Bill Maher hbo host
© Michael Kovac/Getty Images for J/P Haitian Relief OrganizationBill Maher
HBO host Bill Maher slammed "woke" culture and people who were complaining about cultural appropriation at the Olympics, saying that the toxic ideology was something that belonged in Stalin's Russia.

Top lines from Maher's segment on HBO's Real Time with Bill Mahe" included:

  • "The director of the opening ceremony was fired hours before the event because they found out there was a Holocaust joke at a comedy routine he did decades ago. ... Why do we allow the people who just want to b***h to always win? Days before that firing, the opening ceremonies musical director, musical director, was also forced out because someone dug up an interview with him from 1994 where he admitted to bullying classmates as a child. As a child. Remember when your teacher used to try and scare you by saying this is going to go on your permanent record? Yeah, no longer an empty threat now."
  • "And the creative director of the entire shebang of the whole Olympics got s**t canned because he once made a fat joke in a private conversation. This is called a purge. It's a mentality that belongs in Stalin's Russia. How bad does this atmosphere we are living in have to get before the people who say, 'cancel culture is overblown,' admit that is, in fact, an insanity that is swallowing up the world."
  • "And that is not a conservative position, my friends. My politics have not changed but I am reacting to politics that have and this is yet another example of how the woke invert. The very thing that used to make liberals liberals. Snitches and b***hes, that's not being liberal. The Associated Press is a real news organization, yeah? So why am I reading this headline, 'Olympic surfing exposes whitewashed Native Hawaiian roots?' Yeah, the Olympics added surfing this year, good, surfers deserve to be recognized as athletes. I'm sorry, what I meant to say is no, that's cultural appropriation. ... I must say of all the violations of the woke penal code, cultural appropriation just might be the dumbest of all. First of all, there are 25,000 islands in the Pacific. How do we know a Hawaiian was the first to stand on a board in the water? It seems like something anyone in any ocean would eventually get around to. And if you're a surfer, it doesn't matter if you're black, white, or in between you all taste the same to sharks."
  • "This new idea that each culture must remain in its own separate silo is not better, and it's not progress. And in fact, it's messing with one of the few ideas that still really does make this melting pot called America great. Not everything is about oppression, stealing natural resources from indigenous people."
Watch: