The Daily Show with Trevor Noah

That extended joke is about as funny as I think Patton Oswalt is. Which is not at all.

oh! oops i skimmed past that.

xpost

xp the general point he's making is (somewhat) reasonable, despite the way he's making it. but trevor noah is too lame a comedian and the things he said too legitimately offensive to deserve the defense

as for oswalt himself i greatly enjoy his standup most of the time, which rarely if ever contains the sort of stuff that he is defending other comedians for employing! idk why he bothers.

comedy sucks
comedians suck

Well, one of his tweets received similar attention in the past right?

wrong login lex xp

no this is just part of my new tough guy persona where i say everything sucks

this thread sucks
the internet sucks

xxp yea him & salon were engaged in a long-term blood feud that they recently appeared to sort of quash but im sure this will bring it back to life bc salon knows they are obligated to write the "it's problematic" piece, they have a #brand to preserve

(and to be fair, in this instance he might deserve it a bit bc idk why patton is bothering to defend a p obvious douche who isn't even funny!)

i think he's defending the rights of unfunny douches everywhere

Oswalt's acting exactly like the self-righteous screechy PC strawman he thinks he's satirizing.

I really don't get the sense that people need Patton Oswalt to explain the nature of comedy or that they want everything to be 100% safe and toothless... More like people are looking at Noah's tweets and saying "hmm, this guy made Jew jokes and fat chick jokes... and they're poorly constructed unfunny unsurprising uninteresting Jew jokes and fat chick jokes. Seems like he's punching down. Seems like this guy has bad instincts. Is this really the best guy to host the Daily show?"

OTM

Most of this really has to do with the fact that Noah is nearly completely unknown in America--the rightful owner of the Daily Show--and if someone dug up these tweets on, say, Al Madrigal's or Jason Jones' feed there might be a few articles about it, but it would largely shrugged off because we have familiarity with those guys. It seems like they're doing Noah a disservice by announcing his host job after barely giving him any airtime.

Trevor Noah ‏@Trevornoah
To reduce my views to a handful of jokes that didn’t land is not a true reflection of my character, nor my evolution as a comedian.
5:36 PM - 31 Mar 2015

Clayton Cargill ‏@claytoncargill 18h18 hours ago
@Trevornoah @AlexMiglio we misunderstood you like a fat girl misunderstands how horrible the Jews are.

xxp yea him & salon were engaged in a long-term blood feud

The super funny thing is that the person who WROTE the original Salon article that started it all is NEVER REFERENCED. After Salon published her piece and Oswalt hit back, it's just been treated by both parties like this massive institutional feud when actually the writer in question also said many nice things about Oswalt, and never literally said the thing her article is accused of saying.

She did a bit on this on her podcast recently!

It's a few jokes from over a five year period! I get why people are upset since several of them are over the line, but people who think they can judge his comedic ability from that deserves all the scorn they can get.

oh do they now

I feel perfectly justified in judging *anyone's* comedic ability if at any point in their career they went with, "Man, Jews sure are greedy and fat people sure are un-sexy!" They're a hack, plain and simple.

Yeah, just like you could judge anyones football ability if they ever missed a wide goal. That's how things work.

Making "Jews are greedy" jokes in 2015 is not the equivalent of missing a wide goal. It's the equivalent of trying to play football with a fucking hockey stick.

proclaiming you can't judge his character off of bad old jokes without apologizing for them is admittedly a pretty funny thing for a comedian to do

Phil, you do realize he hasn't done that, right?

Like, there are THREE factual mistakes in the fragment "'jews are greedy' jokes in 2015"

In 2015, He has failed to acknowledge these jokes suck at least

There is no other legitimate interpretation of the "beatsbydreidel" joke.

xp oh, sorry, I forgot that those jokes were OK in previous years.

"They didn't land" doesn't count, makes it sound like he's the fucking wright brothers

"Man, don't understand why my 'lol fat chicks' joke didn't go over, maybe it's the delivery? Will re-visit."

i saw a production of Old Jews Telling Jokes over the winter, i guess those are still OK if Jews are telling them and they are funny? (and about a third of them were)

Arguing whether he was merely saying that "rich jews run everything" vs. "jews are greedy" is kind of splitting hairs here.

