What the Caitlin Clark discourse was missing was someone like Bill Maher weighing in.
That’s what everyone was thinking, right?
Well, the host of HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher added his voice to the media frenzy surrounding Caitlin Clark. And to say that discussions have gone far afield would be putting it nicely.
Discussing the now-viral clip on his Friday show, Maher highlighted how Clark’s Indiana Fever teammates didn’t defend her after the Chicago Sky’s Chennedy Carter’s hip-check that’s evolved into a never-ending news cycle.
“See, if this was men, they’d defend each other on their same team,” Maher said Friday via Fox News. “I mean, men will fight from two teams, but when somebody checks you on who’s on your team, you defend that guy. I’m just saying men have their bad parts. We’re toxic. We’re dogs. Only women would do this.”
Maher quoted former NBA player Matt Barnes, co-host of the All The Smoke podcast, who said, “My issue and my question is, where the f–k are her teammates at?… I’ve seen a couple of girls smirk when she’s got knocked down, half-a** to pick her up… “You guys are supposed to be a family… It’s your guys’ f–king job to have her back and to have each others’ backs.”
In echoing a talking point that’s long found itself within the Clark discussion, Maher added a divisive element — the issue of race and how it’s evolved in the discourse. And despite recognizing the potential for racial factors, Maher downplayed the problem by suggesting a white person’s success isn’t inherently linked to racism.
“There’s also a racial element to this, we can’t deny that,” Maher added. “But I’ll just say, it’s not always racism when a white person succeeds.”
Countering the idea of a racial element, Reason Magazine‘s Matt Welch pointed out that race wouldn’t necessarily be a factor when a Black player hip-checks a white player. Maher agreed with this point but then broadened the discussion, suggesting that the lack of immediate support might be due to a lack of camaraderie within women’s sports, using terms like “catty” and echoing a talking point from Clay Travis regarding the league being “very lesbian.”
“It’s everything,” Maher said. “It’s women are catty, the league is very lesbian, and she’s not, and there’s race. There’s a lot going on.”
And in continuing his commentary, Maher made another generalization about women being “catty,” even within their own teams.
That’ll almost certainly go over well.
[Fox News]
About Sam Neumann
Since the beginning of 2023, Sam has been a staff writer for Awful Announcing and The Comeback. A 2021 graduate of Temple University, Sam is a Charlotte native, who currently calls Greenville, South Carolina his home. He also has a love/hate relationship with the New York Mets and Jets.