Bill Maher is the latest person to address the Nevermind baby lawsuit, and unsurprisingly he didn’t mince words.
“The words ‘victim’ and ‘survivor’ have traveled a long way from their original usage,” Maher said during his show Real Time with Bill Maher. “The baby from the Nirvana album says he’s a victim. He’s suing Nirvana for lifelong damages. I never thought I’d have to say this to a baby, but stop being such a fucking baby. You’re not a victim. There’s no reason you can’t have a normal, happy life just because people look at you and think, ‘baby penis.’”
Watch the segment below.
Over the summer, Spencer Elden aka the Nevermind baby filed a lawsuit against Nirvana for alleged child pornography. The filing claims Elden “has suffered and will continue to suffer lifelong damages” as a result of the cover and that the defendants “knowingly benefited and continue to benefit from their participation in Spencer’s commercial exploitation.”
The now 30-year-old lists Nirvana’s surviving members, Kurt Cobain’s estate, album-cover photographer Kirk Weddle, and the labels involved in the album’s release as defendants in the lawsuit and is asking for a minimum of $150,000 per defendant, citing “permanent harm.”
Though the upcoming 30th anniversary reissue of Nevermind still plans to use the original artwork, Dave Grohl recently addressed altering the image for future re-releases. “I have many ideas of how we should alter that cover, but we’ll see what happens,” Grohl told The Times Magazine. “We’ll let you know. I’m sure we’ll come up with something good … I think that there’s much more to look forward to and much more to life than getting bogged down in those kinds of things. And, fortunately, I don’t have to do the paperwork.”