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How many threads are there already on this subject? How many more do people think we need?
the worst part is that everyone is ignoring the final few minutes of the show: rethugs are vicious and fight like angry badgers. Democrats fight like it's a Sunday school picnic.
Can we just quit beating up on our allies? Nobody gives a shit whether so-and-so like whats-his-name or what hoozits said about something. We're bickering among ourselves while the real enemy is egging us on and laughing.
If someone doesn't like Maher or Griffin, nobody is forcing them watch them. Or we could open 20 more threads on the same subject just to get it out of our system. 
The issue of the use of the n-word by whites is admittedly always problematic, tho not always treated consistently in the political arena of progressives. I myself absolutely shy away from any utterance of the word, both for moral reasons as well as personal, but in fact there are at least two other examples that should be remembered here.
First, there was a huge controversy when John Lennon (who maybe you think was also a punk but I really admire) and his song in the early 70s that used the n-word ("Woman is the n-word of the world"
Many on the left were piling on him until Congressman Dellums defended that particular use and the controversy faded (altho I have no doubt there are many who would never forgive him for it, and perhaps not even someone like me for continuing to admire him greatly -- but not uncritically on a range of concerns, as with anyone -- to this day).
A second example was by Bill Maher himself, and he had Spike Lee (I gather that they at least somewhat know each other personally). Spike Lee seemed at least by implication sort of dared Bill Maher to say the n-word in his challenge, so Bill Maher said it several times in succession and Spike Lee remarked that it seemed to come easily off his tongue. My recollection of every particular may not be perfect -- perhaps you could find it on the web somewhere -- but Bill Maher using the word that way in a conversation w/Spike Lee and there being no controversy about it to speak of is definitely accurate.
Why? Well, in this case he was speaking with Sen Sasse, not Spike Lee, which really does make a big difference; but in general I feel that there are other factors that create a range of incliniations and opportunities. I do not completely agree with everything that Bill Maher says about Islam, but on the other had he does make some important valid points most progressives prefer to avoid or downplay. He does overstate his case in some crucial respects but I would NOT call him an "islamaphobe",mobilizing a cultural nightstick to categorically handle any ideological deviation on certain sensitive issues.
Bill Maher presses the envelope on just these kinds of sensitive issues, and here he messed up and apologized. But while say, the absence anywhere on the web of the lyrics to the famous 80s song about how "they take the diamonds out of the mines, and throw the corpses in, with one crop as good as the other, as the profits keep rolling in", or of Dennis Brutus poem "There will be ample provision for the elite" (which is NOW findable but for many years wasn't) and much else -- NO ONE focuses on these things, or on how the voter suppression issues raised by Greg Palast regarding the 2016 elections have hardly been addressed in the MSM, even only mildly on DU. It's just so easy and not really threatening anything important in the system to go on about supposed Islamaphobia or the use of the N-word by someone like Bill Maher. In that sense I see immense hypocrisy and moral laziness, which no one does anything about
Sometimes Bill Maher says things that make me cringe -- even more than that very cringeworthy comment. But I do watch his show and find a lot in it that is worthwhile
sued by Trump and during the proceeding Trump had to produce a birth certificate proving he wasn't the product of an orangutan. 
Cut him a break. Everyone has said something stupid or offensive at some point in their lives.
