Jenna's 'baby' with Maher's bathwater

HBO’s “Real Time with Bill Maher” returned Friday night, back with a vengeance (and technical difficulties).

Maher’s mike went out at the top of his monologue. On any other show this might be a conspicuous gaffe, but “Real Time” is kind of a messy show, anyway—a topical salon of the fast-and-loose opinion, interrupted by comedy bits that recall Carson’s more old-school, vaudevillian approach.

“Real Time” might not be as silky smooth in its rhetoric as Comedy Central’s “Daily Show with Jon Stewart” or “The Colbert Report,” but the show also comes down a little farther from a perch of above-it-all remove.

To wit—the somewhat painful sketch in the cold open Friday that had Maher riffing on missing U.S. weaponry in Iraq, playing a Crazy-Eddy-in-Sadr-City type, selling guns in a “back to surge sale.”

Mercifully, the bit was short.

The panel featured the liberal flame-throwing actor Tim Robbins (''the American people were suckered into this war with false information and with propaganda”), who was off-set by National Public Radio’s Michel Martin and The Weekly Standard’s Stephen Hayes, the latter cast in that lonely, difficult “Real Time” role of the conservative whoever facing down the crowd-pleasing movie star.

Robbins and Hayes got into it on the specter of pre-9/11 ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda,  Maher finally turning the temperature down by bringing on another bit—a faux baby shower gift basket for President Bush’s daughter Jenna, set to be married amid speculation that she’s preggers.

I kind of liked the “Interrogate Me Elmo” doll and the little baby port-o-potty that reads “Mission Accomplished” when you lift the seat.

Later, new Republican presidential darling Mike Huckabee made a repeat appearance via satellite. Having finished a surprising second behind Mitt “Daddy Warbucks” Romney in the Iowa straw poll, Huckabee, celebrating a birthday Friday, seemed to be feeling his oats.

“How old are you, governor?” Maher asked.

“I’m 52 years old. Please say I look younger. Do me a favor, give me that birthday present and tell me I don’t look that old.”

Maher, for once, kept his tongue.

--Paul Brownfield

(Photo courtesy HBO)