Bill Maher ‘Joke’ Met With Silence on ‘The View’

Bill Maher keeps complaining that he might get canceled any minute now, and with any luck, he’ll soon be proven right. Yesterday’s appearance on The View probably won’t get the job done, but at least Maher is giving it the old college try. 

Maher and The View hosts got right into Maher’s favorite topic — the word “woke” and all things associated with it. Maher continued to insist that he’s neither on the left nor the right, and that both sides are guilty of leading America into ruin. “I think we agree about the danger of the super far right, and I can’t say it enough, I think they’re the bigger threat,” he pontificated. “But don’t tell me that the left hasn’t changed. I mean, I’m old enough to remember when it was the conservatives who hated the Jews, okay?”

The response from both the panel and the studio audience:

Even Maher acknowledged the awkward elephant in the room: “That was a joke.” Note to Maher: When you have to let people know it’s a joke, it’s probably not a good one. 

Alyssa Farah Griffin didn’t think so. “Too dark!” she laughed to break the silence. 

“Well, maybe it is, but it’s true,” replied Maher. So not a joke after all, just more of Maher speaking for the vast middle.

The book-plugging appearance gave Sunny Hostin a chance to poke Maher over his woke obsession. “It struck me that in the first segment, you used the term ‘woke,’ and you said that woke is what was ruining everything,” she said.

Not exactly, said Maher. “I didn’t say ‘ruining everything.’ I said that’s why Trump could get re-elected.” 

In other words, ruining everything. 

Nevertheless, Hostin expressed that “woke” is a word that’s been “co-opted by the right and weaponized and bastardized. So I was surprised to hear you use the term because historically, as you know because I think you’re quite brilliant, ‘woke’ is a word used by the Black community to note that we must be aware of social injustices. Why is that a bad thing?”

Maher, nodding in agreement with Hostin’s “brilliant” description, said it’s not a bad thing but that words migrate. “Alert to injustice — who’s not for that?” he offered. “I’ll use any term you want because maybe that’s a word that’s triggering.” How would The View ladies feel about… “superfar left?” 

One point of agreement for everyone around the table: Watching the nightly news is a chore, with any individual outlet only providing one side of the story. “I just want one place” for all the pieces of the picture, pleaded Maher.

“And, of course,” he smirked, “it’s my book and my show where you can get both.”