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Talk show host Bill Maher read an open letter to pop superstar Chappell Roan during a segment on his HBO show Real Time with Bill Maher on Friday during which he lambasted Roan’s support for Palestinians and said she would be thrown “off a roof” in Gaza.
During his closing monologue, which is called “New Rules,” the host addressed Roan directly while also saying “we must launch a campaign to educate young Americans about the Middle East.”
Maher began the segment acknowledging that Roan may not know about him. “Let me tell you a little bit about myself, since you may have no idea who I am, considering that when this show went on the air, you were barely old enough to be told you were in the wrong body.” (Maher’s “joke,” if you can call it that, is a reference to the right-wing conspiracy theory that trans identity is pushed on children by outside influence, either through parents or school systems, as Donald Trump recently alluded.)
Prior to getting to Roan, Maher meandered through a lengthy diatribe about teens and young people who “get their history from TikTok,” suggesting that that is how Roan has made her own political decisions.
“I didn't learn about the Middle East from TikTok, which is a Chinese company whose totalitarian government would just love to have America’s youth hating America,” he said. “That’s some of that algorithm stuff you say you want to look into.” Maher was making reference to Roan’s own statement during her TikTok video discussing her decision to vote for Kamala Harris, in which she said, “I think it’s important for me to question authority and question world leaders and question myself, question my algorithm, question if some person that tweeted something about someone else is even true.”
Maher continued to suggest that Roan’s political analysis comes from social media and said, with condescension, “Getting all your history from TikTok is like getting all your calories from Hostess.”
Maher went on to critique her for her support of Palestine as an LGBTQ+ individual.
“Chappell, if you think it was repressive growing up queer in the Midwest, try the Mideast,” he said. You’re a female drag queen and you sing ‘I fucked you in the bathroom when we went to dinner at your parents.’ That wouldn’t fly in Gaza, although you would, straight off a roof.” (Maher seems to be referencing graphic footage from 2015 in which members of the Islamic State can be seen throwing four people off a roof, a video that has been widely and falsely attributed to Hamas on social media.)
He then quoted her song “Casual,” which includes lyrics about having oral sex in the backseat of a car, and said, “My guess is the morality police would figure out that one’s not about the drive-thru and kill your feather boa-wearing ass.”
Maher has been known to target Islam specifically, making bigoted and anti-Muslim remarks throughout his career that have often landed the HBO host in hot water. In 2019, Columbia professor Hamid Dabashi called Maher a “chief Islamophobe” who “has a well-paid job at HBO spreading his racist, Islamophobic drivel” in an op-ed. In 2014, Ben Affleck got into a heated argument with Maher on his show in which the Batman star called Maher’s views on Islam “gross” and “racist.”
When Roan published her video on TikTok explaining her vote for the vice president, she explained that the reason she would vote for, but not endorse, Harris is because of the Democratic party’s stance on Palestine.
“Fuck Trump for fucking real,” she said. “But fuck some of the shit that has gone down in the Democratic Party that has failed people like me and you, and moreso Palestine. And moreso every marginalized community in the world.”
While performing at Governor’s Ball in New York City in June, Roan shared that she had declined to perform at the White House until there’s “freedom for all oppressed people in occupied territories.” She has also sold prints in support of Gaza relief at her merch table on tour stops this year.
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