Clarence Page: Bill Maher, Mark Twain Prize winner, proves that free speech isn’t just for laughs |
Following reports that Bill Maher will receive the prestigious Mark Twain Prize for American Humor, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt refused to believe it.
“This is fake news,” she told CNN. “Bill Maher will NOT be getting this award.”
Ah, guess again. The Kennedy Center recently confirmed that Maher was the pick. (This reversal was first reported by Politico.)
The annual award presented by the Kennedy Center will be given on June 28, right before the performing arts center closes for a two-year renovation.
In the spirit of the honor, Maher thanked “the Mark Twain people” in a statement. “I just had the award explained to me, and apparently it’s like an Emmy, except I win,” he said.
”I’d just like to say that it is indeed humbling to get anything named for a man who’s been thrown out of as many school libraries as Mark Twain.”
Indeed, Maher is a particularly appropriate honoree since, like Twain, he is famous for edgy topical humor that aims, as journalist Finley Peter Dunne wrote in 1902 about newspapers, to “comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.”
If the response from Team Trump sounds like a disdainful “harrumph,” that’s partly because the comedian‘s program, “Real Time with Bill Maher,” appears uncensored mostly on HBO. (The show is also presented on CNN on Saturdays. HBO and CNN are both part of Warner Bros. Discovery.)
He has, at times, been a target of President Donald Trump’s outrage yet also........