Bill Maher Tackles White House Correspondents’ Dinner And ‘I Feel Pretty’ Critics On ‘Real Time’

UPDATED with video: Bill Maher looked at the week’s controversy at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner where “Michelle Wolf I thought did a great job talking truth to power.”

“These people have Groundhog Day Syndrome. Every year it’s ‘Let’s hire a comedian to tell jokes! And the day after it’s ‘Why did we hire a comedian to tell jokes?!'”

The Real Time host reminded viewers he had been the comedian at the dinner in 1996. “They were doing the same thing: getting mad at the comedian for telling jokes. They should get a juggler – something non controversial.”

Noting there’ also talk of getting rid of the dinner altogether, Maher cast his vote to instead get rid of that other event White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders attends: the daily press briefing. “I heard from people in the press this week they’re just fed up with [her] at this point,” he said.

Maher was talking on Friday – one day after restless briefing correspondents pointed out to Sanders that her talking points on President Donald Trump’s dealings with Stormy Daniels bore no resemblance to what Trump’s new attorney Rudy Giuliani said on Sean Hannity’s program the previous night.  The correspondents, remembering all the other times Sanders briefing remarks proved to be extremely creative moldings of the rough clay of truth, wondered why they should swallow any more of the horseradish she feeds them. She seemed stumped,  assuring them she always serves the best horseradish available to her at the time.

“We know this is the lying-est administration ever,” Maher snarked on his show, saying the Washington Post this week reported its update of Trump’s lies in office to date and he’s pushed past 3K. “He’s the Pete Rose of lying.”

“What is the point of going into this room every day and having this Baghdad Bob person just tell you this bullshit that you know is bullshit and he knows is bullshit.” Walking out en masse would “make a statement,” he suggested. Stay tuned…

On this week’s show, Maher also aired another edition of Explaining Jokes to Idiot, a segment in which he explains to idiots the jokes they missed – because they’re idiots.

This time, he examined reaction to Amy Schmer’s new film I Feel Pretty. (See the video above.) The “professionally offended,” he said,  have decided, “even though it’s a movie by women filmmakers, presenting a pro-woman message, it’s does it the wrong way!”

Schumer has remade The Nutty Professor, Maher said, “where someone not thin, and not cool, magically sees themselves as better looking and gains confidence. Except, when Eddie Murphy did it, he didn’t have the Purity Police up his ass.”

And, by Purity Police, Maher meant The Hollywood Reporter, which wrote an article dissecting I Feel Pretty and its “questionable message of empowerment.”

He also meant Rolling Stone, which called it  “fat shaming.”

And The Independent, which had reviewed the trailer, “cause why wait for the actual movie when you can start your hating two months early?”

That publication wrote that I Feel Pretty  “seems so offensive…it’s frankly exhausting.”

“Exhausted – by a movie trailer. I think we’ve reached peak snowflake,” Maher snickered.

More Purity Policing by the LA Times, which asked “wouldn’t a bolder, more progressive version of this story have cast…a women of color?”

“Can’t we just sit in a movie theater, un-clench our assholes for two hours, and laugh at what it is, instead of dissecting it for what it is not?” Maher said, complaining, “Movie reviews, they’re not even reviews any more. They’re just, ‘How come you made the movie you made and not the one I would have made?'”

Then there were the critics who said that casting Schumer undermined “truly ugly fat people,” and those who asked why her self esteem had to be linked to her physical appearance, and those who wondered why the role had not been given to a woman of color. On The View, Schumer wound up apologizing for appearing in her own movie,  saying, “I recognize that I’m Caucasian…I would love if this movie were starring a woman of color who’s had it way harder than me.”

“Yeah because all goofy comedies should also address the black experience,” Maher snarked, calling life “too complicated to reduce everything to real problems on the one side and white problems on the other.”

“You can be white and still have a life where you pray for death. Just ask Melania,” he joked.

Some critics, Maher noted in exasperation, dinged the movie for casting straight, white, able-bodied, blonde, well-dressed Schumer.

“Yes, she’ a traitor to feminism because she wears clothes, has all her limbs, and is hotter than Predator,” Maher shot back.

Having worked himself into quite a lather, Maher turned his focus to comedian Sofie Hagen, who also had mentioned Schumer’s able-bodied-ness, adding, “she’s femme and, yes, thin. She IS society’s beauty ideal.”

“No, she’s precisely not!” Maher roared in response.  That’s her ACT, you idiots!”