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Bill Maher apologizes for N-word. HBO/Sasse also comment

L

Lord Frieza

Member
benjipwns said:
Except he and Nixon agreed on very little, with Nixon being only a tactical ally in blocking Rockefeller...meanwhile Nixon was an actual racist and bigot against all kinds of ethinicities and types who openly fanned the flames of racial fears for personal benefit many times in his career and not just someone who opportunistically if stupidly voted against a single civil rights bill while voting for every other one to come before him, helping to found his local chapter of the NAACP and pushing for desegregating the city of Phoenix in the 1950s.
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Barry Goldwater was also an actual racist, and yes, Nixon was bad. I have no idea what that has to do with what I'm talking about.

And again, Maher was talking about him in 1999. In comparison to the still living Republicans who were at that moment impeaching Bill Clinton.
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And again, I have no idea what this has to do with anything
 
G

gatti-man

Member
Maher is a tacky jackass and the way this came off makes it seem like he's very comfortable using that word. Apology or no apology I don't think anything he could say would make me be less offended or think more of him. There isn't any coming back from that for me.
 
benjipwns

benjipwns

Banned
Lord Frieza said:
Barry Goldwater was also an actual racist, and yes, Nixon was bad. I have no idea what that has to do with what I'm talking about.



And again, I have no idea what this has to do with anything
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Yuck, well, I wrote a reply to this and somehow discombobulated it trying to preview.

I'll ignore all the main points I made instead to point out that you said this:
Might have had some good views, but I don't see him as anyone to hold up in any form, especially since most of his better traits are more present on the left now.
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But Maher was not holding him up now, he was doing so in 1999, when Barry Goldwater had most recently held positions more socially libertarian than practically every elected official in Washington (because he was dead!) and the Congress was impeaching a President in part because of his perjury regarding the sexual abuse of an intern, but something that is being held up now is this 14 year old interview by people now trying to proclaim Maher a "right-libertarian" because of it as if to magically ward him off from themselves because they think he somehow casts a shadow on them.

Even though not only has Maher disclaimed the label libertarian but has taken positions nearly almost universally opposed to "right-libertarianism" on everything except what he and 1998 Barry Goldwater and Karl Hess and the rest of "left-libertarianism" still would agree on. Along with half the posters on here...maybe...on a day when they're feeling in favor of civil rights rather than collective privileges.

None of this proves Maher is or is not racist. Is or is not a comedian or funny or white. Did or did not peak with PI. Or...

Oh wait, he did, and probably with this exact episode.
 
B

Budi

Member
Surprised he apologized. Good that he did though, he does understand the weight behind the word. Shouldn't be making jokes like that using it.
 
FalsettoVibe

FalsettoVibe

Member
I don't think Bill Maher is racist......but at the same time I don't think her should have said it. I don't think black people should say it either....and I'm black.
 
D

Darth Ghandi

Banned
I love how people say "I don't think he is racist".
Like saying racist shit is ok just as long as you aren't a KKK attending mother fucker.

Also love all the diet racists defending other diet racists.
Seriously, fuck diet racists.

I wonder why people why want to discuss Islam never once talk about things like foreign policy or discrimination as a part of the problem.
I also wonder why people who want to talk Islam never talk about moderate groups inside Islam that are trying to make a change. And once you tell them, they be like "nah, I ain't interested in supporting that"
 
Spladam

Spladam

Member
Nostremitus said:
The fact the word was in his vocabulary often enough for it to slip means he uses the word quite a bit, he just did so on camera this time.

When I slip up and say fuck in front of my son it's because I use the word when he's not around. Same applies to the N word.

You can only slip up and accidentally say it if you use it enough for it to be something you could accidentally say.


You don't accidentally say words you never use.
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He's not racist. Well, racism is nuanced, we all have a little diet prejudice in us, it's a condition of human nature.

Bill is just really privileged. He thinks he can because he's so cool and progressive. It's like the "I have black friends syndrome.". Glad he got his privileges checked.
 
