Bill MaherandMegyn Kellymay not agree on everything, but they’ve found a common enemy in “cancel culture.”
Kelly, 49, was a guest on Friday’s episode of HBO’sReal Time with Bill Maher, where the host brought up Kelly’s ousting from NBC last year after a controversial segment about blackface during herTodayshow hour.
At the time, he took issue with characterizations of the hijackers as cowards, arguing that “we have been the cowards, lobbing cruise missiles from 2,000 miles away.”
Meanwhile, NBCpulledMegyn Kelly Todayoff the airin October 2018 after Kelly questioned whether wearing blackface as part of a Halloween costume is actually racist during an all-white panel discussion.
OnReal Time, Maher defended Kelly, saying he was “angry” on her behalf after NBC canceled her show.
“Because this cancel culture — it’s so funny, when they do polls, they find 80 to 90 percent of the people in this country hate this s—. Even liberals hate this s—,” he said. “This is one reason why Trump got elected, because people hate political correctness so much that they’ll even take it in the mouth of a werewolf when he’s not politically correct.”
“But when individual instances come up, everybody is so afraid to stand up,” he continued. “I mean, you even apologized for something that I didn’t think was that awful. Why can’t you just say, ‘Okay, I was a little inartful about how I expressed that. My bad, I’m sorry, move on with our lives,’ instead of, ‘No, you have to go away for all of time.’ Who are these perfect people who have never made any mistake?”
Kelly replied, “I mean, my own take on it is the country is going through something right now.”
“The marginalized groups are rising up and trying to find positions at the table — equal positions. And that’s a good thing. The difference is in approach, how do we do it?” she continued. “And I understand this fight, because as a woman … I have also felt marginalized at times and like I don’t have an equal footing.”
“But the question is, do we do it with grace and humanity and understanding that people make mistakes and that we’re all imperfect and we’re going to screw up, maybe more than once, and kindness and an understanding that we’re all only here for a limited time and we can’t expect a perfect score of any person?” she asked.
Maher blasted the “snowflakes” that called for Kelly’s firing.
“They’re gross, because all they care about is getting a scalp on the wall. They don’t care if you’re really a racist, which you’re not,” he said. “They always want to find the worst version of what any person is.”
Ultimately, Kelly said she hoped younger generations and older generations could “get back to talking to each other so there’s buy-in, so people feel heard, and so we allow for disagreement, [respect], kindness.”
The anchor — who had signed a three-year, $23 million-a-year contract with NBC in 2017 —finalized her departure from the networkin January 2019, with a source telling PEOPLE at the time, “The contract will be paid out, about $25-$30 million dollars.”
Maher is no stranger to controversy himself. In 2017, he came under fire for using the n-word onReal Timeduring a conversation with Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse. He later apologized, in a statement and again on-air.
source: people.com
