Bill Maher tore apart singer Chappell Roan because she came against Israel in a recent video. She even turned down a White House invite for Pride because of President Joe Biden’s response to Israel and Hamas. Everyone says Gaza, but come on.
I love music but don’t much about Roan. Here’s her Wikipedia page. She’s not bad. Just not my kind of music.
Anyway, Maher gave Roan a dose of reality. The truth hurts.
It’s an eight-minute video, so I transcribed it for you:
MAHER: And finally, new rule. To mark the October 7 anniversary, we must launch a campaign to educate young Americans about the Middle East. 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 their phones, let me explain. Chappell is not the name of one of Trump’s golf courses. She’s actually a great new recording artist who, like a Hezbollah pager, is really blowing. Up in just a few months, she went from a struggling artist to getting 3 billion plays on Spotify, netting her almost $0.11. But here’s what caught my eye. She seems like a Gen Z who can be reached because I saw her on TMZ say…VIDEO OF ROAN: Obviously f*ck both the policies of the right, but also f*ck some of the policies on the left.MAHER: That sounds like something I would say. She also said, I think it’s important that people use critical thinking. I think it’s important for me to question myself, question my algorithm, question some person that tweeted something about someone else even true.Preach, queer ally. Preach.But then we get to Israel and Chappell, this is where we must put to the test your pledge to use critical thinking and to question whether what you’re reading on social media is true, because it isn’t.There’s a whole history of the Middle East that you and your fans aren’t hearing about. So why don’t you let me be your spirit guide through this?But before I do, let me tell you a little 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.So, my name is Bill Maher. I’m 35. I’ve been to all of Diddy’s freak off parties. And I work at the same place as Euphoria. In fact, she’s right down the hall. My TikTok handle is be nasty and I go live every Friday night with the anime filter on. I once want to smoke off against Willie Nelson, Woody Harrelson, and Snoop. Okay, that one’s true. But no. Look, truth be told, I’m a baby boomer. I remember phone booths and cars with ashtrays and vaginal sex.And 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. That’s some of that algorithm. Stuff you say you want to look into.Now, first off, the fact that you don’t know much history isn’t your fault. You live in the United States where the schools stop doing that whole teaching facts thing a while ago. But getting all your history from TikTok is like getting all your calories from Hostess.I know you’re moved by what you see on there. We all are. The dead Palestinian bodies, but it’s odd that your generation didn’t seem nearly as moved by the Jewish bodies on October 7. You killed it at Coachella this year.But when Hamas kills at a music festival, it’s a whole other thing.Doesn’t the sight of so many young women raped at a music festival make it a little personal? My guess is that Gen. Z hearts are hardened by the propaganda you see on TikTok, which likes to call the Jews colonizers. But colonizers are intruders who have no history in an area like when Spain conquered the Mayans or when your mom took over Facebook.When the Dutch took over South Africa, they had no history to the land. They just wanted it. But Israel is the Jew’s homeland, and Jews have always lived there. I kid you not. You can look it up. It’s in this book called the Bible, which is horribly wrong about sex ed, slavery, science and cooking. But the archaeology checks out. It says the Jews built a temple with a really big wall seven centuries before Muhammad or Islam ever existed. And sure as shit you can still go there and touch it.Calling Jews colonizers in Israel is like calling Native Americans colonizers. Here it’s ridiculous, Chappell. Did you know that for 2000 years Palestine was like an Uber driver with a three star rating? Nobody wanted it.And there was never any Arab country called Palestine. It was an orphan province. And if you ask people what they thought about it back then, they’d say it gave them the ick.But after World War II and after the Jews were very nearly wiped out by an actual attempted genocide. They decided it was time for their historic homeland to be an actual country, so that for once, they could defend themselves and the UN. We like them, right? Yeah. They agreed and voted a country for each of the indigenous peoples. One side agreed to that, but the Arabs had a slightly different proposal. They said, how about we keep it all and wipe you out?Chappell, if you think it was repressive growing up queer in the Midwest, try the Mideast. You’re a female drag queen and you sing, “I f*cked 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 on the passenger seat and you’re eating me out.” Yeah. My guess is the morality police would figure out that one’s not about the drive through and kill your feather 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. The Revolutionary Guard is a terrorist mafia that took over Iran. ISIS is a terrorist mafia that took over Iraq. The Taliban is a terrorist mafia that took over Afghanistan. These are the oppressors. And when you make it all about Israel, you take the pressure off of them. You enable them. The Iranian regime has killed 600 protesters after a 22 year old woman died in police custody following her arrest for the crime of wearing her head covering incorrectly. Just to be clear, that’s your team.Iran is who sponsors Hamas and Hezbollah. Are you sure this is who you want to throw down with? Meryl Streep spoke at the UN recently and said this about the Taliban, who are only slightly more conservative than your heroes in Hamas. She said today in Kabul, a female cat has more freedoms than a woman. A cat may go sit on her front stoop and feel the sun on her face, she may chase a squirrel into the park. A squirrel has more rights than a girl in Afghanistan. Today, a bird may sing in Kabul but a girl may not.You’re a singer and you’re advocating for a place and a culture you would never want to live under your gender. May not be binary, but right and wrong, kind of is.
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