N

NandoGip

Member
I dont believe he should be fired, I think he does some good with his show. I also believe the criticisms against him for his comments on Islam are valid as well
 
O

Omegasquash

Member
Didn't learn about this incident until now. What an asshole.

That was some seriously off the cuff racism. But then again, it's Maher. With all the other things that he's said/done, it's not surprising. Comes off as one of those folks that thinks they do enough, so a little indulgence every now and again is fine and dandy. It's old, it's deep, and it ought to be confronted the second that it occurs.

Don't watch him folks, and maybe HBO will get the hint. And if that's all he's done to apologize, I hope he sleeps worse than he did on Friday. Fucking jerk.
 
S

SkeptiMism

Member
kitsunelaine said:
Can we get a mod edit to put air quotes around "apologises"
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No, because whether you like it or not, it's a decent apology and mods probably realize that. It contains the basic elements of a proper apology (admitting you fucked up, admitting your action was bad, showing regret) and doesn't try to put the blame on the ones who got offended (the "I'm sorry you got offended" style that you see so often).

Could it be better? Absolutely, in many ways. Is there reasonable cause to doubt him being really sorry? Sure.

But that doesn't mean you can be 100% sure he's just faking it because of the pressure.

And this isn't to say the guy isn't an idiot. I hope he will touch on the subject more.
 
F

finley83

Banned
Spladam said:
Bill is just really privileged. He thinks he can because he's so cool and progressive. It's like the "I have black friends syndrome.". Glad he got his privileges checked.
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Think this is it. Maher originally wanted to call the show "True Dat" and I think this kind of talk is more a sign that he feels he's 'in' enough with black folks that he's comfortable enough saying the word without having to worry about coming across prejudiced.

Problem is, the word is the verbal equivalent of a hand grenade and for anyone not black there is no way to use it outside a direct quotation without just coming across insensitive and arrogant at best.

Maher is wrong on a tonne of issues, particularly his relentlessly knee jerk condemnation of Islam as a religion, but in this case it didn't come across that he was making a racially derogatory comment. It was a bad attempt at a joke, it completely misfired and he apologised and admitted as such within a day.

If there was ever a reason to cancel his show it's the constant jumping on Islam every time someone mentions it, not this. Jokes misfire but the Islam thing isn't a joke, that shit escalates racial tensions and leads to genuinely bad shit happening.
 
S

shadowsdarknes

Member
Darth Ghandi said:
I love how people say "I don't think he is racist".
Like saying racist shit is ok just as long as you aren't a KKK attending mother fucker.

Also love all the diet racists defending other diet racists.
Seriously, fuck diet racists.

I wonder why people why want to discuss Islam never once talk about things like foreign policy or discrimination as a part of the problem.
I also wonder why people who want to talk Islam never talk about moderate groups inside Islam that are trying to make a change. And once you tell them, they be like "nah, I ain't interested in supporting that"
Click to expand...

Did anyone say it was okay to say racist shit?
 
S

shadowsdarknes

Member
Nepenthe said:
People think it's okay to say racist shit if you're either a comedian or couch it under the deflective veil of the racist shit being just a joke.
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Yeah that's not really okay.

But in this instance, I can't really seem to think anyone is saying that Bill's joke was an okay one.
 
Spladam

Spladam

Member
Nepenthe said:
People think it's okay to say racist shit if you're either a comedian or couch it under the deflective veil of the racist shit being just a joke.
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So, the Dave Chappelle show is not ok? Satire should be protected by freedom of speech, sometimes it's healing and cathartic. Can a rape joke be funny? Yes, it can. Just make damn sure it's funny or you're screwed.
 
