When are we going to acknowledge the health crisis we have in our midst. We have to do something about Old White Guy Disease, now.
[PEACE] [LOVE] [UNITY] [RESPECT] (stay posi)
You are a sacred being of light projected into reality for a purpose. Demand the right to your moment in this holographic gift with no rules, no borders, except for those you choose to accept and live by.
Without Labour there is no Rest; nor without Fighting can the Victory be Won ᕦ(ò_óˇ)ᕤ
Pops Freshenmeyer wrote:seein this pop up now, good times
this is the last straw for me. semi serious?
I've been thinking about the post a page back about why Norm gets more of a pass from me than others and I agree and don't know why. Part of it is that he's really funny, and that he doesn't seem to use his talents to further his politics. (although maybe he has been more lately? I don't really follow his career anymore.) Part of it is nostalgia. Part of it is his detached humor. He's a character, and he's not lecturing about how the world is or should be. Louis presented himself as loathsome at times, but also as a good guy, someone who wanted people to be better people. He talked a lot about doing the right thing and putting good into the world. When he went dark he tended to talk about things deep in people's minds they might not even believe, but like hearing other people talk about. When it was revealed he was harming people it was not just horrible for those people (obviously that is the worst part) it changed the way I heard everything he says. Norm's 10 minute joke about a moth is none of that, and it doesn't matter than he thinks Tucker Carson does a good job. But the more he shows who he really is, the harder it is to enjoy the character on Conan being a goof.
it's early and I haven't been sleeping well, i apologize if that is incoherent.
gold and glass wrote:When you get to heaven, do you get to see a list of which gimmicks belonged to who?
No that's a good post imo... definitely an undercurrent of my feeling too.
It keys into my big feeling that social media is a poison because it makes everybody think they need to give out their opinions. He doesn't do it in his comedy, why can't he keep his mouth shut on twitter
Or interviews, lately
[PEACE] [LOVE] [UNITY] [RESPECT] (stay posi)
You are a sacred being of light projected into reality for a purpose. Demand the right to your moment in this holographic gift with no rules, no borders, except for those you choose to accept and live by.
Without Labour there is no Rest; nor without Fighting can the Victory be Won ᕦ(ò_óˇ)ᕤ
Good post jewels Most of Norm's humor is apolitical so it doesn't really bother me what his views are outside of comedy. Sometimes his views come through a bit, and I cringe at them from time to time. Other times though it's like his pov comes through in a joke but it's just by a hare on the edge of funny rather than offensive, which makes the laughs and release of the setup more satisfying. Like it's cathartic to laugh about some of the things he jokes about cause there's so many distasteful jokes we're barraged with, it's somehow healing to see proof that xyz topic can be funny material. Or maybe the joke brings me into being complicit with it's offensiveness, who knows. I think Norm purposefully and skillfully crafts jokes to press up against that edge of funny/offensive. And he knows his politics are at odds with the zeitgeist in comedy, which oddly enough he's gained a lot of recent success from. And then there's his odd ambition for a show in a super dated talk show format, which I think is a dinosaur but he makes it work. IDK norm doesn't really fit into the typical boxes how I think about celebrities so I guess I'm more forgiving
I mean there's plenty of celebrities whose politics do align with mine, but they're personally responsible for directly harming people. That's more cut and dry for me to not enjoy their work anymore (looking at you the deuce)
There are other parts to it, but one feature of norms comedy was to distill rhetoric into its basic premise as an “every man” in order to lampoon it. Like the “nazi germany” bits, the OJ stuff, etc. And these people hes a fan of spout literal white supremacy so its clear now that whatever bits that came from that part of his brain is broken, and he really doesnt have a talent for reducing rhetoric to its base point anymore. Like louis CK went around sexually assaulting women... feeling like “the real victim” is this millionaire who had his mic taken away and has to live wealthy but without people seeing him because of his own behavior is something, in my brain, he would have thought ridiculous and lampoon worthy in his prime. But in reality its a real thought he has. Because theyre his friends i guess? Because his brains broken now?
Another part of his comedy is that hes an idiot who stumbles into problems and makes them worse because he doesnt think too far ahead, and i have to admit while i havent heard the interview yet, the dark part of my brain laughed at hearing that he apologized by saying something offensive about the disabled. Like that seems pretty on-brand but in the old days it wouldve been done as the bit where *he* was the butt of that joke. Maybe it still was, and maybe the reality of the situation just renders it beyond the pale. Or maybe he really wasnt aware any,ore and has brain worms. Or just maybe those jokes arent funny anymore.
I hate not liking him any more but yeah he needs to fix his brain somehow or be put in a pile with his shitty comedian friends.
His down syndrome joke/apology is just as bad as everything else. Fuck Norm Macdonald and fuck all these boomer comedians and fuck sonic boom at the toop for blaming pc culture for their inability to stay sharp and adapt to evolving audiences.
It probably comes from a place of (my own) privilege but in theory I'm fine with him having a hard reaction to finding out his friends are sexual assaulters, and that he might want to believe them that they didn't do it, cognitive dissonance where what you thought about a person is sharply turned is something that can be hard to turn on a dime on. I know it'd be hard for me and I might have the same thoughts if a close friend had done these things. All of a sudden I might be like "I agree that these things need to be talked about and fuck assaulters... but my friends could never have done this" are bound to pop up.
My problem is that he should just keep it to himself. Live with it.
[PEACE] [LOVE] [UNITY] [RESPECT] (stay posi)
You are a sacred being of light projected into reality for a purpose. Demand the right to your moment in this holographic gift with no rules, no borders, except for those you choose to accept and live by.
Without Labour there is no Rest; nor without Fighting can the Victory be Won ᕦ(ò_óˇ)ᕤ
He could also take a look at how responsibly Sarah Silverman reacted to her good friend having done those things. There are ways to tackle this without coming across as threatened and hostile.
You are a sacred being of light projected into reality for a purpose. Demand the right to your moment in this holographic gift with no rules, no borders, except for those you choose to accept and live by.
Without Labour there is no Rest; nor without Fighting can the Victory be Won ᕦ(ò_óˇ)ᕤ
Jack Allison put it best: Norm's a reactionary. I think he's mostly reacting to his immediate industry: Hollywood. He sees the phony, hypocritical "liberal" scene around him and thinks, "Well, they're all full of shit. I'm gonna go the other way." Unfortunately, this is base level and lacks any kind of rigor whatsoever (which Norm seems to pride himself on, with the incessant Russian literature talk and whatnot).
"I don't like x, so I'm gonna be y" is just toddler-level dumb. I wish he and his ilk would, ya know, think it through just one more step and realize you can have similar politics to "limousine liberals" without becoming them.
also it seems like Norm's dreamed of being a crusty old comedian his entire career and this is a dark, unpleasant part of the fulfillment of that destiny.
plz if u get a chanse put some flowrs on algernons grave kthxbye
someone on twitter (i can't find who it was) said norm is like the comedy kanye, and it's kind of disturbing how well that fits. the combo of contrarianism for its own sake, extreme ignorance of politics, and incredible talent makes a pretty toxic stew, it turns out.
i don't think norm has gotten worse, exactly. he's always had some pretty shitty views (he's supported the iraq war and said women weren't funny, off the top of my head), but the culture has shifted so much in just the past couple of years and norm's made zero effort to reform his thinking at all. at least norm's comedy is mostly apolitical, but i think even that (the idea of completely apolitical comedy) seems kind of untenable these days.
I don’t necessarily think that I have to agree with the political views of whatever comedian I’m listening to you, or even think that’s comedy’s job
But anybody who is going to uncritically embrace Jordan Peterson is dumb as hell in a way that’s really disappointing. I can’t really express it but it’s like finding out somebody is a flat earther or something
Last edited by fresco painter on Thu Sep 13, 2018 10:36 am, edited 1 time in total.
not calling out anyone in particular but i think we need to stop saying (person) is shitty because BRAIN WORMS. it removes the Bad Man's agency and culpability, it's a creepi gross visual that literally sickens me and my stomach, and everyone is fucking saying it all the time now it's like a played out reddit memephrase at this point
She is, she wrote a seminal 10s sitcom with Girls, and Norm roasting her as occasionally unfunny is fine
That's not what he did tho. To be fair if you want to see more explicit aggressive harassment you could take a look at the majority of comments on every single online Dunham utterance. ymmv but with that pattern in mind, it's a case of a very popular comedian with a predominantly male fanbase retweeting dozens of her innocuous posts for snark purposes while patronizingly calling her "Young Lena." You're calling that roasting her funniness I guess, but it doesn't feel like good behavior to me knowing what we know.
RIXX wrote:not calling out anyone in particular but i think we need to stop saying (person) is shitty because BRAIN WORMS. it removes the Bad Man's agency and culpability, it's a creepi gross visual that literally sickens me and my stomach, and everyone is fucking saying it all the time now it's like a played out reddit memephrase at this point