Bill Maher cites HBO rival Showtime's The Affair in reaction to the sexual misconduct allegations against Chris Hardwick'

Entertainment Weekly

The Real Time host doesn't know Hardwick well, but he says he read Chloe Dykstra's account of his alleged emotional and sexual abuse. "There’s a show on — I shouldn’t plug it because it’s my network rival — but there’s a show on Showtime called The Affair," he says when asked about Hardwick. "Have you ever seen it? It’s a Rashomon-type show where the first half hour is his story, then the second half hour is her story. So, they’re showing basically the same sequence of events through the eyes of two different people. And, of course, what you see is how differently people remember the exact same situation. They didn’t invent that, but it’s an interesting way to look at a relationship. So I have no idea. What I do know is this: It’s got to be different when you have 30 accusers than when you have one. When it’s a Bill Cosby, when it’s a Harvey Weinstein, when it’s any of these situations where dozens and dozens of people come forward, then it’s almost preposterous to say, 'Well, there’s nothing to see here.' But when it’s one person, I have no idea. And of course, it’s probably wrong to condemn someone based on one person, because relationships touch our rawest nerves, and people then sometimes do remember things wrong, or sometimes have personal revenge motivations. We just don’t know. Should we believe the woman? Yes, of course. But also every case is an individual case. I don’t think anyone should be arguing that women, ethereal creatures though they are, are infallible."