Bill Maher and the N-word

I am prepared to get booed for what I'm about to say. While I found what Bill Maher said to be cringe-worthy, I wasn't offended, because I recognized the context in which he spoke. Should he have said it? No. But it doesn't make me question his integrity as someone who, in my opinion,has stood as an ally on many issues I care about. Frankly, I think we progressives waste a lot of time with the whole knee jerk response to things. Every time you turn around, we're offended by something someone said or did, to the point where people don't take us seriously because we're written off as a bunch of crybabies. This era of extreme sensitivity and political correctness is one of the reasons Trump won. His winning was in part a referendum on political correctness(among other things). I have a feeling that most of the outcry came from people who either don't know who Bill Maher is, or don't even watch his show. But, I think those who actually watch the show on the regular know that while the joke wasn't the least bit funny, Bill meant no harm. And I found Ice Cubes argument that the N-word is our word exclusively and we have claim to it and all derivatives to be rather silly. Either the word is offensive and egregious and nobody should use it, or perhaps we should work at not giving words such power. Personally, I don't think anyone should use the word. At least then when racists use it there's no question as to the intent of its use.