Only from Bill Maher, America: “For outstanding achievement in growing a pair…”
Yup, HBO’s “Real Time” host went there on Friday’s episode and I for one couldn’t be more delighted. As reported by Blaze Media, “Maher honored the brave, few people and companies that have taken a stand against cancel culture.” The alluringly acerbic comedian and political commentator hosted the “The Cojones Awards,” although he quipped that the actual awards are “solid brass balls.”
Maher delivered the first Cojones Award to Martha Pollack, the president of his alma mater, Cornell University, who has steadfastly defended freedom of speech against woke activists trying to cancel conservative speakers at the college
Here’s Pollack, as transcribed by the Blaze:
It is critical to our mission as a university to think deeply about freedom of expression and the challenges that result from assaults on it, which today come from both ends of the political spectrum.
Learning from difference, learning to engage with difference, and learning to communicate across difference are key parts of a Cornell education. Free expression and academic freedom are the bedrock not just of the university, but of democracy.
Maher said, of Pollack:
She didn’t cave in or hire a new dean of sensitivity, she just said, “No. College is for introducing you to new ideas, not for kissing your ass and making you feel wonderful and always right.”
Other Cojones Award winners included Trader Joe’s, for refusing to kowtow to the outrage mob after the retail food outlet was accused of putting “racist” labels on its products, and actor Ben Stiller, who in early 2023 was blasted by the woke mob for his role in the 2008 movie “Tropic Thunder.”
And most notably Maher gave a Cojones Award to Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos for standing up when the outrage mob went after comedian Dave Chappelle, including employees from his own company. Lunatics on the left wailed that a Chappelle stand-up comedy special on Netflix was “transphobic” and “dangerous.”
Speaking of “phobic” — having an irrational fear about something— the left’s cute little labels: transphobic, homophobic, Islamaphobic, xenophobic, et al., are a complete crock of crap, intentionally meant to suggest to low-information Democrat voters that people opposed to, for example, radical Islamism, so-called “transgenderism” (including the irreversible mutilation of young kids’ bodies who confusingly believe they’re members of the opposite sex).
Afraid of? Oh, hell no. Morally against? Oh, hell yes.
Regardless of what one thinks about Bill Maher, the guy has “brass ones,” himself — particularly when considering the Hollywood crowd he runs with. For that alone, he should be commended.
Finally, I want to revisit the hypocritical irony of the left’s continuing attempt to censor free speech. As reported by The New York Times on December 3, 1964, the left’s Free Speech Movement began in earnest on the campus of the University of California, Berkeley:
Demonstrating students took possession of the University of California administration building today. About 1,000 supporters of the Free Speech Movement moved into the corridors of Sproul Hall [at] about noon. Some were still there late tonight. Many slept and others read while still others sang. There was no attempt by the campus policeto remove them.
“The time has come for us to put our bodies on the machine and stop it,” said Mario Savio, a student leader, in a speech on the steps of the building as the demonstration began. “We will stay until the police remove us.” Joan Baez, the folk singer, helped draw the crowd, as she has at other demonstrations on the campus.
The rest is history, as they say.
Nearly 60 years later, it’s the left that does its damnedest to shut down free speech on college campuses, on social media, and within news outlets all over the country — not the right. On the off chance that a so-called “progressive” is reading this article, can you please explain your blatant hypocrisy to the rest of us?
Take your time — but we won’t hold our freedom-of-speech-loving breath.
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