Media

Bill Maher Is Actually On To Something In NYT Piece: “Please Stop Apologizing”

Everyone knows HBO host Bill Maher oversteps his boundaries and would probably make his girlfriend cry, so I was surprised to find myself agreeing wholeheartedly with his Wednesday New York Times op-ed titled, “Please Stop Apologizing,” which is a call for all of us to stop being so. damn. sensitive.

Maher, who was obliterated by the media for using the “c” word during a stand-up act to describe former Alaska governor Sarah Palin, begins the piece by saying people overreacted to actor Robert DeNiro’s now infamous “white first lady” joke, and by people, he means presidential candidate Newt Gingrich and first lady Michelle Obama. No one else seemed wounded by the comment, yet the fact that it blew up on the Interwebs shows we’re wasting our time expressing endless amounts of rage over innocuous statements. Maher has a slew of other recent examples that are still fresh in our memories:

“When did we get it in our heads that we have the right to never hear anything we don’t like? In the last year, we’ve been shocked and appalled by the unbelievable insensitivity of Nike shoes, the Fighting Sioux, Hank Williams Jr., Cee Lo Green, Ashton Kutcher, Tracy Morgan, Don Imus, Kirk Cameron, Gilbert Gottfried, the Super Bowl halftime show and the ESPN guys who used the wrong cliché for Jeremy Lin after everyone else used all the others. Who can keep up?”

He’s right. Constantly finding something or someone to take issue with is draining. Of course, he could help by not making so many sexist comments with no remorse. Rather than go cold turkey and desist with the “conniption fits,” however, Maher proposes we do the bare minimum by blocking out one day a year to blissful apathy:

“Let’s have an amnesty — from the left and the right — on every made-up, fake, totally insincere, playacted hurt, insult, slight and affront. Let’s make this Sunday the National Day of No Outrage. One day a year when you will not find some tiny thing someone did or said and pretend you can barely continue functioning until they apologize.”

The other solution is to, I don’t know, not listen to conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh or anyone else who hurts your feelings. This isn’t a Kindergarten playground or a high school you’re trapped in for four years. You’re free to avoid any public figure with whom you disagree. Just turn off the channel. Or, if you’re Maher and are forced to hear Limbaugh’s program when “at a stoplight next to a pickup truck,” you can roll up your windows and blast Nicki Minaj or something.

TAGS: bill maher | michelle obama | Rush Limbaugh

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