C

Carpe Dumdum

Banned
Spladam said:
So, the Dave Chappelle show is not ok? Satire should be protected by freedom of speech, sometimes it's healing and cathartic. Can a rape joke be funny? Just make damn sure it's funny are you're screwed.
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Rape jokes can definitely be funny. I know so because I was bored last night and I put on Sarah Silverman's new Netflix special. She has a rape joke near the beginning of the show that was set up brilliantly and had an amazing twist at the end. I don't normally like her, but this was very well done.
 
smokeymicpot

smokeymicpot

Beat EviLore at pool.
dakun said:
I dislike his move especially because it's not a cancellation out of principle, but because it's "too fresh" and "let's wait until this is forgotten". He'll be back on Real Time before you know it (if he's invited back again)
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He will be they are both friends. He will go on in a month a so when it all blows over. Franken is being smart especially if he thinks about running in 2020.
 
H

hokahey

Member
Spladam said:
He's not racist. Well, racism is nuanced, we all have a little diet prejudice in us, it's a condition of human nature.

Bill is just really privileged. He thinks he can because he's so cool and progressive. It's like the "I have black friends syndrome.". Glad he got his privileges checked.
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This is exactly it. Bill thought he was "down" enough to use that word.
 
LordKasual

LordKasual

Banned
Spladam said:
He's not racist. Well, racism is nuanced, we all have a little diet prejudice in us, it's a condition of human nature.

Bill is just really privileged. He thinks he can because he's so cool and progressive. It's like the "I have black friends syndrome.". Glad he got his privileges checked.
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I can agree with this.

The thing is, even if he actually is seen as "cool enough" to use the word in private settings and get away with it, he will never, ever be able to do it on television.

No white man will. It's a public image nightmare
 
C

Crossing Eden

Hello, my name is Yves Guillemot, Vivendi S.A.'s Employee of the Month!
HellforLeather said:
Colin's Last Stand did a video on this

Pretty much sums up how I feel about the whole deal.
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Colin Moriarty?.....his last video is straight up doing false equivalences for the wonder woman Alamo screening questioning whether or not men only screenings are ok and that it was mean-spirited. An absolutely stupid question that misses the point. and he has a video entertaining the idea of transracialism yet again making a comparison with transgenderism when such a discussion doesn't need to be entertained at all. and in that video you linked, he says society should be more forgiving of situations like this, aka an old white man casually blurting out the n-word. He either supports stupid shit or tries to entertain both sides. Colin is an idiot.
 
D

dakun

Member
smokeymicpot said:
He will be they are both friends. He will go on in a month a so when it all blows over. Franken is being smart especially if he thinks about running in 2020.
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I'd be pissed as hell if the person that calls me his friend is the first to bail on me. But that's on Bill if he's ok with that.
 
R

RumbleHumble

Banned
Talk about great timing for Bill Maher and HBO!:

http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a55479/bill-maher-profile/

"Yeah, but I just find some of her positions kind of horrible," I told him.

"I'm not sure you know what you're talking about," Maher insisted. "If you think democracy as we know it will survive if France becomes 51 percent Muslim, you're fooling yourself along with a bunch of other liberals."

I began to mount a counterargument—that many of Le Pen's remarks on immigrants were proto-Trumpian, that France was, at present, just 7.5 percent Muslim—but Maher had turned back to the National Enquirer. An hour later, we arrived at the Four Seasons in Dallas.
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Instead, Maher zeroed in on the disgust for Le Pen that I'd displayed the night before. "You didn't have an argument," he told me. "You had a reaction."

I wanted to tell Maher that my "reaction" was based in part on the knowledge that Le Pen had recently said the French were not to blame for shipping Jews to death camps during World War II. (That crime belonged to the Vichy regime, an illegitimate government, she said, neglecting to mention that it was staffed at every level by French citizens.) But I was exhausted and the room was soon full of people, including the grateful beneficiaries of Maher's philanthropy.

Maher returned to the subject in the van on the way back to the airport. "I just want you to keep an open mind until you really know. Just don't jump on a team—everything in this country is team," he said. "Look, she may turn out to be fucking Hitler in garters, but it's unfair to ask her to suffer the sins of her father."
Click to expand...
 
