Bill Maher’s ‘Real Time’ interview with Milo Yiannopoulos fuels new criticism

In the end, it was a non-event. Bill Maher’s decision to host controversial blogger Milo Yiannopoulos on “Real Time with Bill Maher” on HBO Friday led to very few on-air fireworks. Conservative group cancels speech by Milo Yiannopoulos after comments seemed to condone pedophilia » Earlier in the week, Maher’s announcement that he had invited the blogger and author for a top-of-show interview caused the withdrawal of another guest, Jeremy Scahill, a left-wing journalist who founded The Intercept and produced the documentary “Dirty Wars.” Scahill said in a statement that he pulled out because he said the appearance would “provide Yiannopoulos with a large, important platform to openly advocate his racist, anti-immigrant campaign.” Maher had defended the choice as necessary to bring the blogger’s positions under scrutiny. While Maher said on-air Friday that he was against Yiannopoulos’ policy of going after people individually, he offered no rebuttal to Yiannopoulos’ repetition of slurs against “Saturday Night Live” and “Ghostbusters” star Leslie Jones, an earlier round of which got the blogger banned from Twitter last year. Off the show, perhaps one of the most pithy responses from the left came from the MSNBC anchor Chris Hayes, who after the interview posted online, tweeted “Watching the Real Time clip confirms: @jeremyscahill made the right call.” See the most-read stories in Entertainment this hour » steve.zeitchik@latimes.com Twitter: @ZeitchikLAT ALSO: Q&A: It’s a free speech clash as Milo Yiannopoulos is shut down at UC Berkeley Trump hints at cutting federal funds to UC Berkeley after violent protests over Milo Yiannopoulos Inside the black bloc militant protest movement as it rises up against Trump From Streep to McCarthy, why women are the ones getting under Trump’s skin