On September 11, 2001, conservative political commentator
Barbara Olson was on her way to Los Angeles to appear as a guest on
Politically Incorrect, when
the airplane she was on was hijacked and flown into
the Pentagon during the
September 11 attacks. In the aftermath of the attacks, U.S. President
George W. Bush said that the terrorists responsible were cowards. On September 17, 2001, one of Maher's guests,
Dinesh D'Souza, said "These are warriors. And we have to realize that the principles of our way of life are in conflict with people in the world. And so—I mean, I'm all for understanding the sociological causes of this, but we should not blame the victim. Americans shouldn't blame themselves because other people want to bomb them." Maher agreed, and replied: "We have been the cowards, lobbing cruise missiles from 2,000 miles away. That's cowardly. Staying in the airplane when it hits the building, say what you want about it, [it's] not cowardly." Similar comments were made by others in other media. Maher apologized, and explained that he had been criticizing U.S. military policy, not American soldiers. The show was canceled the following June, which Maher and many others saw as a result of the controversy, although ABC denied that the controversy was a factor and said the program was canceled due to declining ratings. Maher said that the show struggled for advertisers in its final months. There were subsequently comments in various media on the irony that a show called
Politically Incorrect was canceled because its host had made a supposedly politically incorrect comment. The show was replaced on ABC by
Jimmy Kimmel Live! in 2003. Maher rebounded with an hour-long weekly program on
HBO called
Real Time with Bill Maher premiering on February 21, 2003, which follows a similar format. == Awards and recognition ==