In recent times, Bill Maher upset a fair number of people by making casual use of the n-word. However, this should come as no surprise to people who have been paying close attention to his statements over the course of his career, seeing as how he seems to make controversial statements on a semi-regular basis.
Here are 5 examples of some of Bill Maher’s controversial statements:
Compared One Direction Member to Boston Bomber
In 2015, Maher welcomed Zayne Malik to his TV show. For those who are unfamiliar with Malik, he is an ex-member of One Direction who has since started pursuing a solo career as a singer and songwriter, whose father happens to be British Pakistani. When Maher interviewed Malik, he made a joke wondering about Malik’s whereabouts during the Boston Marathon, suggesting that there was a resemblance between him and one of the two half-Chechen brothers who carried out the 2013 bombing.
Defended Bill O’Reilly’s Racist Joke
Not so long ago, Bill O’Reilly made a joke about not being able to take in what Congresswoman Maxine Waters was saying because he had been distracted by how her hair looked like a James Brown wig. Suffice to say that a lot of people found the statement to be rather racist, which caused O’Reilly to eventually issue an apology. In contrast, Maher claimed O’Reilly’s statements by saying that it was not racist in nature.
Claimed that Hundreds of Millions of Muslims Supported Charlie Hebdo Shooting
The Charlie Hebdo shooting was when three gunmen killed 12 people and injured another 11 people by attacking the office of the satirical French magazine for printing a picture of Muhammed on one of its magazine covers. Said shooting happened on the same day as Maher’s appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live! When asked about his opinion of the shooting, Maher stated that most Muslims would not carry out such an attack but that hundreds of millions of them would support such an attack.
While said in the heat of the moment, his statement is all the more insulting because one of the two police officers killed in the shooting was a Muslim man who had exchanged fire with the attackers in spite of the fact that his pistol was no match for their assault rifles.
Defended Shawne Merriman After He Had Choked Tila Tequila
In 2009, a NFL linebacker named Shawne Merriman was arrested for choking and restraining his girlfriend at the time Tila Tequila when she attempted to leave his home. Maher’s statement can be summed up as him being more surprised that someone had not choked the woman sooner while calling her the b-word in the process.
Uttered Support for Bathroom Bills
When Maher had Milo Yiannopoulos on his TV show, he said that Yiannopoulos’s support for bathroom bills was not unreasonable. For those who are unfamiliar with the concept, bathroom bills refer to recent legislation meant to force transgender people to use the bathrooms corresponding to the sex that they were assigned at birth. Even ignoring the impracticality of enforcing such legislation, bathroom bills are based on tenuous reasoning because there has been a single case of a transgender person attacking someone else in a bathroom over 35 years.
In contrast, more transgender people have been either assaulted, harassed, or other discriminated against at public bathrooms than those who have not been, which is a reflection of the unfortunate fact that they are much likelier to be either abused or assaulted than members of the general population.
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