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Bill Maher turned his New Rules segment against a preferred target, woke culture, this time in defense of Matt Damon, now “flailing around in cancel culture quicksand” for acknowledging he
used a gay slur that was thrown around when he was coming of age in Boston, but stopped. “Okay, he was late to the party. To which we could say, ‘Welcome, glad you could make it. Or we could
say, ‘You came later than I did. Die,’” ranted the host of HBO’s _Real Time With Bill Maher_, calling the _Stillwater_ star “one of the most likeable guys in Hollywood, with impeccable
liberal credentials.” (Damon volunteered in an interview with the U.K.’s Sunday Times that he had recently stopped using a term derogatory to homosexuals after his daughter explained to him
why it was offensive.) “There are too many people in this country motivated not by what they really believe, but by what will get Twitter to react to them with likes and retweets. That’s
called bad faith,” said Maher, ticking off Damon-bashing headlines, including one from Vox – “Matt Damon isn’t a terrible person, he’s just ignorant.” WATCH ON DEADLINE “Really? … He’s got a
clean water charity and delivers food to Haiti. What have you done, Vox headline writer? And yet he is always getting pulled over by the woke police.” _Real Time_ kicked off with Maher
talking ageism with Martin Short and Steve Martin ahead of the premiere of their new Hulu dark comedy series _Only Murder in the Building. _Martin’s having “white hair when he was three” was
a great move, Maher said, since the comic icon always looks the same. Martin said he’d “never ever thought of dying it.” The panel of Donna Brazile (now a _USA Today_ columnist and _ABC
News_ contributor) and Vice News national correspondent Michael Moynihan hit on climate change and the Taliban’s rapid takeover of Afghanistan since President Biden pulled U.S. troops out –
a topic hard to joke about. “It’s terrible. Twenty years we were there. All for nothing,” Maher said. “It’s like when Sean Hannity went to high school.” [embedded content]