Fireworks.
Last week, or maybe two weeks ago, the Associated Press brought up surfing’s grand Olympic debut and the fact that it is a cultural appropriated art that benefits white devils at the expense of native Hawaiians. Days ago, The Washington Post doubled down, arguing that surfing was part of America’s evil soft power used to subjugate and abuse.
This narrative is standard, now, but social commentator Bill Mahr ain’t having it.
In his most recent episode of Real Time with Bill Maher, the host blasts the “woke Olympics” and singles out our surfing as a prime example of silliness. The piece begins around the three minute mark.
Maher gets upset at the “cultural appropriation” line, says there are only two native Hawaiians left on earth and doubts that they birthed surfing pointing to the twenty-odd thousand islands in the Pacific. “How do we know that they were the first to stand on a board on water? It seems like its something that any person near any ocean would eventually do.”
Unsaid was, “Like Peruvians. Buy here.”
Maher continued, “But let’s say a Hawaiian did invent surfing. Should he or she have kept it to themselves? The best part of human history is sharing, which is sort of the point of the Olympics.”
Well?
What do you think about that?
Offended?
this place is weird, used to have lots of waves…..even down the street. Times have changed. High pressure just blocking everything for years.. Hurricanes? haha….
Fucking debris flow almost took the whole place down. Might have added some connecting sections to some spots, but thats a guess. Never see so many huge rocks tossed like toys
Ok let’s all just take a deep and just give credit where credit is due. The Greeks invented the Olympics so they are the ones who are truly victims of this wacky culture I know you are, no you are, no you are, mom he’s looking at me juvenile behavior. This is the moment when I don’t care who started it because I’m taking my belt off to whip everyone with the belt.
Bill “Too Little Too Late” Maher.
I think we’ve been telling you this crap is nonsense for about 5 years now…and the biggest nonsense is acting as President.
It’s hilarious to me, and ironic that it’s lost on pretty much all of the BG commentariat, that surfing culture is one of the most ‘gate-kept’. We hem and haw and yell and scream and dedicate a site to preserving its culture, the roots, etc. We’ve even made a term for those infringing and adopting surf culture in bizarre and sometimes offensive ways: the VAL. ALL OF THIS IN AN ATTEMPT TO PREVENT CULTURAL APPROPRIATION. That jeep ad we all hate? Cultural appropriation. Dirk Ziff buying the WSL? Cultural appropriation.
Get your head out of your asses and think for yourselves you dumb fucking hypocrites! Admit it, fighting off a corporate takeover is the definition of protecting one’s culture from appropriation. Jesus, us surfers are fucking stupid.
The way the story goes is that Hawaiians used to ride a board or chunk of tree down the mountainside as a proof of bravery into age. One of them at some point in time took it to the water and rode a wave.
Spot on. Woke will make you go broke. Those living in reality will make that happen
And when are people going to call out the ‘Jah-waiians’ for appropriating Jamaican culture?
Culture is literally for appropriating.
Like really who has ever givin a fuck what the Hawaiian’s think anyway , whats really important is when will i be able to experiance the cultural experiance of Bali once again.
Are you kidding me? Wasn’t the Marathon established in Greece, yet so many countries run it. How about Golf? I don’t think the USNWT invented soccer or do they claim that as well? How about the Jamaican Bobsled team? Who was the first to use a long pole to elevate them over a horizontal pole?
Bill Maher is as “woke” as his audience!.
Nevertheless, the “woke left” will eventually implode, turning on each other. They are offended by everything, and narrow the blood flowing to the brain by self imposed restrictions.
I think Maher is looking for redemption from his earlier anti-right comments on previous shows. He’s finding out what it really means to be playing for the “left” and their intolerance of any opposition.
You sell out! Down with corporations!!! Down with consultants! haha…. joke
hey T did you go to UCSB? I graduated 78 or so and learnt some farm tricks over on Kona side, then came to Cito to farm it…its weird and foggy here at my place though
. Lurking in the neighbors hedges for my grow? Just not productive. Probably shoulda coulda gone to Humbolt…….Altho weird times up there. Too much money too fast for people. Oh well. Cito now on a shoestring sponsorship!! ..it aint too bad here.
Traffic and crowds do suck.
The book plug was truly a master stroke.
Whoa! I was just on a Winwood kick, played Valerie over and over. Arc of a Diver too
You pissed about raven Saunders putting up an x on the podium? There’s certainly no way a large gay African American woman ever felt any kind of oppression in the good old boy south, home of America’s first slave market still celebrated as a tourist site. It sounds like your point is because one country is bordering on north Korea like dictator state, another place with less overt forms of oppression cannot count? Take a look at us prison statistics regarding racial demographics and also the differentiation of prison sentences between races and I think you might glean an understanding of one way in which large groups of Americans are still blatantly disadvantaged. Are you American? Either way you truly sound like a kunt
I didn’t know surfing was an Olympic sport, sigh.
What’s next?
Best Sand Castles b4 the evening tide? It’s an ancient art in California, by people of all West Coast cultures.
Agree! Started with the greedy dispensaries tumbling the bud and selling the kief side by side with flower they tumbled. Then the dab fiend generation came in and totally ruined things.
Really Maher, Slow NEWS week…Simone Biles bore you or fact that Japanese wasted billion$ and were strong armed by the IOC to run the show in the middle of a more contagious variant wave require too much from your legal department, so you pick on Hawaiians (there are more than 2 of us) and the gift of surfing we gave to the world…look up Duke Kahanumoku (also an Olympian) who popularized the sport worldwide.
Really, Bill…I’m a fan and I’m an indigenous Hawaiian, conflicted, NO…disappointed…YES, in you Maher, for growing into a cynical, lazy, old man resting on your last best act. I had higher hopes for you to have more respect for the native people who preserved the land where you rehabilitate yourself every winter.
As a fellow BOOMER, I never expected you to go gently into the night but I did hope you’d have sense enough to
It was because of the Olympics that Duke was able to spread surfing to the world – even all the way down to Australia!!!
I don’t think moderns appreciate just how famous Duke was after the 1912 Olympics.
Duke and Jim Thorpe shook up the world: The red man kicked ass in track, and Duke wasted everyone in the pool.
Duke was somewhere between Tiger Wood and Muhammad Ali famous and so he was in demand everywhere.
He went to Australia in 1914 I think to put on swimming exhibitions as an Olympian, and that’s when he showed Aussie! Aussie! Aussie! how to ride da kine.
So, yeah.
Also, Duke’s swimming garment during the Olympics was considered improper because it didn’t have a “modesty skirt” to hide the block and tackle.
But it just let him go a little bit faster.
https://uploads.disquscdn.c…
This is all extremely dumb and trivial and designed to generate controversy and attract eyeballs and raise ratings.
Anyone taking the bait and arguing any of this nonsense will die within a week.
Kinda like The Ring.
As said elsewhere: “In 21st Century, social media America, the bullshit was so high you needed wings to get above it.”