"Who, Me? I'm Not a Misogynist"

Bill Maher has found himself struggling to escape his own self-created quicksand. While many of the defensive statements he mentioned in his later interview are, in essence, true about the nature of the First Amendment and his justifications for his use of foul language, at the end of the day, calling a female politician a curse word on national television and around the country during his shows doesn't excuse that language. He says he's "just a foul-mouthed comedian but not a misogynist."

Rush Limbaugh is equally responsible for creating a huge commotion by calling a regular female citizen a slut while she spoke on behalf of the use of contraceptives in religious institutions in Congress. I spoke at length about this topic here and in the follow up blog here.

Both circumstances are similar in many ways. Limbaugh could have implied Fluke was spending a lot of money on contraceptives because she was having a lot of sex—if that was his point—without calling her any names or accusing her of prostitution. Although it would have also been offensive, Fluke was talking about sex, after all, which opened up the discussion to talk about the subject. And knowing Limbaugh, he was going to go against contraceptive use in his ultra-conservative show. In contrast, calling Palin a sexually-charged curse word because of an attitude Maher dislikes about Palin that is not sexual in any way was misogynistic; he used an offensive word that has a strong sexual connotation. In essence, Limbaugh, despite his poor choice of words, was at least attempting to stay within the realm of the discussion that was present. Maher can't get away with rationalizations that the "Brits use this word for either gender," since after all, his show focuses on Americans. Nice try.

Looking at recent events, Congressman Weiner became the butt of everybody's jokes by being called a "dick." While we hope women won't go around calling their bosses or politicians this word, we understand his sexual indiscretions made him a very easy target. Interestingly, most male comedians took advantage of his last name and his social media activities, where he sent explicit pictures of himself. Why aren't these comedians being called "anti-male?" Because they used sexually-charged words for a sexually-explicit action. Maher, instead, used a sexually-charged word instead of one that described his pure dislike of a person.

When 30 Rock actor Tracy Morgan said he would "stab his son to death if he couldn't talk like a man" during his stand up comedy show, it didn't take much to think he disliked (or hated) gays—even if he apologized after a public outcry. If we heard any politician call an African-American opponent the n-word, we would all be up in arms, as much as we would frown upon any other derogatory comments on ethnic groups.

What's the problem? When Limbaugh, Maher, and Morgan apologize and say they are not against women or against gays, we wonder about the sincerity of their words.

What are the options?

Option 1: They are lying to the public about their true beliefs in order to save face.

Option 2: They are convinced that they are not against women or gays.

This second option relates to unconscious bias and is the most dangerous of both options. Why? Because they don't know what they don't know! And only their façade to the world will change: they need to continue to have a wide audience's approval and will change their actions for that reason; just because someone with power (audience, sponsors, and underwriters) say that they must stop doing this (using this sort of language) doesn't mean that they themselves wish to stop. However, changing their beliefs out of conviction and desire to change will take much longer, if it ever happens. Why is this important? We need to discern between a heart-felt apology and an external, pressure-driven apology. The first kind of apology is real, whereas the second one is just fake and will continue to exist behind the scenes.

How about you? We all have biases. Are you aware of your own biases? Do people say you have biases that you don't believe you have, but people are consistently pointing the same ones out? How do you deal with your own biases, do you apologize with conviction or just to make others' criticism go away? How good of an actor are you? Are you found out consistently? Do people trust you? Do they think you talk the talk and walk the walk?