Today’s Tom Woods Letter, which all the influential people receive every weekday. Click here to be one of them, and get my free eBook Your Facebook Friends Are Wrong About Health Care at the same time. How many truly fearless comedians are left?
David Angelo (Tom Woods Show guest, episode #255) Tweeted this:
People: “Trump will be good for comedy.”
Comedians: “The 9th Circuit ruling should be upheld for the following 35 reasons…”
Exactly.
In the Age of Trump, comedians have become pedantic bores.
Dave Smith, meanwhile, devoted an episode of his Part of the Problem podcast to unpacking what recently happened to Norm Macdonald.
(By an interesting coincidence, I recently saw Norm Macdonald perform, in a show featuring David Angelo as the opener.)
Norm recently uttered an unapproved thought about the #MeToo movement. It doesn’t matter what it was. Dave goes through all the details.
What matters is that it broke Norm.
Norm Macdonald is one of the true greats in comedy, for more reasons than I can state here. But one of the things that made him great was his refusal to be intimidated by the censors of American culture. His job was to make people laugh.
Dave said in his podcast episode that one of the great things about comedy has been its brutal honesty — that comedians could say what they wanted, period. And if they were great, they even could take something the ninnies would call “offensive,” and despite the social pressure not to laugh, get people to realize: hey, this is pretty ridiculous after all.
But after this incident, Norm did the unthinkable. He apologized.
Not only that, but he subjected himself to a humiliating appearance on The View, where he appeared to agree that sometimes we have to watch what we say, lest we offend someone.
One of the women asked him, when he hesitated in giving an answer: “Are you worried to speak now, in light of the backlash?”
And the crowd applauded.
As Dave put it, nobody in that audience ever said anything as funny or interesting as a Norm Macdonald routine. But they’re going to cheer his fear of speaking his mind.
Seriously, screw these people.
The only explanation we can come up with for Norm’s uncharacteristic response is that he’s thinking about all the people working on his new Netflix series, Norm Macdonald Has a Show, whom he doesn’t want to see out of a job.
So who’s still fearless out there? Who will stand up and tell the opinion czars to take a hike?
Dave and his friends, for one.