E

excelsiorlef

Member
dakun said:
I dislike his move especially because it's not a cancellation out of principle, but because it's "too fresh" and "let's wait until this is forgotten". He'll be back on Real Time before you know it (if he's invited back again)
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Maher made the joke in front of an actual republican politician. Maher's has actually created a scenario where Democrats who go one can then be questioned about supporting someone who uses the N Word.

Maher made himself toxic in this atmosphere where everyone in the right is looking for gotchas
 
E

excelsiorlef

Member
Crossing Eden said:
Colin Moriarty?.....his last video is straight up doing false equivalences for the wonder woman Alamo screening questioning whether or not men only screenings are ok and that it was mean-spirited. An absolutely stupid question that misses the point. and he has a video entertaining the idea of transracialism yet again making a comparison with transgenderism when such a discussion doesn't need to be entertained at all. and in that video you linked, he says society should be more forgiving of situations like this, aka an old white man casually blurting out the n-word. He either supports stupid shit or tries to entertain both sides. Colin is an idiot.
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Ahhhh jesus... Colin decided the word needed to hear his thoughts on Rachel Dolezal and trans folks... why... :'(
 
E

excelsiorlef

Member
RumbleHumble said:
Talk about great timing for Bill Maher and HBO!:

http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a55479/bill-maher-profile/
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Now Maher says that he'd like to help rescue Yiannopoulos from his tumble out of the spotlight. "I actually want to have him back," Maher told me. "I don't think he would be that hard to bring around to a much more reasonable position." (Yiannopoulos says another appearance is in the works.)
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Jesus Christ. The Le Pen stuff is gross enough.
"That applies to everybody but me," Maher said with a hint of complaint. "Everybody but a man my age who wants to go out with younger women. That's the last politically incorrect thing you can do in America, and it is not forgiven." He paused. "It would be okay if I came out as gay on my sixtieth birthday," he said, before offering himself a round of mock applause. "Well, fuck you, I'm going to do what my body wants—like everybody else in America."
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Compares being an older man who only dates young women to coming out as a gay man...



Western medicine is another of Maher's bugaboos. He can filibuster for hours about what medical science doesn't know and calls flu vaccines a "scam." (The only pharmaceutical medication he says he uses is for his thinning hair.) Not even Jonas Salk gets off the hook. "I'm glad I got the polio vaccine, and I think it did put the final kibosh on it," he told me. "But polio was going down, dramatically, even before the vaccine." (Not exactly. In each of the twelve years before 1955, when Salk's vaccine became widely available, there were at least 10,000 cases of polio in the United States. Since 1964, there has not been a year with more than 115 cases.)
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This just speaks for itself.
After the show, Maher looked tired as he plowed through some whitefish. I sat quietly in a chair while he ate. He broke the silence.

"After what you said, I listened, and they laughed just as hard at the Islam stuff as anything else," he said with a smile.

He told me that he'd read the Marine Le Pen op-ed we'd discussed on the plane. Its author, Ross Douthat, he said, had been on Real Time.

"It's not exactly what I said last night," Maher admitted in a hesitant tone. "I don't know much about her." Maher seemed to be on the verge of correcting the record, but stopped himself. "I'm not saying I'm a fan, but liberals have decided she's Hitler. I don't know if that's true and I feel like I honestly keep an open mind."

He eyed me up and down.

"Party matters. It matters that her father was a Nazi. But it also matters that family going against family is the rarest form of bravery. I remember the Unabomber's brother." He trailed off before making explicit a moral equivalence between Marine Le Pen—who broke with her dad for what appeared to be politically expedient reasons—and Ted Kaczynski's brother, who turned in his terrorist sibling to the FBI.

Instead, Maher zeroed in on the disgust for Le Pen that I'd displayed the night before. "You didn't have an argument," he told me. "You had a reaction."

I wanted to tell Maher that my "reaction" was based in part on the knowledge that Le Pen had recently said the French were not to blame for shipping Jews to death camps during World War II. (That crime belonged to the Vichy regime, an illegitimate government, she said, neglecting to mention that it was staffed at every level by French citizens.) But I was exhausted and the room was soon full of people, including the grateful beneficiaries of Maher's philanthropy.

Maher returned to the subject in the van on the way back to the airport. "I just want you to keep an open mind until you really know. Just don't jump on a team—everything in this country is team," he said. "Look, she may turn out to be fucking Hitler in garters, but it's unfair to ask her to suffer the sins of her father."

I tried to argue that Le Pen's nationalist rhetoric was worrisome, but Maher cut me off.
"Nationalist, it's just a word," he said with disdain. "We get all freaked out because they say 'Death to America' in Iran, but Persian people will tell you that it doesn't really, actually mean what you think it does."

It was at this point that I realized Maher's Doubting Thomas ideology is, in its way, as rigid as any dogma, a reflexive contrarianism that works spectacularly well for him right up until it convinces him that it's okay for a white person to call himself a "house nigger." He can be just as dependent on slogans and talking points as the politicians he skewers on his show. And here, perhaps, was another important difference between him and his peers. Unlike John Oliver, who did seventeen minutes on the French election, Maher clearly had not done his homework about the most important European election of this century so far.

We got on the plane. There was talk of Barbra Streisand's birthday party, which Maher attended, but his thoughts returned to Le Pen.

"Look, I'm not her fan," he said, adjusting a baseball cap. "I'm just keeping an open mind and not swimming with the tide."
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This.... this just exposes Maher.
 
N

Nepenthe

Member
Spladam said:
So, the Dave Chappelle show is not ok?
Click to expand...

Has the Dave Chapelle Show ever said anything racist, or has it used race to make some point about society?

Spladam said:
Satire should be protected by freedom of speech, sometimes it's healing and cathartic.
Click to expand...

First, what Bill said isn't satire. Second, satire can have limits. Third, nothing in this thread is suggesting taking away anyone's free speech, so don't know why you brought that up.

Spladam said:
Can a rape joke be funny?
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A rape joke is funny if it's not actually advocating rape or shitting on an actual rape victim, yes.

Spladam said:
Just make damn sure it's funny are you're screwed.
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Well, yes! If you say some dumb shit, be prepared for the social consequences! Why we fight so hard to wrap comedians and assholes up in blankets to protect them from the reality that is the most basic social contract that's worked for thousands of years ("if you're an asshole, prepared to be ostracized from the group because we're a fucking social species goddammit"), I don't know.
 
L

L Thammy

Member
RumbleHumble said:
Yup, those Le Pen statements feel ripped straight out of some garbage "just asking questions" Gamergate scripts.
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Well, that would be if he's posting a Breitbart link. If we're comparing Maher to guys in Gamergate threads, I'd imagine he's closer to the guys who jumped in to say that they didn't actually know anything about the issue but both sides are wrong. Those are the ones whose sole concern is feeling superior to others and have no actual interest in the subject they're talking about.
 
R

RumbleHumble

Banned
L Thammy said:
Well, that would be if he's posting a Breitbart link. If we're comparing Maher to guys in Gamergate threads, I'd imagine he's closer to the guys who jumped in to say that they didn't actually know anything about the issue but both sides are wrong. Those are the ones whose sole concern is feeling superior to others and have no actual interest in the subject they're talking about.
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Probably one of the best descriptions of Maher's current state I've read in a while.
 
C

cloudburst

Banned
I like some of Maher's viewpoints, but I find it puzzling that the n-word is even part of his vernacular. He must be saying it fairly often if he can casually say it on television. Or maybe, he drinks before the show?
 
Z

Zabka

Member
cloudburst said:
I like some of Maher's viewpoints, but I find it puzzling that the n-word is even part of his vernacular. He must be saying it fairly often if he can casually say it on television. Or maybe, he drinks before the show?
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He's high all the time
 
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