Comedian Bill Maher recently appeared on ABC’s “The View,” where he offered a strong rebuttal to co-host Sunny Hostin’s assertion on the term “woke.” Hostin suggested to Maher that the term, now used extensively by the right to describe far-left manifestations in culture and politics, was hijacked, thus obfuscating its original meaning.
Hostin introduced the topic, “But it struck me that in the first segment you use the term woke and you said that woke is what was sort of ruining everything.” Maher clarified, “I didn’t say ruining everything. I said that’s why Trump could get reelected.”
Hostin continued, claiming that the term “woke” was originally used by the black community to stay aware of social injustices that were being committed. She pressed Maher as to why this would be considered a “bad thing.”
“So I just, the term woke has been, in my view, co opted by the right and weaponized and bastardized. And so I was surprised to hear you use the term because historically, as you know, because I think you’re quite brilliant that woke is a word used by the black community to know that we must be aware of social and justices but weren’t. Why is that a bad thing?” she asked.
Maher quickly hit back, explaining that words “migrate” and can change in their meaning. He even offered to use another word to illustrate his point so Hostin would not get caught up in the semantics of his statement. The comedian said, “It’s not a bad thing. And originally, that was absolutely a great thing. alert to injustice who’s not too bad, but words do migrate. Now I’ll use any term you want. Because maybe that is word that’s triggering. And so we let’s not use that word. I don’t want to call it the super far left.”
While Maher maintained that he is highly critical of the right, he emphasized that the left has become problematic. “We talked about that. I mean, I think we agree about the danger of the super far right and I can’t say it enough. I think they’re the bigger threat but don’t tell me that the left hasn’t changed,” he said.
SOURCE: theamericantribune.com