HBO host Bill Maher called out celebrities he believes are refusing to stand up to China.
During an episode of his show, Maher mentioned Olympic skier Eileen Gu who chose to compete for China instead of the United States where she was born.
“Is that cool now to choose to represent a totalitarian police state over America?” Maher said.
He added, “The Olympics pretends to only be about sports, but of course, the games have always been a bit of a proxy war for which country has the best system. And by choosing Team China, Eileen Gu became a living symbol of China’s triumph over the West, which wouldn’t bother me so much if I thought China had triumphed over us in the ways that really matter. But they haven’t.”
Maher recognized there are human rights issues in the United States.
Still, he argued, “We’re still at least, for another three years, a democracy based on freedom, and they are an authoritarian surveillance state based on ‘How would you like to disappear for a few months?'”
He continued, “Like that tennis player [Peng Shuai] who recently vanished for a while when she said she had been raped by a government official. We do still throw too many black people in jail, but perspective matters.”
Check out his comments below:
When a country can make your big muscled, macho man action stars grovel in their language, you know you're somebody's bitch. #Taiwan pic.twitter.com/nTjjkUQV9l
— Bill Maher (@billmaher) February 22, 2022Are celebrities kowtowing to China?
Maher went on to accuse China of jailing an entire ethnic minority, explaining, “A situation that both the Trump and Biden administrations has called a genocide. America is not close to that. And it’s a cynical dodge to pretend that China’s sins should be overlooked because we all do it. No.”
Turning his attention to LeBron James, Maher mentioned a comment the NBA player made about Philadelphia 76ers President Daryl Morey, saying he needed to “be educated on the situation.”
“The situation being, ‘I’ve got some shoes to sell,'” Maher said.
He added, “Kowtow is a Chinese word but, boy, Americans have gotten good at it.”
The HBO host noted China offers American companies and celebrities a deal giving them “access to our billion-plus consumers as long as you shut up about the whole police-state-genocide thing.”
“John Cena took that deal. Well, come on. China accounts for 34% of global box office, and he’s a movie star now. So, like the Uyghurs, last year, he learned he needed to get some re-education. You see, John referred to Taiwan as a country as if it was a separate country from China, which it is. But China would like to do to Taiwan what it did to Tibet and what it’s now doing to Hong Kong,” Maher said.
Maher suggested when “a country can make your big muscly macho man action star grovel in their language, you know you’re somebody’s b****. In the original Top Gun, Tom Cruise wore a bomber jacket with the flags of several Asian countries that are our allies sewn on the back. Well, the flag for Taiwan has now magically disappeared for the upcoming Top Gun: Maverick. Well, he used to be a maverick. Now he does whatever China says.”
Concluding his remarks, Maher told his viewers, “Someone has to tell me where we got this rule that you can’t criticize China because I suspect we got it from China. Because, after all, that’s where we get everything else.”
