In Real Time’s return to HBO after a month-long break, Bill Maher in his opening monologue said the Tokyo Olympics Are “out-woke-ing” the Oscars, and once again critiqued cancel culture.
According to Maher, the news stories coming out of the Olympics–which have included accusations of white-washing amidst the surfing competition by The Associated Press, and the opening ceremony’s musical director being ousted after he admitted to being a bully in school– are “yet another example of how the woke invert the very thing that used to make liberals liberals. ‘Snitches and bitches.’ That’s not being liberal.”
“Remember when your teacher used to try to scare you, they’d say, ‘You know, this is going to go down on your permanent record,” Maher joked about the opening ceremony’s musical director. “No longer an empty threat now.” Maher also spoke about climate change, and related it back to cancel culture, calling the former “a purge.” “It’s a mentality that belongs in Stalin’s Russia,” he said. “How bad does this atmosphere we are living in have to get before people who say cancel culture is overblown have to admit that it is, in fact, an insanity that is swallowing up the world?”
He admitted that “most of human history is a horror story,” but added that “the good parts are groups coming together and sharing. It’s sort of the whole point of the Olympics.” He closed by saying, “we live in a world where straight actors are told they can’t play gay roles and a white novelists aren’t allowed to imagine what it’s like to be a Mexican immigrant. Even though trying to inhabit the life of someone else is almost the definition of empathy, the bedrock of liberalism.”
