During his closing monologue on Friday’s broadcast of HBO’s “Real Time,” host Bill Maher called for 2024 Democratic presidential candidate Vice President Kamala Harris to admit the left went too far on crime, rioting, DEI, immigration, and education and to clearly push back on teachers’ unions.
Maher began by saying, “With only a couple of weeks to go, it’s not too late for Kamala Harris to do what many have been calling for her to do since she became the candidate, have a Sister Souljah moment.”
He added, “Kamala could make her own Rev. Wright speech and ask all white Americans to please understand, as much as you can, how much, in 2020, the sight of a black man being slowly murdered with a white cop’s knee on his neck would affect you, if that was the history of your race. I think most Americans would be sympathetic, and then admit that, in 2020, the left got a little carried away. Carried away, like most of the merch at this shoe store. … Looting was rebranded as justice shopping. We stopped arresting shoplifters. ‘Antiracist Baby’ was a bestseller. Corporations took DEI to ludicrous lengths. We opened our hearts to all who wanted to come here, and then also our borders. Portland decriminalized all drugs and Seattle set up a no-cop zone until they had to reverse course on both. Standardized testing was dropped until schools saw how dumb that was.”
Maher continued, “And yet, the head of the teachers’ union in Chicago still maintains that testing is ‘junk science rooted in white supremacy.‘ And her union tweeted during COVID, when many Americans felt we could have gotten back to normal sooner, that ‘the push to reopen schools is rooted in sexism, racism[,] and misogyny.‘ No, it was rooted in reading, writing, and arithmetic. The teaching of which is apparently job none in Chicago, because only about one in four students in the city are proficient in either math or English, and absenteeism is off the charts. The teachers there want a raise now, and, look, I’m always all for all teachers always getting a raise everywhere — I hate kids, I can’t imagine being around them all day — but I also think Kamala Harris could have a moment if she trotted out her favorite phrase and said, let me be very clear: Our schools need to do better. Our kids need to be in school, and when they’re there, they need to have the phones off and the brains on, learning the basic things we used to teach. And the idea that testing is rooted in white supremacy is, in itself, a racist belief that says black children can’t compete with white children on tests, which they surely can.”
He concluded, “When Kamala says, we’re not going back, the undecided voter thinks, no, I don’t want to get on the short bus back to Trump town, but I also don’t want to go back to 2020. Please, God, don’t make me sit through another one of those corporate-mandated sensitivity training sessions. When the Harris campaign launched, they got great traction by calling Trump and Vance weird. That was good. Weird was working. People are tired of weird. And ever since Donald Trump decided to dominate our f*cking lives, the Democrats’ argument has been, we’ll restore normal. Well, if what you’re selling is, let’s be normal again, here’s an idea: be normal. America doesn’t need a revolution, it needs fixing.”
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett
