Ah, yes, because someone like Bill Maher truly understands the nuances of racism.
On Sunday’s episode of Maher’s podcast, “Club Random,” the comedian took issue with a “Saturday Night Live” sketch that was featured on its 50th anniversary special in February for implying that supporters of President Donald Trump are racist.
In the skit, titled “Black Jeopardy,” Tom Hanks reprised his role as Doug — a MAGA-hat-wearing white guy who, according to Maher, refuses to shake a Black man’s hand.
Maher’s assessment of the sketch is one interpretation. In the sketch, Keenan Thompson’s host character approaches Doug for a handshake. Doug recoils in fear before eventually accepting it.
Maher said on his podcast Sunday that he “hated” the sketch and felt that those who wrote it just don’t get MAGA.
“Wearing the MAGA hat, not shaking hands with a Black person. And that’s when I thought, ‘You people don’t know MAGA people,’” Maher said.
He continued, “I mean, they have their issues and I certainly have my issues with them … of course, there’s some racists everywhere who are that bad, but generally, all the MAGA people I know have no problem shaking hands with a Black person. You’re just hysterical and you’re not helping.” Ultimately, the “Real Time” host said his issue with the common belief amongst the left that MAGA is racist is that he feels that it’s a “lie.”
“Don’t lie to me, it’s a lie,” Maher said.
He continued, “I get it, it’s part of a skit and it’s an exaggeration and that’s comedy. [Racism is] a little too delicate a subject to just … go there,” Maher said.
“Look, we all in comedy step over the line sometimes. Or do one that they want to take back, I doubt if they want to take that one back. They probably think it’s great,” Maher said, referencing the creators of the sketch.
“As a liberal, I don’t like it. Again, because lying offends me. I’m a comedian, when the premise isn’t real … the joke isn’t going to work,” Maher said. “That premise doesn’t ring true. … It might have rang true X years ago. It doesn’t now.”
“But that’s where we are,” Maher bemoaned. “Everyone has to just play the ‘hate card’ because that’s what gets clicks, that’s what gets you loved by your side.”
Maher concluded with an imitation of what he thinks the left feels whenever they slam the right.
“They just want to feel that, ‘Oh, yeah, that’s right! He’s Hitler!’ Let’s go right to your devil,” he added.
Even if Maher knows MAGA people who’d shake a Black person’s hand, the assertion that Trump’s base isn’t racist ignores the current reality that, under Trump’s administration, massive amounts of Latinos are being deported to prisons outside of the country without due process. Or that comedian Tony Hinchcliffe compared Puerto Rico to a pile of garbage to a cheering crowd at a Trump rally a little over a week before he was elected. Or that Trump’s followers openly joke about wearing ICE costumes to scare immigrants. Or that Trump falsely claimed that Haitian immigrants were eating cats and dogs in Springfield, Ohio, during a presidential debate, which led to bomb threats and general threats of violence within that community. Or all the numerous other times Trump’s base has been unapologetically racist.
Maher is also missing a major point about Hank’s Doug character.
When Doug debuted on “Black Jeopardy!” in 2015, his character was meant to represent how much MAGA and the Black community have in common.
“I know people on the right, my family included. I was noticing a lot of overlap between what some people on the right think and what some Black people think,” Bryan Tucker, who co-wrote the sketch with Michael Che, told Vulture in 2018. “I texted Che and said, ‘Maybe there’s something here.’”
Che liked the idea.
“Previously it was always white people not getting it,” Che said of previous white characters on the long-running sketch. “And then it was like, what if [Hanks] gets the answers right, and shows that we do come from the same things? It’s not really ’Black Jeopardy’l it’s a community of people who get these things.”
Doug’s reaction to the handshake during the 50th anniversary special was also a callback to the original sketch, in which Doug did the same thing.
“SNL” cast member Kenan Thompson, who played the host who Doug doesn’t want to shake hands with in both sketches, told Vulture that the bit wasn’t rehearsed, and that Hanks improvised it during the live taping in 2015.
“My host character reaching his hand out to somebody who might unnecessarily be afraid of him — I’ve experienced things like that,” Thompson told Vulture. “So when he did it, I laughed super-hard in my mind but played it off. It was the most natural ad-lib I’ve ever done.”