Bill Maher Explains His Zayn Malik-Dzhokhar Tsarnaev Joke to Us Idiots

After he compared former One Direction member Zayn Malik to Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the internet got really mad at HBO’s late-night host Bill Maher, but he made clear he’s far from sorry. In Friday night’s edition of Real Time with Biller Maher, he addressed all the critics in a segment he dubbed ‘Explaining Jokes to Idiots.’

The whole segment is very tongue-in-cheek wherein Maher dryly breaks down his joke line by line as if speaking to actual comedy students.

Here’s what he said about the joke’s punchline, and why the joke is a non-controversy:

Now, notice how the crowd was shocked at first, but in just a few seconds, they were cracking up and applauding. That’s because they are not idiots, and they understand—or ‘get’—what the joke is: that they look alike! That’s it. Their facial features are quite similar which is humorous because one is a murderer and the other is in a boy band where they only murder the music.

Now, it turns out that Zayn Malik is a Muslim, but neither I nor anyone on our staff knew that—how could we, the whole joke is that I don’t know who the fuck he is. I don’t know his religion or his birthday or his favorite food because I don’t spend every waking moment obsessing over teenage boys like a Catholic prie—I mean a 12 year-old girl.

By the way, if you are a 12 year-old you have every right to be upset—because you’re 12. But for every other media outlet who covered this story when you could have spent time and space on real news that needs reporting, you are not only traitors to journalism, you are in the truest sense of the word, 12 year-old girls.