Bill Maher continued to diminish Rush Limbaugh’s sexist attacks on Sandra Fluke and attack liberals for overreacting. On his HBO show last night, Maher said that liberals should “put this in perspective… a guy made a bad joke.” He added in that in America “sometimes you’re made to feel uncomfortable.”

Actually, Limbaugh launched hateful attacks against Fluke seventy times over three days. You can watch all of Limbaugh’s attacks on Fluke here. He doesn’t appear to be joking.

Maher insisted that he was not, in fact, defending Limbaugh but “defending living in a country where people don’t have to be afraid that they might go out of the bounds for one minute. Do we all want to be talking like White House spokesmen?” Watch it:

Maher also framed the criticisms of Limbaugh as an attack on “free speech.” But the issue is not whether Limbaugh was free to say what he did about Sandra Fluke. Hundreds of thousands of people are asking advertisers and others if they want to continue to pay for Limbaugh’s speech. At least 98 major advertisers have said no and canceled their ads.

Maher also dismissed Limbaugh’s comments by noting that “no one died.” The same talking point was echoed by Tucker Carlson who argued, oddly, that we should cut Limbaugh some slack because Don King was convicted of manslaughter in 1966 and still has a career. Carlson, like Maher, has his own history of mysoginistic comments. Last year he tweeted, “Palin’s popularity falling in Iowa, but maintains lead to become supreme commander of Milfistan.” He later apologized.

Last night on Twitter, Bill Maher defended Rush Limbaugh and attacked liberals for not accepting Limbaugh’s apology after he spent three days relentlessly attacking law student Sandra Fluke.

Notably, Limbaugh only apologized for “two words,” after attacking Fluke dozens of times. Among those liberals not satisifed with Limbaugh’s apology was Fluke herself, who said it didn’t “change anything.” Dozens of Limbaugh’s advertisers agreed and have announced they are pulling their ads after Limbaugh’s apology.

Here is Maher’s tweet:

Maher comes to the debate with his own baggage. Last March, he used an offensive sexist epithet to describe Sarah Palin. He’s also called Rep. Michele Bachmann and Palin “bimbos.”

Recently, Maher defended his sexist comments, stating “I sometimes called Sarah Palin a bad name. I don’t have sponsors, I’m on HBO.”