Bill Maher Breaks Up with MSNBC

When you’re a so-called liberal-progressive media outlet and you’ve lost Bill Maher, that may be a sign you’ve jumped the shark.

In a post on his blog, HBO Real Time host Bill Maher offered a Valentine’s Day confession, which was he thought MSNBC had overdone it with their coverage of the so-called scandal surrounding Gov. Chris Christie (R-NJ). Therefore, Maher said, he would be “seeing other news organizations.”

[Y]ou’re obviously interested in another man: Chris Christie. You’re obsessed with him. So I wanted you to hear it from me first. I’m going to start seeing other news organizations. I’ll miss what we had. It was a rocket ship ride. We were both passionate flaming liberals and we didn’t care what the world thought of us. It was a glorious time. We finished each other’s Sarah Palin jokes. But now we never talk about any of the things we used to talk about: global warming, gun control, poverty… All because Chris Christie came along and put you under his spell.

Maher likened MSNBC’s coverage of Christie to Fox News Channel’s coverage of Benghazi and argued that it no longer is “leaning forward” as its “Lean Forward” mantra had suggested.

“You’ve stopped leaning forward,” Maher said. “Look, I’m no good at being noble, but it doesn’t take much to see that the problems of three little lanes of traffic don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world.”

Maher has been critical of MSNBC in the past. Last year, he criticized Chris Matthews for attacking embattled former Gov. Eliott Spitzer (D-NY) and former Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY) on his show. Maher also was critical of the glowing coverage coming from Matthews and then-MSNBC Countdown host Keith Olbermann of Obama during the 2008 Democratic National Convention.

“I think there is a problem, though, with the media gushing over him too much,” Maher said on his August 29, 2008 HBO show. “I don’t think he thinks that he’s all that, but the media does. I mean, the coverage after, that I was watching, from MSNBC, I mean these guys were ready to have sex with him… It’s embarrassing.”