Real Time with Bill Maher
Season 22 – Episode 12
Original air date: April 19, 2024
The explosive documentary about the toxic and abusive environment inside ’90s kids’ TV didn’t just expose a dangerous workplace, it also exposed Hollywood hypocrisy.
* * *
(AUDIENCE APPLAUDING)
And finally, New Rule, as one of the few people in the public eye who’s gone through life, and never had kids, someone has to tell me, why am I always having to defend them?
(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
I don’t even like kids. But I also think it’s every adult’s job to protect them. Have you all been watching the Max documentary called Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV?
O-M-G.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
Nickelodeon, it wasn’t a studio, it was Neverland Ranch with craft services.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHING, APPLAUDING)
(CHUCKLES) It is just scene after scene, clip after clip of the child stars of their day being subjected to obviously inappropriate, highly sexualized degradation, and quite a few pickles going through glory holes.
(AUDIENCE GASPING, LAUGHING)
I was grossed out, and I’ve gone camping with John Waters.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHING, APPLAUDING)
I kid you, John, I love you. So, I don’t know if this documentary is the talk of your town, but it is out here, because it didn’t just expose a dangerous workplace, it also exposed hypocrisy, because it must be pointed out that when the evil governor of Florida was saying the exact same thing about kids, and creepy stuff at Disney, that liberals now find intolerable at Nickelodeon, he was dismissed as a hick and a bigot. But why would a kids content factory like Disney, be all that different than the one at Nickelodeon? A 2014 CNN report discovered that at least 35 Disney employees had been arrested for sex crimes against children. And in 2021, Disney child star, Alyson Stoner, confessed she only narrowly survived the toddler-to-trainwreck pipeline. The next year, child star, Cole Sprouse, told The New York Times that young actresses at the Disney Channel were heavily sexualized from an early age. You know, Willie Sutton said he robbed banks ’cause that’s where the money is. And the reason we find pedophiles in the boy scouts, and the rectory and kids TV is, that’s where the kids are.
(AUDIENCE CHUCKLING)
DeSantis wasn’t wrong. But we’re so tribal now, the Left will overlook child fucking if the guy from the wrong party calls it out. Sure, Nickelodeon messed up Amanda Bynes, but the Mickey Mouse Club was where Britney Spears got her start, and she’s perfectly fine.
(GASPS, GRUNTS)
(AUDIENCE LAUGHING, APPLAUDING)
(CLEARS THROAT) And get this. After Brian Peck, who was one of the lead creeps at Nickelodeon, served 16 months in prison for the molesting he did there, Disney hired him naturally to work on a children’s series. (SCOFFS) For pedophiles in Hollywood, it’s a small world after all. (AUDIENCE LAUGHING, APPLAUDING) And… and not just Hollywood, there are Instagram moms these days, who are practically OnlyFans-ing their itty-bitty beauty queen daughters by having them wear skimpy bikinis, and eat bananas to build social media stardom. They’re called “Sharenters,” a hybrid of sharing and parent. I call them “Pimps.” A hybrid of “pimp” and “s.”
(AUDIENCE LAUGHING, CHEERING, APPLAUDING)
(CLEARS THROAT, CHUCKLES) And people who believe in social justice have agreed this is wrong and this is bad, and exposing kids to an adult world of lurid costumes and garish makeup borders on abuse. Now, hurry up and get in the car. We’re late for Drag Queen Story Hour. (AUDIENCE LAUGHING, APPLAUDING) Not that there’s anything wrong with being a drag queen, but maybe it’s time to admit that sometimes Drag Queen Story Hour is more for the queen than the kids. (SCOFFS) Sure, kids love a clown, but does the clown have to have tits?
(AUDIENCE LAUGHING, APPLAUDING)
(CLEARS THROAT) And when I see a five-year-old tipping, tipping at a bar under a sign that says,
“It’s not gonna lick itself…”
(AUDIENCE GASPING) …do I have to pretend that’s cool in order to keep my liberal ID card? Sorry, I can’t do that. If you want kids to be more tolerant, why not have handicapped people read them stories? Kids are more likely to encounter disabled people than drag queens in life. Geez, can’t we just go back to the good old days when kids were read simple stories with simple morals like if you’re a lonely single man,
just make a boy out of wood.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHING, APPLAUDING)
(CHUCKLING) I’ve said it before, wokeness is not an extension of liberalism anymore. It’s more often taking something so far that it becomes the opposite. Teaching kids not to hate or judge those who are different, great. Proud we got there, all for that. But at a certain point, inclusion becomes promotion. And contrary to current progressive dogma, children aren’t miniature adults, wise beyond their years, they’re morons.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHING, APPLAUDING)
They’re gullible morons who’ll believe anything, and just wanna please grownups. And they don’t have any frame of reference. So, they normalize whatever’s happening. That’s why endlessly talking about gender to six-year-olds isn’t just inappropriate, it’s what the law would call entrapment… which means enticing people into doing something they wouldn’t ordinarily do. For example, after 9/11, there were several cases of overzealous federal agents leading sad losers into terrorist “plots.” (CLICKS TONGUE) Like the undercover FBI agent who got seven out-of-work dudes in Liberty City, Florida to sign onto a plot to bomb the Sears Tower in Chicago. Oh, please, these guys didn’t even have a gun.
(AUDIENCE CHUCKLING)
But when someone said, “Wouldn’t it be cool if we taught the man a lesson, and blew something up?” They said, “Yeah, that would be kinda cool.”
(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
Entrapment, suggesting someone into something they wouldn’t otherwise do. And if you think that some of that isn’t going on with gender in schools, you’re not watching enough TikTok videos.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
I pledge allegiance to the queers. I’m not allowed to be out as trans non-binary at school. So, my response to this is to be as obnoxiously queer as possible. There’s a certain kind of activist these days who wants to take heterosexuality, old school, old fashioned, boring,
minding its own business heterosexuality…
(AUDIENCE CHUCKLING)
…and lump it in with patriarchy, and sexism, and racism, and tell kids, “Wouldn’t it be cool if you were anything but that?” It also seems to be the theme of kind of a lot of kids’ books these days. I never used the phrase “gay agenda” because I thought it was mostly nonsense. And it is, mostly. But a director for Disney Television Animation did say after she was hired… The showrunners were super welcoming to, like, my, like, not at all secret gay agenda. Like, I was just, wherever I could, just basically adding queerness. No one would stop me, and no one was trying to stop me. Look, I’m all for adding queerness wherever. I put some in my drink before I came out here tonight.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
(CHUCKLES)
(AUDIENCE CHEERING, APPLAUDING)
But maybe we should think about giving kids a break from our culture wars for a minute, or at least until the election is over.
