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On this Friday's Real Time with Bill Maher, documentary filmmaker Alexandra Pelosi was once again sent out to do interviews for the show, this time in New Jersey in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy. After watching so many of these so-called "tea partiers" who were out there waving signs saying to keep the government's hands off of their Medicare during the health care debate debacle, the responses here were not that surprising.

In the end, none of the people she talked to wanted to have Social Security, Medicare, education, unemployment insurance, hurricane relief or anything else cut to balance the budget. About the only thing they agreed on was cutting Congressional salaries and foreign aid, which as Maher rightfully noted when the segment was over, doesn't do anything to balance the federal budget.

The cognitive dissonance on display was disheartening, but sadly, not unexpected or surprising. Tragically, what was also missing was any meaningful follow up on the fact that Social Security doesn't add a dime to the deficit or about the root causes of what's driving up health care costs and what can be done to help lower the deficit without destroying our social safety nets, which even self proclaimed "tea party" members don't want to see happen when it affects their own lives.

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From this Friday's Real Time with Bill Maher, one of Bill's "Real Time reporters," Alexandra Pelosi, sent the show this report from the 2012 Republican National Convention. Lots of Obama derangement syndrome, teabaggers and wingnuts galore.

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After last week's segment where Bill Maher sent Alexandra Pelosi out to interview residents of Mississippi, that as I noted, may very well not represent the voters of that state and may well have offended a lot of viewers after watching it, Maher followed up with Pelosi going out and talking to welfare and food stamp recipients in New York City. Here's how the segment was characterized by both Maher and Pelosi, which Dan Abrams' site, Mediaite, was apparently happy to go along with.

Alexandra Pelosi Debuts New Video, Bill Maher Says It May ‘Make Liberals Go Insane’:

Alexandra Pelosi appeared on Real Time tonight with two purposes: to defend the video she filmed of voters in Mississippi that aired on the show last week, and to air a brand-new video that Bill Maher admitted would probably anger liberals in the same way the aforementioned video angered conservatives. For her new video, Pelosi spoke to African-American welfare recipients in New York. There was far less laughter during this piece than the Mississippi one (which Pelosi pointed out after it played), but there were still some revealing moments contained therein. One of the men lined up outside the welfare office said he was more interested in collecting than going across the street to try and find a job. Pelosi asked surprisingly tough questions, like “When was the last time you actually worked?” and “Why should my tax dollars be going to you?”

Maher joked before the video aired that Pelosi might not want to reveal her real New York address in case anyone has a problem with the video. Pelosi revealed afterwards that some of the people she spoke to at HBO told her that the video was too controversial for TV. She noted a slight hypocrisy between the willingness to run a video of “toothless rednecks, but when it’s our neighbors,” it becomes a problem. However, she and Maher did make sure to give some context to the two videos so that they were not completely equating both situations. Pelosi contrasted the money spent by the government on food stamps as opposed to defense, which gets a significantly larger portion of the federal budget.

Because this video depicted just as extreme a side as Pelosi’s first piece, she predicted there would be a similar response from the left complaining about her new video.

Sorry Bill and Alexandra, but no, the video you just posted this Friday is not going to make anyone "go insane." I'm not shocked by what you posted any more than anyone living in the real world should be because yes, there are people out there who don't want to work and receive either welfare or food stamps. And those people live all over the country and not just in Mississippi and New York City and they're not just black or white any more than the issue is black and white. And if you want to solve the problems with poverty, and drop out rates and the real problems underlying either of these videos, you cannot reduce some complex social issues to sound bytes as one of my fellow contributors here at C&L reminded me tonight after watching this segment.

And note to Alexandra Pelosi, please spare me the condescending crap about bloggers in pajamas and who is doing real journalism out there. You're roaming into Willie Geist/Joe Scarborough territory there with those sort of cracks during this interview.

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From Raw Story -- Maher panel responds to footage of Mississippi voters:

Filmmaker (and daughter of former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi) Alexandra Pelosi traveled to Mississippi at the behest of Real Time with Bill Maher to film voters and get their opinions of the 2012 Republican primary. Before showing the footage, Maher explained to the audience and his panel of guests that the people in the video were not “cherry-picked” and that the intent of the video was not to make fun of anyone.

However, it becomes clear fairly quickly that some of these people are not going to be shortlisted for MacArthur “Genius Grants” any time soon. After the clip, panelists John Hamm from AMC’s series Mad Men and former RNC Chairman Michael Steele joked about the number of teeth the interviewees possessed, but otherwise refrained from poking too much fun.

The Pelosi segment is above and the panel segment is below the fold and I'll give them credit for actually having a pretty substantive conversation about what leads to the sort of prejudices shown in the video by Pelosi, whether anyone thinks that the people she interviewed are representative of most of the people in that state or not, I've never spent any time in Mississippi, so I don't consider myself qualified to say one way or the other what most of the population there is like, although I do know they've got abysmal records when it comes to education and poverty. I found it strange that the coverage by Pelosi did not include any black people from that state, but they weren't specific about what area she dropped off in and what the ethnic breakdown there is compared to the general population of the state.

I'm sure there are a lot of people who will find the footage insulting, but I think the larger arguments about addressing the prejudices of the people interviewed is a good one to have for all of us and how to not dismiss them, but attempt to address them and understand what the underlying causes are, which I think the panel here at least tried to do in the limited time they had to discuss it.

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I just had a chance to watch HBO's documentary Right America: Feeling Wronged I don't know how anyone can watch the film and not agree with the point made by my fellow C&L contributor Jon Perr in this post.

The 5 Signs of Republican and Tea Party Unity:

After a year of denying the obvious, the American media is finally coming to the conclusion that the supposed Tea Party movement is simply a continuation of the failed 2008 Republican presidential campaign by other means. As the data show, the vast majority Tea Baggers don't merely identify themselves as Republicans, they vote for the GOP as well. And as it turns out, the wildest myths propagated by the Tea Bagger are broadly accepted by the Republican faithful. Even in their casual incitements to violence, they are, as Jon Stewart aptly put it last year, "confusing tyranny with losing." Read on...

Of course any of us that followed the presidential elections closely and this astroturf Tea Party movement since it first started came to that same conclusion a long time ago. Alexandra Pelosi talked to Salon about her experience making the documentary -- Watching Republicans grieve:

When Alexandra Pelosi made the Emmy-winning documentary "Journeys With George" in 2000, about her 18 months on the campaign trail with soon-to-be-President George W. Bush, her mother, Nancy, was not yet speaker of the House, and the name "Pelosi" was not yet an epithet on the lips of Republicans.

Eight years later, Pelosi went back out on the GOP campaign trail and into the lion's den, in the waning days of John McCain's failed bid for the White House. In her latest film, "Right America: Feeling Wronged," which debuts on HBO Monday night, Pelosi attends McCain and Sarah Palin rallies in 28 states and puts her microphone in the faces of some very passionate conservatives. As defeat looms, she watches the Republican base go through a very public grieving process, with most of the stages that psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross described -- denial, depression and a whole lot of anger -- but not very much acceptance. Salon spoke to Pelosi by phone. Read on...