re: Did Bill Maher have to apologize THAT much?

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People be dying in Syria and shite

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You black?

I feel like black people only get offended because societys told them to get offended. Its ridiculous when they evoke shite about their ancestral slaves. Someone calls me a sand N I could give two shits.

Cube is out promoting the rerelease of his old album "death certificate". In it, he raps about "f aggots" and "Jews" (his words) liberally in the song vaseline. He is a fraud and a hypocrite and if Maher wasn't such a groveling pussy, he would have called him out for it.

I still say it didn't sound like a public apology, but more an apology to a handful of people whose opinions he respects (as opposed to the sea of anonymous triggered dickheads on social media), and to hell with the rest. It certainly wasn't an act of desperation IMO. He explained why he said it, didn't waver from it, and took the piss. And whether intentional or not, by letting Ice Cube blather on like he did, Maher might've even made a point without having to say anything at all.

All in all, Maher allowed himself to sit in the dunk tank for one episode, but there's nothing to suggest it won't be business as usual in future episodes...

Watched it last night, didn't think it was that bad. Ice Cube and the first guest said repeatedly they didn't think (and think most feel the same) Maher is a racist, but if somebody like Bill, who's always championed for civil rights and equality in his tv career, can slip out that, especially how he used it, implying that being a slave in a house was somehow desirable, it says a lot about how much racism still permeates society.

that's just my opinion as a white dude with a shitload of white privilege

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implying that being a slave in a house was somehow desirable

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Implying it? I and 7+ billion people, with full knowledge of all the circumstances will straight up say it, "If I were a (black) slave in the Americas from the 16th through the 19th centuries, it would have been way better to be assigned to the plantation house than the fields, period."

The reason it is a pejorative among black Americans today is precisely this reason - their outwardly more servile demeanor and higher quality working conditions, often with access to better food and housing, for lack of a less bannable term, "House Negroes" were viewed as having more in common with the master and his family, than with their fellow slaves who worked the fields.

To a degree, this is somewhat distorted by film and literature (just as the American West has been fictionalized to a point where it is difficult to separate myth from reality) - living conditions of slaves varied widely from region to region, crop by crop and certainly from slaveowner to slaveowner. While it is likely that the domestic servants had a greater deal of freedom and quality of life, they also had a much higher exposure to the plantation family, for example (and many slaves were held in much smaller holdings, not in the plantation system) and if the slave owner and/or his family members were particularly easy to anger, cruel, etc., then working the house might pose challenges of its own.

But, to get to that type of discussion, people need to be educated, rational-thinking adults, not emotional children with knee-jerk reactions to words, ideas and concepts they don't like.

He has to eat shite on his program but gets to keep gig. It's good to keep him around and beat Democrats up over it when he's useful to argument.

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Where did I say that or defend that?

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when you implied slaves working inside had it good compared to slaves in the field

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Being low on water is better than being out off water. I don't know what else to tell you, my brother.

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not surprising the point is still lost on you

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Wrong again. I said they had it better. And I even explained the nuances involved.

Slaves of Slaveowner A (a "good" master) had it better than slaves of Slaveowner B (a "terrible" master). Slaves working sugar cane had it better than slaves working cotton (generally).

It's all relative, but it's still slavery. Which is about as bad a thing as one person can do to another. Straight up murder might be "less" cruel. But, it happened. And some folks had it better than others.

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so again...the point is still lost on you...

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Or do you just lump it all in the "slave" category and move on, pretending that every single experience was exactly the same?

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yeah, mostly because to the people it affects it doesn't really matter if there were super nice slave owners...slavery put the african-americans at such a disadvantage today that any and all reminders of how their ancestors were property is something that should probably just not be brought up.