Despite disagreeing with him on nearly every issue, I’ve always liked and defended Bill Maher because he’s one of the last of a dying breed: a genuine, old school, small-l “liberal” who has the guts to tell you exactly what he’s thinking in defiance of the modern totalitarian left “cancel culture.” And a great example is what he just had to say on his show directly to the purveyors of cancel culture. (Warning: contains some “only suitable for HBO” language.):

Sample quotes: Warning those on the left that “cancel culture is real,” and “it’s coming to a neighborhood near you.” And to those who try to destroy anyone who ever said or did anything that they disapprove of, including “canceling” Abraham Lincoln, Maher said, “Memo to social justice warriors: when what you’re doing sounds like an ‘Onion’ headline, stop.”

I might have said “The Babylon Bee,” but he’s right on. And speaking of becoming self-parodies, the latest crusade by the Keyboard Crybaby Corps is a “boycott Hyatt Hotels” move because they dared to host the CPAC conference in Orlando. For the record, hosting all kinds of conferences is what Hyatt does. They’re in the “hospitality” industry, “hospitality” being a term that I’m sure SJW’s are as unfamiliar with as they are the term “free speech.”

But screaming about a hotel hosting a conference is so stupid nobody could take it seriously, so they had to reinforce it with an even stupider grievance. And so, they declared that the stage at CPAC was deliberately built to resemble an Odal rune, a design that appeared on some Nazi uniforms. I congratulate them on actually opening a history book (that must be a first!), but it’s too bad they did it only to find something idiotic to pull completely out of context.

First of all, the Odal rune is hardly synonymous with Nazism. It’s been around for centuries and used in many contexts. Unlike the swastika, most people wouldn’t even recognize it as a Nazi symbol. On top of that, it’s a tremendous stretch to try to attach it to CPAC.

The stage was designed as a square with two walkway entrances so that it could hold multiple participants while maintaining social distancing. Finally, Matt Schlap of the American Conservative Union, which designed the stage, called the claim “outrageous and slanderous,” noting that unlike today’s radical leftists, CPAC has a longstanding commitment to the Jewish community and to fighting anti-Semitism, and that stage hosted Jewish speakers.

The Hyatt chain did the usual reflexive corporate virtue signaling, called hate symbols “abhorrent” and said they were taking the Nazi rune claim “very seriously.” I beg to differ. I agree that hate symbols are abhorrent, but nobody should take that ridiculous claim seriously. It should be laughed out of the room. It’s the perfect example of what Bill Maher was saying, and it belongs in the Onion, not any legitimate news outlet.