Rob Lifford

We recently noticed that our TVs are now picking up HBO, apparently for free, though no action of our own doing. Maybe someone in the neighborhood was fiddling with one of the cable boxes up on the telephone pole and decided that we just weren’t watching enough boob tube.

I realize that as an ethical person, I am obligated to notify the good people at my local cable provider so they can shut it down. Said obligation has been added to my to-do list.

Luckily, my to-do list is prioritized in order of importance to the Prime Directive — supporting my family — so it’s waaaaaay down there for now.

Anyway, I’ve caught a few reruns of Real Time with Bill Maher and found it pretty entertaining. I normally don’t go for such heavily political talk shows, especially when they’re as one-sided as Real Time, but they’ve got some good writers and their panel-discussion format often feels fresh and funny.

So tonight I caught the new episode, and it was a pretty typical show until Maher closed the “New Rules” segment with an extended, ridiculously wrong-headed litany against public breastfeeding. He went as far as to compare feeding an infant to masturbation, and to call out “lactivists” as attention-seeking narcissists. WTF?!?

Bill, Bill, Bill. The real attention-seekers here are the hung-up head cases who just aren’t happy unless they’re complaining about something or telling others what (or what not) to do. I have a feeling you might summon up a little activism yourself if you had to spend any of your time defending your right to do a completely natural thing from a legion of sexually repressed dimwits.

I did at least find great humor in hearing a show-biz professional summon up the chutzpah to call anyone else narcissistic. That’s a knee-slapper.

C’mon, America, don’t make me write about this again.

Aside: did you guess where this post was going when I used the phrse “boob tube” in the first paragraph? Zing!