Bill Maher Lectures Whoopi Goldberg on Black National Anthem, Compares Her to ‘Chairman Mao’

HBO host Bill Maher hit back at Whoopi Goldberg over criticism she’d made about his opinion on the singing of the Black National Anthem at NFL games, and likened the View host to “Chairman Mao.”

It all started a few weeks ago when Maher opined about the singing of “Lift Every Voice and Sing” at a football game. Maher had taken the position that it would be better to have no anthem, like those people who used to say instead of gay marriage there should just be no marriage, and that if you’re going to have an anthem there should only be one. The practical consequence of that notion, of course, is to protect the status quo that disfavors people who don’t feel the current anthem represents them.

The cast of The View weighed in about it.

“I think because we have gone backwards a good 10, 15 years, we’re having to reeducate people. We’re having to re-educate people about how women want to be talked about, how Black people want to be talked about, how Hispanic people want to be talked about,” Goldberg said after playing a clip of Maher’s criticism.

“And just so you know, Bill, Lift Every Voice has always been considered the black national anthem. It’s always been that because the separation of the anthem has been so clear to us,” Goldberg added.

Sunny Hostin took issue with what she saw as an implication that highlighting division is the same as, or worse than, the division itself.

And he also said that teachers are taking children and making them hyper-aware of race in a way that they wouldn’t otherwise be. And mere research will tell you that sociologists have studied this for years and that seven and eight year old Black children in first and second grade are aware that they are treated differently because of the color of their skin and judged differently because of the color of their skin. I can tell you, as a Black little girl, I knew as early as really five or six that I was being treated differently. Who treated you differently? Other children, teachers, people in society. And so the notion that talking about racial inequality is the reason, is the problem, and not actual racial inequality, is ridiculous. And I’m really tired of the gaslighting.

And so it was that on Friday night’s edition of Real Time with Bill Maher, the host hit back at Goldberg and Hostin at the start of his New Rules segment.

The program, The View last week devoted a lot of time to this, while somehow avoiding what I actually said, it seemed to be a lot about a need to school me on the Black National Anthem itself. Whoopi Goldberg said we need to anthems because, quote, “we’re having to reeducate people,” because nothing ever goes wrong when you start talking about reeducation. Just ask Chairman Mao, maybe we can set up some sort of camps now.

Ms. Goldberg, as the clip indicates, actually played video of what Mr. Maher had said.

Watch above via HBO.