(Photo: Janet Van Ham/HBO)
Comedian and commentary TV show host Bill Maher may have used the dreaded “N” word during a joke gone off-center on his popular HBO talk show last week, but many people in the African-American community are screaming foul—but not against the illustrious comedian—against all the whiners making a mountain out of a mole hill.
Maher is no stranger to controversy. He has said things before that didn’t sit well with outsiders—those watching his highly rated show from an analytical perspective. Most Maher fans know what to expect from the 61-year-old comedian, and they often get his jokes right away. Mainly, because they know he’s joking. And that’s how many African-Americans viewed the political commentator’s monologue on last Friday’s show.
“I thought it was funny,” one Maher fan, who is African-American, posted to his social media account. “It’s Bill Maher, not Michael Richards.”
Michael Richards, as we know, made headlines in 2006 with a racist tirade at a West Hollywood comedy club. The disgruntled Seinfeld actor spent years trying to atone for his obscenity-laced outburst.
It’s been a different case with Maher. Many African-American fans absorbed Maher’s unscripted sketch with laughs instead of reproach, and even more of those fans of color found the backlash to the comedian’s descriptive witticism to be unwarranted.
“He didn’t use the word in an offensive way,” said one blogger, who also happens to be African-American. “He wasn’t calling anyone in particular the n-word. And he wasn’t referring to the Black race. He was referring to a term used back during slavery times. Most house niggers back then didn’t want to work in the fields. That’s what made the joke even funnier.”
Maher apologized for the comment during the show and later—after it was blown out of proportion. And while HBO released a statement calling the skit totally “inexcusable” and promising to edit that segment out of future broadcasts, a myriad of African-Americans took to social media, blogs and popular radio shows—like the DL Hughley Show—to weigh in on the controversy.
“Dave Chappelle said nigga at least twice in his SNL monologue in 2016 and it was funny,” Maher fan Willie Robertson said on Hughley’s radio show. ” I didn’t hear Al Sharpton or anyone else for that matter get on his case.”
Roland Martin, host of TV-One’s well-liked weekday morning cable TV news show, News One Now, addressed the controversy as hypocritical. “If you don’t want your oppressors using derogatory speech, don’t use it yourself,” he said.
Martin and other influential Black leaders observed Maher’s use of the n-word from a single perspective: ” If you’re gonna call out Bill Maher, then call out rappers for including the N word in their lyrics, too. Bill Maher, prior to this moment, has never been a voice of bigotry.”
