Bill Maher returned to a topic directly at his wheelhouse during his closing monologue on the Friday night episode of Real time: Cancel the culture during the ongoing Black Lives Matter protests.
“Whites should stop trying to cancel other people whose hearts are in the right place, but they don’t do it exactly right on the first try,” Maher said.
By ridiculing recent incidents involving white shame in other white people’s responses to protests of racial injustice, Maher managed to avoid the phrase “political correctness.” But she counted a number of examples, which she scoffed at effectively telling people they were “helping badly.”
Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf opened an investigation of hate crimes for “knots” found in trees in a city park, despite the fact that the black man, Victor Sengbe, who tied the rope ties said that he did it as an exercise rig. Maher also mentioned the backlash over the posting of black squares on Instagram in support of Black Lives Matter and a tweet from Ellen DeGeneres. The host of the daytime talk, Maher marveled, had to delete a tweet that said in part: “People of color have faced injustices for too long” because it was seen as an offensively cautious tone.
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“I am concerned that the kind of tensions the ‘gotcha’ guardians are creating is going to make people afraid of mixing at all, and it will push us towards a kind of re-segregation, where instead of just seeing one person and not color, now we are only seeing color, “he said.” Maybe this is the old school liberalism speaking, but I don’t think that is the way to go. “
Maher said he appears to have a feeling of uneasy competition. “Hate racism more? You can’t steal that. Elvis taking the Little Richard act, that was bad enough.
Liberalism, Maher said, “should be about lifting people up rather than slapping people who are trying to say, ‘I’m on your side.'”
He skewered the uncomfortable push and pull that has become common in 2020. “You want to be a good ally, but not too good, or you’re being a white savior. Use your voice, but don’t do anything about yourself! But talk, unless it’s your time to listen. And then silence means violence, “he said. “Although ‘silence’ sometimes just means someone has two jobs and has three children. They have baby food on their shirts, I don’t hate my heart. “
Maher acknowledged that there are sometimes clearer examples of someone making a serious mistake that deserves to be reported, but argued that more leniency should be applied. Maher mentioned to a sportscaster in Sacramento who was fired after tweeting “all lives matter,” although he claimed he did not understand the racist nuances of the phrase. “Instead of a possible ally, we create a bitter and unemployed person,” Maher lamented.
Willow Smith, Maher said, offered some of the most accurate evaluations of these difficult times. She recently denounced people “embarrassing others for what they are choosing to say or embarrassing people for saying nothing at all. I feel like if we really want change, shame doesn’t lead to learning.”
Maher said he will take his usual summer vacation for the next four weeks, but said he would return on July 31. The new weekly episodes, he said, will go through “the campaigns, the conventions, the elections, until the end of La republica.”
