Bill Maher and his panelists S.E. Cupp and Andrew Sullivan slammed George Clooney for his call for a boycott of the Dorchester Collection hotel group because it's owned by the government of Brunei, which will shortly implement a punishment of death by stoning for gay sex.
Said Maher: “This really bothers me because it's chickenshit tokenism because, what about Saudi Arabia? If you really want to get back at them, stop driving. Don't use oil.”
Added Sullivan: “The nice thing about a free society is that you can have your political life, and then you can have your actual life. Love and sex and friendship and activities. Not everything you buy has to be filtered through this political lens. … We shouldn't be dictating our lives like a religion, according to the dictates of wokeness. It kills the vitality of a society.”
“It's not just Saudi Arabia,” Cupp chimed in. “It's UAE where Hollywood does a ton of business.”
“And don't go to a cocktail party with MBS (Mohammad Bin Salman, the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia),” added Sullivan, “a torturer and dictator. Hollywood sucked up to him incredibly. As if there was no worry about a dictator who is currently sweeping his own family of possible enemies.”
Maher continued: “George Clooney's a really smart guy who made a movie Syriana which is about the Middle East. … I don't think you could make that movie if you really didn't know what was going on. … This idea that the Sultan of Brunei is going over the receipts from the Polo Lounge, ‘oh no! We only sold two soups today!'”
Sullivan piled on to take a swipe at Rachel Maddow: “People can smell it. Its just virtue signaling. It's like that whole Rachel Maddow smug thing. And it's like, ‘no you're not.'”
“Let's just take down one liberal at a time,” Maher laughed.
