The unfortunate thing about Bill Maher is, in recent years, as he’s gotten older his arguments have grown considerably weaker.
Take what happened Friday night.
Maher, the host of HBO’s Real Time, didn’t make as egregious an error as a couple of weeks ago, where he lobbed a racist remark at a Black Republican congressman, but his rhetoric was troubling nonetheless.
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During a riff where the political satirist was trying to lambaste the 2019 Academy Awards for being too politically correct, he said, “Look at the Oscars—they’re being ruined by these same kind of ridiculous purity tests. Bohemian Rhapsody is flawed—flawed because it is gay, but not gay enough. Really? That’s what they’re saying: it’s insensitive to the extremely gay. What? For years, the beef around gay characters in movies was they were reduced to their sexuality. Now, the sexuality is placed in the background and it’s, where is the dick-sucking?”
For the record: no big-name critics of Bohemian Rhapsody have demanded there be more “dick-sucking” in it (not that there’s anything wrong with that). This is nothing but Maher’s latent homophobia jumping out. The main criticisms surrounding Bohemian concern not only the fact that accused sexual predator Bryan Singer directed pretty much all of it, but also that the film changed the timing of Freddie Mercury’s AIDS diagnosis to accommodate its fictional narrative.
And Maher didn’t stop there. The comedy host proceeded to defend Green Book director Peter Farrelly’s habit of flashing his penis at his actresses.
“Green Book is a movie made by liberals, for liberals, bursting at the seams with liberal values. Not good enough!” exclaimed Maher. “Because the director is one of the Farrelly brothers, and as an inside joke for his crew he used to pull his weenie out on movies like Dumb and Dumber. Fuck, the poster for Something About Mary showed Cameron Diaz’s hair styled with Ben Stiller’s cum! I say he should just get an award for just growing up!”
Of course, Maher is being disingenuous: Cameron Diaz’s hair wasn’t actually styled with Ben Stiller’s cum… because that was just a part of the movie. But Peter Farrelly really showed his penis to his lead actresses, or his employees. And that is pretty damn far from OK.
