Bill Maher does not like two National Anthems being played before football games
The host of the HBO show "Real Time" Bill Maher ranted about the NFL playing two national
anthems at Thursday night's season kickoff game between the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and the
Dallas Cowboys.
Maher began the show's panel discussion Friday night on the subject of education in America and how college campuses and classrooms have become a "social justice factory," listing several instances across the country of teachers resigning because they've felt
more like "political activists" than actual educators, with one saying it's "pitting students against
each other based on the color of their skin."
He continued, "I saw last night on the football game, Alicia Keys sang ‘Lift Every Voice and
Sing,' which now I hear is called the Black national anthem. Now, maybe we should get rid of
our national anthem, but I think we should have one national anthem. I think when you go down
a road where you're having two different national anthems, colleges sometimes now have …
many of them have different graduation ceremonies for Black and White, separate dorms -- this
is what I mean! Segregation! You've inverted the idea. We're going back to that under a different
name."
The HBO host went to blast the University of Oregon for having lower graduation standards for
"people of color." Panelist George Will agreed with Maher's sentiment, calling it the "soft bigotry
of low expectations," while the other panelist Christina Bellantoni was more sympathetic with the adjusted standards for minorities, telling Maher it's "important to understand" why these
discussions are taking place.