On a recent episode of Club Random, Bill Maher and actor Jerry O’Connell went back and forth over wokeness in America, touching on everything from homeless policy to Hollywood’s awards season blind spots.
O’Connell, who grew up in New York City and now lives in Calabasas with his wife Rebecca Romijn and their twin daughters, admitted during the conversation that living with three progressive family members had made him cautious about expressing his real opinions.
He described the night of the 2024 election when he made an offhand comment and his wife and daughters “became physical” with him in their anger.
“I don’t want to tell you how to live your life,” Maher responded, “but I couldn’t live that way. Whatever household or situation I’m in, I say what I truly think, and if it makes you angry, I’m sorry. We’ll have to work that out.”
Maher also drew a direct comparison to a story O’Connell had shared earlier in the episode about his childhood, when his mother constantly told him to “shut up and sit on your hands” rather than speak his mind.
“I’m not going to tuck my tail between my legs and just shut the up,” Maher said. “This is what you were dealing with when you were a child.”
The two clashed over what Maher described as the tendency of woke advocates to go “10 subway stops too far.” He pointed to the Boy Scouts as one example, criticizing the decision to allow girls into the organization.
“Do you have to always be st**idly counterintuitive about everything?” he said. “Girls, they also need time when they’re just with girls because they can’t be around these knuckleheads.”
Maher also raised the issue of unhoused people passing away in freezing temperatures, arguing that progressive policies had failed the most vulnerable people on the streets.
“What we thought was compassionate,” he said, “was to not be sleeping in zero degree weather on the sidewalk,” he mentioned
O’Connell attempted to offer a counterpoint. “I think you’re trying to inflict your ideas on a city that voted for Mamdani,” he said, before catching himself. “I shouldn’t have said inflict. I meant infect. Sorry.”
The issue of Hollywood bias also came up, with Maher expressing frustration that Taylor Sheridan’s drama Landman had been passed over for Emmy nominations. “Even if it was a conservative show, that should be allowed. This is f**king America,” he said.
O’Connell, who watches Maher’s show weekly and considers himself a genuine fan, found the entire conversation something of a balancing act. Maher put it plainly at one point: “I always say to my woke friends, you probably heard me say it, we voted for the same person. You’re just why she lost.”
