‘I’ve Never Been Asleep’: Whoopi Goldberg Took Bill Maher To School About ‘Wokeness’ And The Black National Anthem

During Friday night’s episode of Real Time with Bill Maher, the comedian launched into an ill-advised rant about the “Black national anthem,” which put him in the crosshairs of Whoopi Goldberg on Monday morning’s episode of The View. As Meghan McCain can attest to, that’s never a good place to be.

On Real Time, Maher thought he was being profound by criticizing Alicia Keys for singing “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” which is known as the Black national anthem. Thinking this was a new development, Maher launched into a rant against “woke college campuses” and literally equated the idea of two national anthems as segregation. “You’ve inverted the idea,” Maher said.

There’s just one small problem. “Lift Every Voice and Sing” has been known as the Black national anthem since 1900, and Whoopi did not hold back schooling Maher on the topic:

Via Mediaite:

Goldberg went on to note that “‘Lift Every Voice and Sing” has “always been considered the Black national anthem,” noting that the separation between Johnson’s song and “The Star-Spangled Banner” has been made clear to Black Americans.

“Now maybe other people don’t feel like that, but I feel like, we have to re-educate and retell people,” she continued. “We don’t think rape humor is funny, we don’t think talking about Native Americans in a really despicable way is funny. It’s not funny and we have to re-educate.”

As for Maher’s accusation of wokeness, Whoopi wasn’t playing: “I’ve never been asleep.” Keep in mind, this all arrived in the first few minutes of the segment, and there were still three more co-hosts left to weigh in on Maher, which they did. Maybe next time, the Real Time host will fact-check his jokes a little harder.

(Via The View on Twitter)