Saturday Night Live

Fuck off Norm

@Shanemgillis Hey, Shane, I'm so sorry. I can't even imagine how you must feel. The work it takes to get that show and to have it snatched away by some guy who does "Spoken Bird" poetry. Unacceptable. Please DM me, pal, when you have a moment. I'm so sorry.

— Norm Macdonald (@normmacdonald) September 16, 2019

Nasim Pedrad, if you count Iranian as Asian.

For the great majority of US people, "Asians" only come from a very restricted part of Asia. For example, you aren't really "Asian" if you are from central Asia, so that Mongolians are Asian, but Uighurs or Kazakhs are not. Siberians generally aren't thought of as Asians, either.

norm kinda fucking sucks now

I still think he’s one of the best comedians ever but he’s carried water for a lot of shitty people these last 5 years and seems to be on the wrong side of everything these days

Like his brain is still stuck in the 80s

Norm's going to pledge for Trump any day now

you're both otm and it's sad

Norm hasn't changed

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=weJqe8m2m5g

Yeah Norm has always sucked like this

its only in the last few years or so I've seen him repurposed as a rightwing hero, judging by the titles & comments on his videos you'd think you were watching Ben Shapiro

I mean....I haven't seen them in forever but I'd imagine his old Weekend Updates would seem vile now because even back then and as a total dumbshit I remember thinking they went over the edge back then

yeah, the infamous story of 'woody allen is dating again' juxtaposed against the photo of the vietnamese girl covered in napalm never making it out of dress rehearsal comes to mind.

i had been totally unaware until somebody brought it up elsewhere that norm went on the view in 2000 to promote his sitcom, and essentially accused bill clinton of murdering vince foster.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z3PP_SWHUQQ

yeah I've always given him a pass on that because he was actually funny, not like Shane Gillis or whatever SNL tries to do now. there's a good interview with him where he explains exactly why SNL's Trump "humor" is so garbage - he gets it. at least when it comes to comedy. he sucks when it comes to basically anything else, and what's worse he always gets really aggressive when you call him on it. I mean its one thing in those clips where he's clearly goofing around but his defenses of Louie CK, Roseanne, and now this guy come off as really earnest and shitty

like I get that "wouldn't it be funny if I said crazy conspiracy shit on The View" is sorta funny except there are many people who earnestly believe that stuff and now we're stuck on a dying planet and running detention camps for toddlers

I think the key with offensive/edgy stuff is to be not hacky or lazy but find something clever or funny to do with it, and even then, like, read the room and recognize it is time to move on with new material (a la what the Bodega Boys say upthread.) That's why comedians like, I dunno, Bill Burr still have careers (I think?). And I assume it's also why, if Eddie Murphy does indeed hit the stages again, he'll leave the outdated '80s homophobic bits well behind. I'm not going to seek out this fired SNL never-ran's clips, but if they are indeed him making fun of Chinese accents and restaurants or whatever, no turd that lazy should be employed as a comedian.

There's like a glimmer of a fun persona in this standup. Like, ca 3 minutes in he says something like 'I actually did not vote for Trump, which was tough because, look at me, his whole campaign was aimed at me'. But he never really does anything with that, and then just goes back into bad racial humor.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0pfZygi2t8

its so surreal to hear Brendan Dassey, a guy I actually knew personally, be used as a punchline to a national audience

Like what?

yeah, the infamous story of 'woody allen is dating again' juxtaposed against the photo of the vietnamese girl covered in napalm never making it out of dress rehearsal comes to mind.

i had been totally unaware until somebody brought it up elsewhere that norm went on the view in 2000 to promote his sitcom, and essentially accused bill clinton of murdering vince foster.

📹

lol "Bill Cosby is my hero, just like Bill Clinton is probably your hero. There have never been any accusations against Bill Cosby about anything."

Whomp whomp

https://variety.com/2019/tv/news/snl-conservative-shane-gillis-hire-1203339723/

that they were pandering to a broader audience seemed obvious; the real story, to me, is how they failed to do the slightest bit of vetting on him.

The Kevin Williamson of Comedy!

