Bill Maher on Friday during a segment on HBO's Real Time said the "war on jokes must end" after actor Will Smith struck comedian Chris Rock with an open palm at the Academy awards for making a joke about his wife, Jada Pinkett Smith.
"I know we're all sick of talking about 'the slap,'" Maher said, "but I'm sorry, one more thing needs to be said. Comedians have been under attack for quite some time, and I need to stick up for my tribe. The war on jokes must end."
In the segment, titled, "Explaining Jokes to Idiots," Maher said Rock's joke about Pinkett Smith's bald head, "wasn't an alopecia joke, any more than the chicken crossing the road is about bird flu."
He pointed to a joke told earlier in the night night where Timothée Chalamet was teased for looking a little run-down, with the cameras quickly cutting to J.K. Simmons in the audience. "That's where it ended," Maher said. "It's called being a good sport. Let the common people take the piss out of you for one minute."
Comedian Tom Segura also defended Rock.
"It is wild that, that guy is getting away with that ... It's just entitlement," Segura said.
"It reminds me. I used to live in L.A., and you would be on like Beverly or Rodeo, and you see these people in like Bentleys double-parked or be like in the handicap zone? And, a parking enforcement person would be like, 'hey, you can't park here.' And then the person in the Bentley goes, 'ya, there's no spaces.' And you're like 'ya f***face, that's what happens!'"
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