Real Time With Bill Maher
- Bill Maher criticized the Tokyo Olympics for being overly "woke" and engaging in cancel culture.
- He pointed to several incidents of officials being punished for decades-old mistakes.
- "Why do we allow the people who just want to bitch to always win?" he said.
- Visit Insider's homepage for more stories.
Bill Maher mocked the Olympics for being "woke" and said cancel culture is an "insanity that is swallowing up the world."
The TV host commented during Friday's episode of "Real Time with Bill Maher," where he criticized the ongoing Tokyo Summer Olympics for punishing officials for minor transgressions from decades ago.
-Bill Maher (@billmaher) July 31, 2021
"Please don't make the Olympics into the Oscars," Maher said. "Oh, what's that? They did already?"
"You know back in April when the Oscars aired, I commented in this space that the theme of that evening was 'we dare you to be entertained.' Lest your mind waiver for a few hours from thinking about the sad things and bad people in the world," Maher said.
"Well, thank God we found some of those bad people now in the Olympics and not a moment too soon," he continued.
He listed several incidents of officials being penalized for decades-old mistakes, including a ceremony director being removed for making a Holocaust joke in 1998, a composer stepping down because of childhood bullying allegations, and another official being removed because of a fat joke made during a private conversation.
"Young people have to stop flattering themselves that they're Nostradamus and would have foreseen had they been around then everything that's unacceptable now," he said.
"Why do we allow the people who just want to bitch to always win?"
He said that it was a "purge" mentality that belonged in Stalin's Russia.
He also criticized claims that introducing surfing as an Olympic sport was cultural appropriation and insulting to Hawaiians.
Maher has been known for his liberal political views and addressed accusations that his political stance has changed.
"My politics have not changed, but I am reacting to politics that have," he said.