Bill Maher Uses Glenn Beck’s Interview (And Political Theory) To Blast Sarah Palin

Political satirist Bill Maher visited Chris Matthews last night to vent his frustration on why the media insists on taking Sarah Palin seriously when not even the conservative movement she embraces does so. Interestingly, Maher manages to both evoke the Overton Window (the theory, not the book) and use her comrade-in-arms Glenn Beck to discredit her.

Maher, who in terms of emotional reaction from those on the opposite end of the political spectrum could very much be the antithesis to Palin, just doesn’t understand the hype. “I understand why I want to talk about her– I’m a comedian,” he argues, but he thinks “a presidential contender should have more qualifications than ‘a Facebook page.'”

He then echoes this season’s popular political science theory, the Overton window, to argue that somewhere along the line “the left moved to the center and the right moved to a mental hospital,” and to substantiate his argument that Palin is not qualified to be a politician at all, much less the President of the United States, he uses her extended softball interview with Glenn Beck on his Fox News program. Beck only asked her one “gotcha” question in that entire exchange– “Who is your favorite Founding Father?”– and Maher notes that she was not even able to answer that (in all fairness, she did come up with George Washington after stuttering about diversity for several seconds).

Matthews, for the most part, agrees with Maher’s assessments, adding that he believes Palin has “neo-cons scripting all this stuff in crayon for her” when she gives a speech and suggesting that if you ask her a spontaneous question, she wouldn’t have an answer.

Watch the segment below: