Bill Maher is facing backlash for using his first “Real Time” monologue since the death of Dolly Parton to joke about the late country music legend’s breasts.
“All this was going on and all America could really talk about this week was how sad it is that we lost Dolly Parton,” said Maher, who suggested that Parton’s death has taken attention away from news around catastrophic flooding in Nepal and President Donald Trump’s trade war with Canada.
“Everybody around the country, even around the world — London they’re doing things. The Santa Monica ferris wheel is lit up with hearts. The Empire State Building was put up in pink. The Sphere in Las Vegas added a nipple.”
Maher’s comments, which were dubbed as the “lamest Dolly Parton tribute yet” by Variety, arrived days after her representatives confirmed she died following a “brief battle with cancer.”
The joke, of course, refers to Parton’s famous bosom, a feature she once quipped had served her “well” and had admitted to having “them jacked up a bit” over the years.
“My boobs are fake, my hair’s fake, but what is real is my voice and my heart,” she declared during the Glastonbury music festival crowd in 2014.
Alex Wroblewski via Getty Images
The singer’s death has sparked touching tributes across the entertainment world. Trump also honored Parton on his Truth Social platform, writing that there “has never been anyone like her, and never will.”
Maher’s joke was swiftly met with critics on social media, including Rosie O’Donnell who simply commented, “heartless,” on a Threads post referring to his monologue.
The Tennessee Holler, a progressive media outlet, also shared screenshots of several outlets’ not-so-glowing reviews of the comments.
“What an absolute asshole,” wrote the outlet in a post to its X page.
One X user likened the comments to those from the president, writing, “Even Trump refused to be shitty about Dolly Parton in her passing it’s wild that Bill Maher would choose to be this much of a shit bag about a beloved person on both sides of politics.”
And another user put it this way, “Seeing a person who spent most of her life trying to unite people through music and basic decency and empathy being celebrated and revered all week must be a foreign concept to him.”