Updated Saturday, June 3, 2017, 3:56 p.m. EDT: Ol’ Bill Maher has come out with an apology after calling himself a “house nigger” during the most recent installment of his Friday-night show.
Apparently, last night was a “particularly long night” for Maher because of his words, although it took him until almost 4 p.m. the following day to fix his mouth with an apology. But, hey, who’s counting?
According to CNN, his apology statement reads as follows:
Friday nights are always my worst night of sleep because I’m up reflecting on the things I should or shouldn’t have said on my live show ... Last night was a particularly long night as I regret the word I used in the banter of a live moment. The word was offensive, and I regret saying it and am very sorry.
Updated Saturday, June 3, 2017, 12:50 p.m. EDT: For all those salivating to see messy Bill Maher use the word “nigger” on-screen, fuhgeddaboudit.
If you were trying to catch the now-infamous episode where the comedian uttered the racial slur, you won’t be able to find it on iTunes. And as of Saturday morning, it also was not up on HBO Now.
This is no accident, according to the network. In a statement to the Hollywood Reporter, HBO called Maher’s (weird and egregious and, on top of that, not really topical) use of the n-word on Friday’s show “completely inexcusable and tasteless” and that it would be edited out of further airings.
Updated Friday, June 2, 2017, 11:51 p.m. EDT: This story previously incorrectly quoted Bill Maher as having said “nigga,” when, in fact, he said “nigger” with a HARD-ASS “Rrrrrrrrrruh,” so that makes this extra offensive. And before you start typing all fast in the comments on your racist burner accounts, I SAID WHAT I SAID. His show needs to be canceled.
Earlier:
During a conversation with Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.) on Friday’s installment of Real Time With Bill Maher, Maher told Sasse that he’s a “house nigger” and would never work in the fields.
Maher and Sasse were discussing Sasse’s book, The Vanishing American Adult: Our Coming-of-Age Crisis and How to Rebuild a Culture of Self-Reliance.
The conversation with Sasse went like this:
“Adults dress up for Halloween, they don’t do that in Nebraska?” Maher asked.
“It’s frowned upon,” Sasse replied. “We don’t do that quite as much.”
“I gotta get to Nebraska more,” Maher said.
“You’re welcome; we’d love to have you work in the fields with us,” Sasse joked.
“Work in the fields,” Maher scoffed. “Senator, I’m a house nigger.”
“You still working in the fields out there, huh?” Maher said.
“Yeah,” Sasse said. “We want our kids to suffer.”
Sasse grinned when Maher called himself a house nigger, but held in his laugh.
This is not the first time Maher has crossed the line or shown himself to be a troll for ratings.
In February he invited infamous alt-right troll Milo Yiannopoulos on his show along with Larry Wilmore. After Milo trolled his fellow guests for most of the show, Wilmore ended up telling him that he could “go fuck” himself.
As previously noted on The Root, Maher had Yiannopoulos on his show for ratings and nothing more. After Yiannopoulos was booked to appear on Real Time With Bill Maher, one of the other guests, Jeremy Scahill, dropped out of the show in protest. In a post detailing his reasoning, Scahill wrote that Yiannopoulos “has ample venues to spew his hateful diatribes” and noted that “there is no value in ‘debating’ him.”
Last month, Maher “used the black bodies of Terence Crutcher and Walter Scott—and all black people shot down by police—as political props. He used their black lives as ledes and their slayings as segues into what he really wanted to do: put their blood on Cornel West’s hands and on anyone’s who was critical of or didn’t vote for Clinton,” The Root’s Kirsten West Savali noted.
Maher doesn’t get a pass just because he likes black women. In fact, that makes his racism disguised as comedy especially egregious. He proved once again on Friday night that he doesn’t care about black people or blackness; we are all just props to him, and co-opting our women, our language and our oppression is just a ploy to make himself seem edgy and hip.
The man is disgusting, and his time in the limelight is long over. Real Time With Bill Maher needs to be canceled immediately.