HBO’s “Real Time” host Bill Maher stated that he has “sympathy for people in authority, because I think parents just let kids do anything nowadays” on Friday.
Maher said that the police officer who bodyslammed a high school student to the ground was “horrendous to treat a child like this, a teenager.” “But I also have sympathy for people in authority, because I think parents just let kids do anything nowadays, so they never listen to authority. … Am I wrong that parents are just not doing the job? It’s overzealous policing and underzealous parenting.”
Comedian David Spade agreed with Maher, saying, “I saw another video of a guy slamming the principal down, and when I was in school i was scared, maybe because of my mom, but I was scared and respectful of teachers, and I think that’s getting a little blurrier. … It’s back and forth, you know, the teachers get too tough with them, but then the kids that you’re actually scared of in classes that are 15, 16.
Maher added, “When we were kids there was a — an alliance between the parents and the teachers that the kids could not drive a wedge through, and now the alliance is against the teachers. That’s why they can’t teach, because the little brats go home and complain, and then the parents complain to the teachers. They’re not on the side of the teachers.”
He further stated, “the deeper problem I’m trying to go is that what I see is parents who just constantly negotiate with their children.”
Spade added, that parents, “might be scared of being bad parents, because all parents are judged so harshly now by other parents”
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett