It seems almost unnecessary to make a list of every instance where Maher threw the “racist” tag on someone or a group of people that disgust him, but for the record he has attacked the Tea Partiers– actually, anyone that questions raising taxes– “anti-immigrant hoopies,” “older white people“… and it goes on. This is someone whose political identity is supposedly deeply rooted in a hatred of racism, someone who makes his paycheck self-righteously brandishing his tolerance, who just admitted on television that you can’t be a “real” black person without behaving like Tupac Shakur.

And that really is the sticking point here that makes this go from funny/offensive to just plain offensive. Some people have made a career of being “racist” comedians– and there’s no doubt that many black comedians use stereotypes for humor– but Maher seems to consider himself a serious political commentator, too. He appears on CNN to talk tell Wolf Blitzer how to fix the world. You can’t blur the line between satirist and commentator to that extent and expect people to let you off the hook for using minstrel show humor (which is really the only way to characterize a “haha, black people like to shoot people” joke).