Seriously, Bill? Maher Continues His Islamophobic Assault On 14-Year-Old Ahmed Mohamed
For the most part, Real Time with Bill Maher is one of the best places on television to get uninhibited discussion about today’s political and cultural issues. Due to the fact it is on HBO, guests can come on and present their views unfiltered, cursing up a storm and generally saying whatever the hell they want. However, much of the time, the show can be almost unwatchable, especially when its host decides to dominate the conversation and go off on one of his trademarked arrogant douchey rants.
During Friday night’s broadcast, Maher decided that it was his mission to deflate the legend of Ahmed Mohamed, the 14-year-old Muslim kid who was arrested in Texas earlier this month for building an alarm clock and bringing it to school. The previous week, Maher railed on the whole issue, essentially defending racial profiling and saying Mohamed deserved the actions against him because many young Muslim men are trying to bomb Americans. This week, Maher joined forces with pretend smart person S.E. Cupp in vilifying the teenager.
Maher began a segment on Mohamed by playing a YouTube clip of someone placing the components of an alarm clock into a pencil case in short amount of time. Maher then used this clip as an excuse to verbally attack Ahmed, yelling “He didn’t invent anything!” Cupp added that Mohomed made it look “exactly like a bomb,” which caused fellow panelist Ron Reagan to state that it is just a clock. Of course, that only added fuel to Cupp and Maher’s fire, with both of them shouting Reagan down.
On top of that, Maher criticized liberals and any other supporters of Mohamed by saying they are a bunch of “ninnies” for treating the young man like a “mascot.” While Reagan attempted to defend the boy, Maher continued to hammer his point home, which is Mohamed isn’t all that smart, definitely isn’t an inventor and made something that looked like a bomb and therefore deserved to be harassed and arrested.
Even if you agree with Maher’s views that the extra scrutiny piled on Mohamed by the school was totally appropriate and young Muslim men should be subjected to additional profiling, you’d have to admit there is just something unseemly and immature about a 59-year-old man piling on a child. It seems as if Maher saw his personal hero Richard Dawkins take potshots at Mohamed on Twitter and thought, “Yeah, I need to give it to that little fucker one more time this week!”
Perhaps some have gone overboard in heaping praise on Ahmed for his ‘inventions’ and technical aptitude. Maybe he shouldn’t be receiving all these accolades from Google and President Obama, among others. It might be reasonable to question his motives behind bringing a clock into the school. At the same time, this is a fucking young kid! What are you hoping to gain by verbally assailing him on live television? What’s to gain, other than you exposing once again that you’re an Islamophobic dickhead who loves to point out how you’re the smartest motherfucker in the room?
Below is video of the segment, courtesy of HBO:
