Bill Maher says Occupy Wall Street should stay "militantly vague"

Wasn't it last Friday night when television personality Bill Maher and his guests ridiculed Occupy Wall Street for their bongos, lack of a "coherent message," and limited access to the Burger King bathroom next to Zuccotti Park? Well, apparently this week Maher has decided that OWS' ideological promiscuity is just the kind of thing he's into.

"I like it that they're militantly vague," he told Rachel Maddow yesterday.

So what does that mean? In true hipster fashion, Maher managed to explain that statement with a garbled adage that political parties — just like Modest Mouse — are only good in their early, obscure years. Once your party develops into having goals and priorities, you're just one step behind Tea Party extremism (and embarrassingly catchy pop songs, played ad infinitum in Starbucks across America).

Early Tea Partiers and Wall Street occupiers, Maher argued, "were sort of on the same page." They were both young (well, not the Tea Party), beautiful, and disenchanted with the system. Then the Tea Party left their lofty, ambiguous ideals and sold out to corporatism and political platforms. "It just shows how easily the people in the Tea Party can be herded into something else," he said.

In case you needed any more evidence that Bill Maher is OWS' newest occupier, he went on to rail on Tea Partiers like Herman Cain for being rich and ungrateful. "They wouldn't be rich if they didn't have this great country that provides roads and schools," he said. Roads and schools... and parks. And Starbucks! And Burger Kings! Although, he noted, his own richness was a "fluke" — because "what you do is not what makes you rich," apparently.