"I just throw some reference points together with a but of wordplay. Some land, some are based on unfunny toxic bullshit, what can I do"

they didn't land, but they shouldn't have taken off either

"Guys, it was 2013, okay? Heady days. Snowden. Boston Marathon Bombing. We were still processing the last Kendrick album."

I wonder if he'll go the full piers Morgan and find some issue like gun control to cling to when people accuse him of being toothless

I also wonder if Jon Stewart will go the full Larry king and have a podcast once he realizes he misses having somewhere to go in the morning.

Consider the recent audience:

Trevor Noah @Trevornoah · 9h 9 hours ago
Thank you Oman for an amazing sold out show. Easily one of the friendliest and most beautiful countries I’ve ever been to.

It's a few jokes from over a five year period, during which he did a bunch of standup and hosted his own talkshow. He must have delivered hundreds of jokes. It's not that hard to find a bigger sample before you judge his ability.

Another thing, look at the original buzzfeed, at the people who dug up these tweets in the first place. A bunch of them pepper their tweets with #RAFR and #StandWithUS. Come on, take a step back, think about if you want to keep on participating in this attack on a black south african comedian, based on the thinnest of evidence and begun by a bunch of right-wing nutjobs, or if you perhaps want to suspend judgement until you've seen a bit more of what he can do?

he may even have delivered more than a thousand jokes

this is really not about judging ability. Like, he's the one framing this that these were jokes that "didn't land."

or if you perhaps want to suspend judgement until you've seen a bit more of what he can do?

no. lol. fuck this dude

in what percentage of Mike Tyson's fights did he bite someone's ear off? if it's under 20% then you can't judge

Obv if he's good he's good but if someone points out his horseshit and his response is "you can't judge me by jokes you don't like" forgive me if I'm unimpressed and unoptimistic

Y'know you could share his really good stuff rather than say its unfair to assume he doesn't have any

Yeah, maybe he's got some much better "fat people are lame" jokes, I'll check it out.

think about if you want to keep on participating in this attack on a black south african comedian

NAGL bro.

He's got some decent "Americans are fucking imbeciles" jokes.

Maybe the Daily Show is commiting suicide.

They want to end it with a whimper not a bang

The super funny thing is that the person who WROTE the original Salon article that started it all is NEVER REFERENCED.

many xposts to in orbit: do you mean mary beth williams? i remember they got into a live twitter debate over the asian names thing bc the site had just recently defended colbert for doing m/l what oswalt did (albeit colbert's was funnier), but they seemed to come to some sort of agreement

it kinda did become an institutional thing bc pareene got involved (perhaps in a separate fight) and there was considerable sniping over oswalt having worked on king of queens, pareene coming out of gawker, etc. etc. anyway. its all kind of ridic. oswalt didn't need to defend this idiot and it doesn't work as an object-lesson for his excessive-PCness pet peeves.

xposts

And he's got a great "Black Americans have funny names like Shaniqua" bit... and some sweet Mexicans talk funny gags. From his stand-up. Which I checked out because I didn't want to judge him on a couple of tweets.

The point isn't that he took risks and they didn't land - it's that he's a sub-Family Guy hack.

Yeah I dunno about suicide but I'm sure audiencewise they're ok with him being more tosh/McFarlane amenable. For middle aged dude boggling at Fox News they still have Larry wilmore

"And he's got a great "Black Americans have funny names like Shaniqua" bit... and some sweet Mexicans talk funny gags. From his stand-up. Which I checked out because I didn't want to judge him on a couple of tweets."

That isn't the point of those bits. He's talking as a black african on how african-americans use african culture. And he's discussing how he himself, looking different than most african-americans, is judged to be hispanic in the US. That isn't 'sub-family guy' stuff, that's using his own personal experience to discuss american racial issues.

So you're saying they didn't land

http://www.vox.com/2015/3/30/7344873/trevor-noah-daily-show?utm_campaign=vox&utm_content=chorus&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter

I like the first half of the first video, where he discusses what it was like to be a mixed-race child during apartheid.