Ahmed Mohamed's clock looked like a bomb, Bill Maher said.
Bill Maher, the left-leaning host of "Real Time" on HBO, told his panel of similarly liberal-minded guests the nation needed to get a grip on the politically correct outrage surrounding Ahmed Mohamed, the 14-year-old who sparked bomb fears with his homemade clock, because the device did indeed look "exactly like a [expletive] bomb." he said.
"The people at the school thought it might be a bomb, perhaps because it looks exactly like a [expletive] bomb," Maher said, referring to the furor that erupted over Texas Muslim-American student Mohamed and his homemade clock that teachers and administrators feared was actually an explosive device.
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Mohamed, as widely reported, was placed in handcuffs and taken from school by police, and subsequently suspended by administrators. Not so widely reported, however, was this bit: the clock supposedly built by Mohamed, which won him high acclaim among the electronics and engineering fields, was a "fraud," according to one technical expert, WND reported.
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In a YouTube video, electrical expert Thomas Talbot analyzed Mohamed's clock, which had been billed as the teen's ingenious invention, and said: "He did not invent a clock or build it. ... What this is is a commercial alarm clock, as you would purchase in any department store," as WND reported. Meanwhile, atheist Richard Dawkins also raised questions about Mohamed's clock saying in a Twitter message the teen may have actually wanted police to arrest him, WND found.
Regardless, the consequences Mohamed faced for bringing his device to school raised the eyebrows of even President Obama, who sent out a tweet extending an invitation for the teen to visit the White House. But Maher said such reaction is silly, and nonsensical.
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"Look, this kid deserves an apology, no doubt about it," he said, during his recent broadcast, Entertainment Weekly reported. "They were wrong. But can we have a little perspective about this? Did the teacher really do a wrong thing?"
Maher also said, in defense of the teacher's concerns about a bomb: "It's not the color of his skin. Excuse me, somebody look me in the eye right here and tell me. over the last 30 years, if so many young Muslim men ... and he's young, 14, but that's not like it's never happened before, hasn't blown a lot of [expletive] up around the world. And this guy, this kid deserves an apology because he wasn't one of them ... For the last 30 years, it's been one culture that has been blowing [expletive] up over and over again."
Among the panelists on Maher's show were Jorge Ramos, Chris Matthews, Mark Cuban and former New York Gov. George Pataki, who seemed to mostly agree with Maher's views.
"He's a great kid," Maher said. "No one's doubting that. I'm just asking about perspective."
