As Bill Maher attempts to appeal to Gen Z, he’s recycling some particularly outdated talking points.
On Friday’s episode of Real Time with Bill Maher, the comedian used Chappell Roan‘s recent political statements to try and school the ‘Pink Pony Club’ artist and her fans on the Israel-Hamas war.
“To mark the Oct. 7 anniversary, we must launch a campaign to educate young Americans about the Middle East,” said Maher. “And the way I’d like to begin that process is by addressing an open letter to Chappell Roan. Now, to those viewers who aren’t watching this while also looking at your phones, let me explain. … She’s actually a great new recording artist, who, like a Hezbollah pager, is really blowing up.”
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Although Maher praised Roan for criticizing both sides of the political aisle, he chalked her perceived support of Palestine up to TikTok “propaganda.”
“Chappell, if you think it was repressive growing up queer in the Midwest, try the Mid East,” he mused. “You’re a female drag queen and you sing, ‘I f—ed you in the bathroom when we went to dinner, your parents at the table.’ Yeah, that wouldn’t fly in Gaza. Although you would, straight off a roof. The same goes for ‘knee deep in the passenger seat and you’re eating me out.’ Yea, my guess is the morality police would figure out that one’s not about the drive-thru and kill your feathered boa-wearing ass. You know when you sing that ‘LA is where boys and girls can all be queens every single day’? You’re welcome, but offer not good in the West Bank.
“Chappell, you’re not wrong that oppression is bad, or that Palestinian and many other Muslim populations are oppressed and deserve to be freed. You just have it completely ass-backwards as to who is doing the oppressing. Hamas is a terrorist mafia that took over Gaza … these are the oppressors. And when you make it all about Israel, you take the pressure off of them. You enable them,” said Maher.
Maher’s comments that Roan would be thrown “off a roof” in Gaza echo a common narrative known as “pinkwashing,” the practice of propping up Israel’s LGBTQ progress to distract from the ongoing violence and repression against Palestinians.
“You’re a singer, and you’re advocating for a place and a culture you would never want to live under. Gender may not be binary, but right and wrong is,” Maher concluded.
Although Roan has kept her political stances mostly to her chest, she previously told Rolling Stone she planned to read “poems from Palestinian women” when she was invited to the White House, but her publicist advised her against it.
Since the Oct. 7, 2023 attack on Israel — in which Hamas took more than 250 hostages and killed around 1,200 people — more than 42,000 Palestinians have died and nearly 2 million have been displaced in the ongoing Israel-Hamas war.