Bill Maher Is Baffled That He Doesn’t Have A Mark Twain Prize Already

Bill Maher writes one book that he patched together from his Real Time monologues and suddenly he thinks he’s Samuel Clemens.

Mark Twain once said, “Man is the only animal that blushes — or needs to.” In 2011, Maher accused The Onion of plagiarizing a joke from his stand-up act that he, himself, stole from an old Onion article, so I don’t think Twain ever encountered an animal as shameless as HBO’s smarmy centrist ignoramus. As such, the suggestion that Maher and Twain have anything in common besides their liberal use of the N-word should embarrass anyone with at least an eighth grade reading level, which would leave a significant portion of the Real Time audience unabashed. 

Therefore, each time the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. selects the annual recipient of its highly coveted Mark Twain Prize for American Humor, Maher’s absence from the awards announcement comes as no surprise to anyone — well, anyone besides Maher, of course.

During yesterday’s episode of Club Random with Bill Maher featuring TV legend Ray Romano, political comedy’s most incurious fence-sitter claimed that, not only is it a travesty that he’s never received the prestigious Mark Twain Prize, but that he’s more deserving of the honor than any of its 25-and-counting recipients because he’s the closest thing comedy has to a modern Mark Twain — or so said the late Larry King.

“I have zero respect for any awards,” Maher told Romano when the topic of his guest’s Peabody Award offered the opportunity for the host to steer the conversation toward himself. Said Maher of his perennial status as an also-ran at the Emmys, “It used to be a stone in my shoe, and now I love it.”

Maher argued that the committees who choose the industry awards that go to comics like Romano and not to Maher have no integrity in their selection process, as proven by his own paltry trophy case. The Mark Twain Prize, in particular, is especially deserving of scorn considering how it habitually forgets to choose a shoo-in for American comedy’s highest honor.

“Larry King, every time I was on, he would say, ‘You are more like Mark Twain than anybody that we’ve had in a long time,’” Maher claimed of his conversations with the broadcasting legend. “And I would take it as a great compliment. Now, I don’t know if that’s gospel or if it’s true. But it always amused me that the Mark Twain award did give out the award to like 20 people who might have been — I’m sure there are many of them, all of them probably are fine comics, but (they) are not like Mark Twain.”

After Maher paused to laugh at his own insight, he said, “There’s one guy who's actually like Mark Twain much more than the people (who receive the award).”

Looking at the list of comedians who have received the award, there’s only one past recipient who is less deserving of the honor of having their name attached to America’s most impactful humorist than the Real Time host, and it’s shocking that Maher has never once thought to have him on Club Random — Maher’s overdue to complain about cancel culture with Bill Cosby.