In the long history of Bill Maher on TV there has never been a more real time moment on Real Time than last Friday’s episode. I struggle to think of another major TV host who responded to a national firestorm by allowing people to come on his show and beat him up over his own transgressions. It’s like Maher went to the town square, locked himself in the pillory, and let people have at him for an hour. But strangely, the courage to have Dr.
Michael Eric Dyson, Ice Cube and Symone Sanders take him to the woodshed did not lead to the best version of Maher. He was contrite—at least early on in the show—but he was also defensive, excuse-heavy, mentioned the omnipresence of the n-word in culture (Maher’s conversation with Dyson was weird; at times, it seemed like they were speaking different languages. My friend Dr. Dyson missed the mark by over-intellectualizing in a moment of pain—Dyson surrounded some solid questions to Maher with so much verbal cogitation that the comedian was able to avoid really answering them. On the other hand, Ice Cube was direct, emotional, and powerfully plain-spoken. He forced the conversation to its true center as Maher grew grumpy. But Cube is right: the problem is that Maher thinks he has a pass.
By “a pass” I mean he feels that he can do things that other white people can’t—things that are culturally reserved for Blacks. The pass is both I’m unique among whites and I get special privilege from Blacks. Many of us have known someone who thinks they have a pass. That guy who dates only Black women, or has lots of Black friends, or really, really loves hip-hop, or mastered…
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