Bill Maher's Big Mistake Analysis

In the article “What Was Bill Maher’s Big Mistake,” shows on his show how Bill Maher made a joke referencing slavery with his guest, Ben Sasse, a republic senator of Nebraska. In the conversation, Sasse tells Maher that he’s welcome to “work in the field with us,” and in the ‘spirit of comedy’ Maher replies back that he’s a “house nigger.” The exchange between two white men talking and essentially making fun of slavery is already problematic in itself, but the audience reaction takes the cake to me. When I saw the video of Bill Maher’s offensive comments, but what was the most disturbing thing about the whole video was the audience reaction. As Maher said this comments people in the audience laughed and no one wanted to talk about the hypocrisy of a 61-year-old white male using slavery

Morris writes, “...white comedians who have really grappled with what it means to flirt with racially inflammatory language and ideas, what it means for the flirtation to fail.” White comedians, I feel like now believe that the in the 21st century it’s okay to take about things like race and continue to skirt on the lines of things that are funny to things that can become offensive. I’m not saying that white comedians shouldn’t talk about race, but in most situations, they use race to joke about things that they truly don’t understand and don’t understand the gravity of the situation. I think this most recently shown with a lot of comedians at the Emmy’s with Sean Spicer. Many people at the Emmy’s embraced Sean Spicer and James Corden even kissed him. I don’t know why you would laugh together with the man that lied to the American people and essentially because of the celebrities joking with Spicer they began to normalize his behavior. I believe that white people are able to do this because when things don’t actually directly affect you, you’re able to make a big joke of it instead of being