Appearing on HBO’s “Real Time with Bill Maher,” MacFarlane was discussing the controversy surrounding last Sunday’s “Family Guy” when a Down Syndrome joke was made at Sarah Palin’s expense. Maher pointed out that this wasn’t inspired by White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel’s “f-ing retarded” comment: “[Y]ou’ve been making fun of the retarded for years.” MacFarlane replied, “[Y]eah, we’ve had our fair share of Bush jokes.” Moments later Maher said, “[I]ronically because of people like Sarah Palin, the country has done, become so stupid, we need the word retarded to constantly describe what is going on in America”