Bill Maher Labeled "NPC" by Conservative Street Artists | Hollywood Reporter

POLITICS

12:39 PM PST 1/13/2019 by Paul Bond

Courtesy of The Faction

The artwork is courtesy of The Faction, conservatives who previously peppered the Hollywood Walk of Fame with dozens of Donald Trump stars.

Bill Maher on Sunday was attacked on a giant billboard that accuses him of not being "real" or "politically incorrect," but a liberal apparatchik of prevailing wisdom ahead of the return of his HBO show, Real Time, on Friday.

The billboard, at the corner of La Cienega Boulevard and Holloway Drive in West Hollywood, is the work of a group of conservative street artists known as The Faction, who previously peppered the Hollywood Walk of Fame with dozens of faux Donald Trump stars to make up for the real one that the president's detractors have destroyed on multiple occasions.

Maher is the former host of Politically Incorrect and currently hosts Real Time With Bill Maher. The billboard features his cartoonish image, the name of his show and the tagline: "The Whole Narrative and Nothing But."

Before The Faction got a hold of it early Sunday morning before the sun rose, the billboard was a real ad for Maher's show, but the artists replaced his image, swapped out the word "truth" for "narrative" and changed "HBO" with the letters "NPC," which stands for "non-playable character."

NPC was hijacked as a conservative meme a few months ago, used often to demean left-leaning, mainstream journalists. Gamers use it to refer to characters that are programmed for simple reactions and to give advice and directions, and not much more.

"For progressivism's tragic devotees at HBO, sadly, the idea that they're still speaking truth to power survives in the form of fan fiction like Real Time With Bill Maher," a spokesman for The Faction told The Hollywood Reporter. 

The Faction are a group of conservatives who will not reveal their identity.

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