New Daily Show Host Examined For... Offensive Tweets

I just realized I saw Trevor Noah do his standup for a few minutes. He's one of those comedians who does nothing but Jokes About What He Is. Like when you see a Fat Comic and he does nothing but jokes about being fat. Or a Mexican comic who does nothing but jokes about the differences between Mexicans and Anglos.

Trevor Noah is half-white, half black, and from South Africa. So I saw him do five minutes on being half-white, half-black, and from South Africa.

Then I turned it off because, seriously, who cares. None of it was funny.

In the brief spot I saw, he didn't do much that was controversial or political. The word I would use is "cloying." He really wanted people to like him.

He's been named as the new, younger, soooo much cheaper host of The Daily Show.

I kind of would like him to succeed just to prove that Jon Stewart's audience are Clapping Seals so it doesn't matter what is said on the show, as long as it flatters their politics. I'm sure you're really tired of hearing how a-MAZ-ing Jon Stewart is at yelling, doing the dumb guy voice, tapping a pencil, and making silly faces at the camera. It would be nice to see that someone else can yell, do the dumb guy voice, tap a pencil, and make silly faces at the camera too.

But Noah's now being scrutinized by the SJWs for tweetcrimes. They say his tweets are offensive.

I have to say these tweets offend me, too. They're very unfunny. They're the sort of things that unfunny people tweet when they want to be funny.

On Twitter, where he has had an account since 2009 and accumulated more than two million followers, Mr. Noah often posts irreverent statements that reflect his interests in popular culture, global politics and issues of race. As with many comedians, Mr. Noah's jokes can test the boundaries of what is socially permissible and what is in bad taste.

In several posts, Mr. Noah came across as mocking or derisive of women. In one from 2011, he writes: "Oh yeah the weekend. People are gonna get drunk & think that I'm sexy!" a quote that he attributes to "fat chicks everywhere."

In another post from last year, he quotes another Twitter user who writes, "When a woman is loved correctly, she becomes 10 times the woman she was before," to which Mr. Noah adds: "So she gets fat?"

Mr. Noah has also posted jokes about Jewish people and about Israel. As he wrote in 2009, "Almost bumped a Jewish kid crossing the road. He didn’t look b4 crossing but I still would hav felt so bad in my german car!"

Another post from 2010 reads, “South Africans know how to recycle like israel knows how to be peaceful.”

...

Others seemed to shrug off these posts simply as unfunny.

...

Others pointed out that he also has made fun of Americans, South Africans and people from numerous other countries. When a fan tweeted at him last October, asking him to please come to Texas, Mr. Noah replied, "But you've already got Ebola?"

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Mr. Noah seemed aware on Tuesday of the controversy surrounding his tweets. Just before 9 a.m. Eastern time, he posted: "Twitter does not have enough characters to respond to all the characters on Twitter." The tweet was deleted shortly after.

When I first saw this guy, I thought English was his second language and he was playing for the Yakov Smirnov Southern Division slot.

You see what I mean? What person, who is not either eight years old, or eighty eight years old, is delighted by the characters/characters pun?

More: Ezra Levant Asks, "Is This Funny?:" But he's curious as to those anti-Jew jokes -- are these just "pleasing the audience" clapter jokes for his audience, given that Noah performs on what Levant calls the "Muslim dictatorship comedy tour," Oman, etc.?

One joke that Levant reads that I think is so-so funny -- not really in the class of the jokes that are plainly unfunny -- was his crack about watching women's Olympic hockey being like "watching lesbian porn, but without the porn." That's not a side-splitter or anything but it is something of a joke. I wouldn't call that one completely unfunny.

A lot of these other ones, though... Man, these are terrible.

More: Rick Wilson talks about the odds that Trevor Noah will be fired for his "borderline anti-semitic" tweets.

I don't really like characterizing them that way because there's so much of that damn claim -- everything is "hate." No one's allowed to say anything at all, hardly.

He definitely has, let us say this, the Sophisticated European Take on anti-semitism, which is to say, he's not made uncomfortable by it.

Now if a right-wing person made these sorts of jokes about anyone in the Protected Leftist Coalition, they would be branded "hate" and "racism." But I don't think that's a good enough reason to spring to do so ourselves.

He predicts the left will begin accusing the right of being racist, and then the media will all repeat this:

Check that Twitchy thread -- Salon and others are already pushing that line.

Meanwhile, Vox is posting Noah's five most high-larious comedy bits. The below is one of them.

I would almost think that Jon Stewart endorsed this guy, knowing he would fail, which would then prove that Jon Stewart Is The Only Man Who Can Save Us. But while I think Stewart is guilty of a lot of sins, I don't think he has that sort of huge-but-brittle ego that would impel him to do something like that. I think his ego is huge and solid. He doesn't need Noah to fail.

So I guess that will just be a Little Bonus.

posted by Ace at 12:29 PM

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