Comedian Nikki Glaser appeared on Bill Maher Friday night and was a “breath of fresh air,” to borrow some language from last week.

At issue was Bill Maher’s obsession, “cancel culture.” But there is no cancel culture. To the extent that cancel culture is real, go ask Liz Cheney about whether it’s a left or right thing. There is increased polarization and we’re working our ways through new standards on how to treat voting rights, POC, immigrants, LGBTQ, and the standard is higher. When people don’t meet it, an apology is expected. Additionally, we’re looking to hold people accountable for the crimes of the last five years, that’s not canceling anyone.

But Bill Maher is on a crusade and what he sees as cancel culture from the left. In other words, Maher agrees with Fox on this one. We admit, comedians likely have it the roughest in the new environment. Comedy needs to live on the edge, it needs to be raw. When it’s not on the edge, one just has “sit-com” level humor and no underlying message.

So comedians can rightly say that they are endangered by these new standards, one wrong line and they’re off a cliff. But Glasser was on the set last night to explain to Maher why none of this is bad. In response to something said, Maher noted:

“Please don’t apologize. Because there’s too much apologizing in America.”

We have an entire political movement based upon never apologizing, never being “weak,” always being right and strong. If anything, the country needs far more apologizing. We haven’t heard Trump apologize for his speech on January 6th. He could still deny that he incited anyone, but he could’ve apologized for “going a bit overboard,” or something. Now that’s comedy.

Glasser had an answer to Maher that stunned and humiliated him, making him look small.

“I love apologizing, I love it. I love apologizing, it feels so good when you mean it. I don’t mean empty apologies, I mean, when someone is really like, ‘I didn’t even consider that somebody could feel that way.’ Like having empathy, like, ‘that sucks that I made you feel that way.

Like having empathy. Like having a sense of compassion. Like being willing to make some mistakes for the greater good. Like accepting that there will be some bumps along the road to this new standard. But believing that one should always miss on the side of caution rather than the opposite? Glasser has it right.

And she didn’t apologize to Maher, who looked pretty small.

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Peace, y’all
Jason
[email protected] and on Twitter @JasonMiciak