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Maher: Tea Bag Repubs are Racist

Juan Cole 09/16/2010

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Bill Maher comes right out with it on CNN’s “Larry King Live”: The Tea Bag branch of the Republican Party just does not want an African American in the White House, and he implies that Newt Gingrich’s references to “the Kenyan” and “Luo tribesman” are just a roundabout way of saying the N word.

(Breaking News: Exhibit A for Maher could have been this one: Tea Party gubernatorial candidate for New York Paladino, enjoys sharing around racist and sexist emails to ‘a certain group of people.’)

PARTIAL TRANSCRIPT

‘ MAHER: Well, you know, I have a theory that the Internet makes people stupider. And Also FOX News makes people stupider.

You know the Pew group did a study recently and they found out that 10 years ago, Democrats, Republicans and independents basically got their news from the same sources, probably more from CNN, for example. Then we had this polarity.

And now, you know, John Edwards said we have two Americas. We do have two Americas. We have the America that’s living in reality. The people who understand that Obama is a centrist liberal from Hawaii who is trying to dig us out of the hole we’re in.

And then we have this other FOX/Matt Drudge/Rush Limbaugh reality where he is a Muslim sleeper cell, Manchurian candidate who was sent over by his Kenyan father imbibe — you hear —

KING: What kind of intelligent person would believe that?

MAHER: Intelligent person? Larry, we’re broadcasting in America.

(LAUGHTER)

MAHER: How ridiculous. Well, no, I don’t think intelligent people do believe it. But, you know, then we’re going to get into partisan bickering because more than half of Republicans agreed with the state that said Obama is trying to impose Islamic law on America.

I mean that is a very radical thing to believe. And it’s more than half of Republicans. Not tea baggers. Not radicals. The mainstream Republican people.

KING: Is there a racist tone in this? Is there — in other words, is this racist — is this inherent racism? Where’s it come from?

MAHER: Does the Pope go to the bathroom in the woods?

(LAUGHTER)

MAHER: Yes, Larry, it’s extremely racist. I mean it’s so funny because the tea baggers, the one thing they hate is black people.

(LAUGHTER)

MAHER: But they won’t say it. I mean if you saw what Newt Gingrich was saying.

KING: Oh yes.

MAHER: OK. For those who know, and I don’t even know if I can even recount it in a way that makes sense to people. But he was quoting from an article by Dinesh D’Souza who is — by the way is an amoral person who was the guest on my show on the night six days after 9/11 when I got into all that trouble for saying that the people who flew planes into building were not cowards.

He was the one who started that discussion. He said it over and over. He — I was agreeing with him when I got thrown off the air. But he never ever came out and said, you know what, I started that, I should defend Bill Maher.

Rush Limbaugh came to my defense and a lot of other people, but not the guy who actually made the statement.

Anyway, Dinesh D’Souza, who said a lot of crazy things, he is saying now, and Newt Gingrich says this is what he believes, that Obama is getting his philosophy from his father who he spent about a month with in his whole life when he was 8 years ago old.

And that his father was a loud tribesman from Kenya who was mad at white people. And so Newt says that he’s anti-colonial like that’s a bad thing? You know like George Washington was fighting the British?

(LAUGHTER)

MAHER: That was a pretty good thing to be anti-colonial. ‘

Maher’s “Real Time” on HBO begins its new season tonight.

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About the Author

Juan Cole is the founder and chief editor of Informed Comment. He is Richard P. Mitchell Professor of History at the University of Michigan He is author of, among many other books, Muhammad: Prophet of Peace amid the Clash of Empires and The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. Follow him on Twitter at @jricole or the Informed Comment Facebook Page

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