7 Times Bill Maher Revealed Himself to Be a Bigot

The host's Islamophobia isn't a recent development.

 By Joanna Rothkopf

SACRAMENTO, CA - AUG 19: Bill Maher performs at Sacramento Convention Center in Sacramento, California on August 19th, 2011
Photo Credit: Randy Miramontez/Shutterstock

Bill Maher’s long, illustrious career is perhaps, more than anything else, an excellent example of mass public manipulation. Under the guise of being a liberal comedian, he has managed to build for himself an ultra-successful career predicated on being a massive dick.

Maher has been consistently racist, sexist, transphobic and otherwise ignorant throughout his career, and responds to each allegation of hatred with more indignation than before. Let’s set the record straight: Bill Maher is a bigot. A bigot with a HBO show, but a bigot nonetheless.

Here are some of his worst moments:

1. When he compared former One Direction member Zayn Malik with Dzhokhar Tsarnaev
“Just tell me two things, Zayn,” Maher said in a Web clip. “Which one in the band were you? And where were you during the Boston Marathon?”

Malik is half Pakistani. The Boston Marathon bombers were half-Chechen. The joke is 100 percent bad.



2. When he defended NFL player Shawne Merriman for choking Tila Tequila

Back in 2009, Maher responded to the news that Tila Tequila had been assaulted by her then-boyfriend: “New rule: Stop acting surprised someone choked Tila Tequila! The surprise is that someone hasn’t choked this bitch sooner.”

3. When he attempted to stand up for Muslim women’s rights, but was flat-out racist against Arab men

On an episode of “Real Time” from 2011, Maher said, “Talk to women who’ve ever dated an Arab man. The results are not good.”

4. “[Islamophobia] is not a real thing when we do it.”

In a now-notorious debate between Maher, Sam Harris and Ben Affleck, Maher defended his own Islamophobia as nothing of the sort.

“All these billion people don’t hold these pernicious beliefs? That’s just not true, Ben.”



5. When he said Hillary Clinton tried crying to get her way

In 2008, Maher discussed Clinton’s campaign strategy: “I’m not trying to be sexist here, but I’m just saying that women try a lot of different tacks when they’re in arguments… I’m not being sexist, I’m just saying that men, when we argue, we’re kind of a one-trick pony — we try our thing, and then we sulk when we don’t get our way.”

“But look at Hillary Clinton,” he said before playing a number of clips of Clinton on the campaign trail. “Because the first thing a woman does, of course, is cry… and then they go to sweet talking… and then they throw an anger fit totally unrelated to anything…. And when it doesn’t work, they bring out the sarcasm.”

6. When he suggested that all Muslims support the Charlie Hebdo attack

Days after the attack on the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo’s offices in Paris, Maher appeared on “Jimmy Kimmel Live” to condemn the second-largest religion in the world.

“I know most Muslim people would not have carried out an attack like this,” he said. “But here’s the important point. Hundreds of millions of them support an attack like this. They applaud an attack like this. What they say is, we don’t approve of violence, but you know what, when you make fun of the prophet, all bets are off.”

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