*Friday night on “HBO’s “Real Time” Bill Maher apologized for his joke about being a “house ni*ga.” He seemed to speak from the heart at the top of the show.
“Thank you for letting a sinner in your midst,” he said on Friday’s show, getting thunderous applause from the audience. “Michael Eric Dyson will be out here shortly to take me out to the woodshed.”
The Michael Eric Dyson Maher was referring to is a professor of sociology at Georgetown University and a frequent “Real Time” guest through the years.
“Unfortunately, this week I find that I’m the news maker,” Maher said, greeting Dyson. “I wanted you to come by here because I want you to school me. I did a bad thing.”
“A very bad thing,” Dyson immediately responded. “Look, in the past you’ve been the person who is been on the front line saying the left shouldn’t apologize, progressives should resist any sense of complicity with the culture that is too apologetic. Yet you find yourself in the hot seat here tonight. What led to that change of mind?”
“Honestly, I’ve said both, was Maher’s response. “I remember when Mitt Romney was running, he had a book, ‘No Apologies.’ Like Americans should never apologize. But I said no, apologies are sometimes appropriate … this is appropriate.”
Maher added:
“For black folks, that word, I don’t care who you are, has caused pain. I’m not here to do that.”
Professor Dyson made the point that the comedian is not a racist … that it’s just another example of “white privilege.” Maher repeatedly expressed regret, saying it was an off-the-cuff comment.
That’s when Bill explained his craft and what may have been behind him using the n-word … “Comedians are a special kind of monkey.”
It was a funny, ironic line. Check it all out in the video above.
Also appearing on “Real Time” was Ice Cube who went straight at Maher, telling him, “I knew you was gonna f**k up sooner or later.”
Cube went on to let know it was wrong to use the n-word, and then suggested Maher may have felt he had a pass because he’s dated black women.
Cube then wanted to know why Maher thought it was cool to use the word, and the host made it clear — he didn’t think it was cool, and then he apologized.
“I love your show. You got a great show,” Cube said. “You know, but you been bucking up against that line a little bit. You got a lot of black jokes. You know what I’m saying? You do.”
Maher replied, “Against racists.” But Cube wasn’t quite ready to let him slide.
“Sometimes you sound like a redneck trucker,” Ice Cube said. He accepted Maher’s apology, but he wasn’t through.
“It’s like a knife,” he said. “You can use it as a weapon, or you can use it as a tool. It’s been used as a weapon against us by white people, and we’re not going to let that happen again. By nobody because it’s not cool. Now, I know you heard, it’s in the lexicon, everybody talking. But, that’s our word now, and you can’t have it back. … When I hear my homeys say it, it don’t feel like venom. When I hear a white person say it, it feels like that knife stabbing me, even if they don’t mean it.
Check out the exchange between Maher and Ice Cube above.
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