On Friday’s broadcast of HBO’s “Real Time,” host Bill Maher and comedian and media personality Marc Maron graded President Barack Obama on his performance at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner last weekend.
While both said Obama had done well, neither thought he would really make it as a professional comedian, and Maher found one of Obama’s jokes to be offensive.
“Now here’s the joke,” Maher said. “It was a good joke, but it bothered me a little. He said, ‘The media landscape is changing so rapidly you can’t keep up with it. I remember when BuzzFeed was just something I did in college around 2:00 a.m.’ And that pissed me off because, you know, there are actually people in jail. There are something like 750,000 people who get arrested for pot every year. This president wouldn’t be president if they had caught him, if that was on his record…He’d still be a community organizer. I just wonder when he’s going to get the memo that pot is the new gay marriage.”
Maron credited Obama for his contributions to opening a “dialogue” about gays, but agreed with Maher and questioned why the president can’t make the jump.
“I don’t honestly — the dialogue around gays is now he’s created a situation where people can — he’s supporting gay marriage and it’s only a matter — for people in this country to go finally be able to say ‘oh, there are gays everywhere,/” Maron said. “It’s not that far from saying ‘everyone smokes weed.’ I don’t know why they can’t make the jump. I don’t know anyone who hasn’t smoked weed. Are there really like people [that say] weed is evil? Are there really those people?”