You knew going into Friday’s Real-TimeBill Maher of HBO would discuss the topic that Hollywood is talking about on HBO. Did he? Starting at the top.
“Thank you all for coming and putting on a brave face,” Maher said right at the start, adding that he knew everyone was still processing the week’s biggest moment. “To Will Smith: stay strong and I got your back.”
Maher paused for a beat. “April Fools. You’re a dick.”
This set the tone for Will Smith’s jokes. “I’m not here to humiliate Will Smith. He gets enough of that at home.”.
Maher permitted that “Every single person in America was talking about the sucker punch heard ’round the world,”It should be noted “That whole ‘Keep my wife’s name out of your mouth’ didn’t really work out.”
Smith and Rock were not able to engage in any physical combat. “There was more action in three seconds than in three hours of The Power of the Dog,” Maher said, adding, “Who would have thought the movie coming out of the Oscars with all the buzz was GI Jane.
Maher was serious for a second, noting that Demi Moore at her hottest wasn’t an insult to compare a woman with. “Alopecia is not leukemia,”He said. “I blame toxic femininity.”
Maher claimed that there was also controversy. He claimed Smith engaged in a shoving match against Liza Minnelli.
Naturally, there were also other happenings in the world during this week. “But we don’t care about that,”Maher said.
Laura Coates, CNN Senior Lawyer Analyst and author of The Panel portion of the Show featured Laura Coates. Just Pursuit: A Black Prosecutor’s Fight for Fairness and host of SiriusXM’s “The Laura Coates Show”Andrew Yang, founder of The New Political Third Party Forward and author Forward: Notes on Democracy’s Future
The Smith/Rock debate was presented to the panelists. Focus was on liberal hypocrisy, which seemed to be Oscar’s biggest loser.
Coates couldn’t believe Smith received a standing ovation for winning the Best Actor award minutes after his slap. “I thought, ‘Why is he even there to get the award?” The former prosecutor was also surprised Smith was allowed to hang around, saying a civilian pulling that would have been dragged off if he said, “Oh, no. I got the rest of my kid’s soccer game.”
Yang made an argument for Smith’s right to remain. “Part of it was he’s Will Smith. Anyone else would have been ushered out.”
Maher remained focused on Smith’s applause. “They’e always talking about micro-aggressions,”Maher stated. But “suddenly, they were OK with this.”It was a moment of pure joy. “showed broken morals,”He agreed.
Maher suggested that the Oscars should be renamed. “represent pandering. They’re not connected to everyday people.”This was the year of “All About” “disability, gay, race,” he said, noting that it looks like that’s all the Oscars were about.
Yang pointed out that the Democrat brand is now a symbol of democracy “insincere moralizing”He was a Democrat, which he told America’s people.
Smith stood ovation to convey that the celebrity audience had broadened violence’s definition. “Actual violence? Not a big deal. Except when I feel like it, then it’s a great answer”Maher said.
Coates was called that “Convenient compartmentalization.”
Maher also agreed. While Timothée Chalamet can wear a tuxedo without a shirt to the Oscars, “I wouldn’t want to see Jonah Hil do that,”Maher.
One point was left to be made. Maher told how he spoke to an African American friend at Vanity Fair, and that someone raised the question of what might have happened if Rock reacted to the insult by fighting back. “He couldn’t,” Maher’s friend said. “He had the whole race on his shoulders.”
Maher also had an interview with Nicole Perlroth earlier in the show. Nicole Perlroth was a former cybersecurity reporter and digital spyage reporter for The Atlantic.New York TimesAuthor This is How They Tell Me The World Ends: The Cyberweapons Arms Race. As the book’s title suggests, Perlroth painted a gloomy picture of the US lack of preparation for a cyber war,