A little more than 21 minutes into “Ep 146 – Live from Shane’s Parent’s Basement,” while talking about the Battle of Gettysburg, Gillis refers to soldiers yelling as “so gay.” About 29 minutes into the podcast, Gillis uses the word “retard,” and “f-ggot,” and shortly afterward he and McCusker joke about “hot Southern boys” being raped during the Civil War, comparing it to “having gay sex in jail.”

Gillis, in describing women who disguised themselves as men to fight in the war, refers to them as “flat chested f—ing bitch[es].” He issued a statement last Thursday addressing the situation, writing in part, “My intention is never to hurt anyone but I am trying to be the best comedian I can be and sometimes that requires risks.”

damn...RIP. some gave all.

ah yes, the ever-risky prison sex joke

lol so he was a diversity hire

i guess the guy figured doing some Eddie Murphy 1982-style stuff was the way in

while talking about the Battle of Gettysburg, Gillis refers to soldiers yelling as “so gay.”

this really is 2019 America in a nutshell

I am trying to be the best comedian I can be and sometimes that requires risks actually good material.

Knew it

what surprises me is that SG ever even thought to audition, maybe they reached out to him, maybe his agent suggested it. because SNL/Lorne's logic makes sense, even if they fucked up big time (that article mentions that the last minute hire didn't allow them to do a "thorough examination" of SG's past work, even though this could've been deduced by a single google search).

but I don't get SG believing he would fit in or last at SNL without this exact thing happening. it's like adam carolla or nick mullen auditioning for SNL, or hannah gadsby going on cum town. it doesn't make any sense

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Downey_(comedian)

he was probably just supposed to do monologues on Weekend Update and stand around in the background of sketches

yeah its kind of funny to see his defenders whine about SJWs desperately digging through a comedian's past to uncover something shitty when in reality this was uncovered like 30 seconds after it was announced

Based on that clip posted up thread, it sounds like this dude is good old fashioned ignorant, which defaults/scans conservative, no matter his political stance. South Central PA, AKA Pennsyltucky. Like a roommate I had one summer, super nice, literally a rocket scientist, from a small town in West Virginia, who came up to me one day and asked me if I was Jewish. I said yes, and he answered, "oh, that's cool." Uh, thanks?

Are there any good conservative US comics? I would assume labeling them conservative meant their comedy was stuck in the 1980s.

Norm Macdonald

Yeah, he has never done it for me. I was thinking of watching the Bill Burr netflix but maybe he doesn't count.

Tim Dillon maybe?

a lot of stand up is based around fear of difference/weirdness that scans as conservative to me, even if the comics don't vote GOP

pointing out differences in others is a way to get the audience on your side, if the audience looks and (you assume) thinks like you do. lazy shit.

it just seems strange that snl may have been courting the modern definition of "conservative" when we know what trash that entails.

is comedy inherently conservative?

It's not that strange. See my evocation of Jim Downey upthread, getting Trump to host. Michaels is nothing if not an opportunist.

I have no idea about Bill Burr's politics but I did read a really good interview with him I will post in a while. He seems very equal opportunity. In the piece he talks about making fun of Hillary Clinton in LA, but then making fun of gun owners in Oklahoma. His philosophy is that confrontation, getting out of your comfort zone, is key to good comedy, and that a good comedian should be able to pull off a successful set in front of any type of audience. Like, you can find a clip of Burr absolutely killing in front of a black Harlem audience.

Burr seems to be a Bernie fan

I will read that old ilx thread. But I guess I specify modern conservatism because to me that is so right wing extremist regressive at this moment in time.

Kevin Hart

j/k Kevin Hart isn't funny

I think that's why Gillam's "oh this was a joke that didn't land" rings pretty hollow, it comes off like that sort of backroom racism where a white person feels out another white person in order to find out how racist they can be in front of them. Like I could never picture him doing that sort of act in front of an audience that included Asian people. The idea you can't be transgressive or offensive anymore is absurd. How many millions did Dave Chappelle get? How's Anthony Jeselnik been doing lately?

https://www.vulture.com/2018/05/bill-burr-in-conversation.html

Like, it takes a great comedian to pull this off:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8b81UM74Ow

Bill Burr’s extremely high quality take on the SG stuff is that it’s a disgrace how SG is being treated, that if you go back 15 years (?!) into anyone’s past you’ll find the same shit, that nobody is actually offended, and that millennials enjoy ruining people’s lives