In a lengthy “New Rules” segment on Friday on “Real Time With Bill Maher,” the talkshow host laid into Chappell Roan, addressing an open letter to the singer and her political statements.
“New rule to mark the Oct. 7 anniversary: We must launch a campaign to educate young Americans about the Middle East,” he began. He went on to say that Roan doesn’t seem to understand that despite her support for Palestine, she would face danger in the Mideast. “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 fucked you in the bathroom when we went to dinner at your parents.’ That wouldn’t fly in Gaza, although you would, straight off a roof.
“You’re not wrong that oppression is bad or that Palestinian and many other Muslim populations are oppressed and deserve to be freed,” he explained, “You just have it completely ass-backwards as to who is doing the oppressing. Hamas is a terrorist mafia that took over Gaza… Are you sure this is who you want to throw down with?”
Maher said it was understandable that young people might be misinformed, given the state of education. “You don’t know much history,” he said, describing himself as someone who didn’t learn history from TikTok.
He started the segment by explaining who the “Pink Pony Club” artist is to his older viewers. Chappell Roan 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 11 cents,” Maher joked.
“When 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 weren’t hearing about,” Maher asserted.
“I know you’re moved when what you see 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 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?” Maher wondered.
“You’re advocating for a place and a culture you would never want to live under. Gender may not be binary but right and wrong kind of is,” he concluded.
Roan stoked controversy several weeks ago by posting a Tiktok saying, “I don’t like what is going on with, like, policies. Fuck the policies on the right, but honestly, fuck some of the policies on the left. That’s why I can’t endorse.” She later clarified that she would be voting for Kamala Harris, but not endorsing her.
Earlier this year, she turned down an invitation to the White House’s Pride Celebration, in which she had considered reading a poem by Palestinian women, in protest of the U.S. Government’s support of Israel.
Watch the segment below:
