HBO host Bill Maher was his usual nasty self on Friday’s Real Time. Joking about Cuba and America’s relationship with the communist country, he sneered that the United States’s decades-old embargo “means endlessly patching up their old DeSotos and Edsels with whatever they can scrounge, old tractor parts, chicken wire, the bones of prostitutes Rush Limbaugh killed on vacation.” This prompted liberal director (and HBO guest) Rob Reiner to break down in laughter.
This is the same Maher who gleefully joked about the death of Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia. So, we shouldn’t be surprised. Maher’s Limbaugh mocking also came with the standard bashing of America: “Before Americans can laugh at how pathetic Cubans are for driving those old, patched-up cars instead of getting new ones, we have to explain why that's what we're doing with our health care system, our voting system, our energy policy and our infrastructure.”
A transcript of the joke is below:
Real Time With Bill Maher
4/29/16
10:50
BILL MAHER: And finally, new rule, before Americans can laugh at how pathetic Cubans are for driving those old, patched-up cars instead of getting new ones, we have to explain why that's what we're doing with our health care system, our voting system, our energy policy and our infrastructure. Now, with apologies to my friend Jay Leno, I am not a car guy. I don't know shit about them. They all look alike to me. I don't know who makes what and I don't care. But I know if this video was taken recently, it must be from Cuba.
And the reason for the time warp is that these cars are the same ones Cuba had back when America imposed its embargo. And so their cars are stuck forever in 1959 and the Cubans are forced to make the best with what little they have. Like what Trump does with his hair. But in the case of the plucky Cubans, it means endlessly patching up their old DeSotos and Edsels with whatever they can scrounge, old tractor parts, chicken wire, the bones of prostitutes Rush Limbaugh killed on vacation.
