Usually, the only reason to cry over something Norm Macdonald said is because it’s just so damn funny. But Macdonald’s appearance on “The Tonight Show” was canceled Tuesday “out of sensitivity” to the audience after comments he made on the #MeToo movement were published earlier that day in The Hollywood Reporter.
Macdonald recalled what happened backstage at 30 Rock in an even less politically correct interview with Howard Stern on Wednesday. “[Jimmy Fallon] came back in, said can I talk to you, buddy? He was very broken up about it, he said ‘I don’t know what to do … it’s just that I have so much pressure, people are crying. Senior producers are crying,” Macdonald told Stern.
“I was like good Lord, bring them in and let me talk to them, I don’t want to make people cry,” added Macdonald. “Jimmy said come back whenever you want, but I think it’ll hurt the show tonight.”
Senior producers were crying?
It’s perfectly understandable that emotions at NBC may be raw in light of the network’s in-house #MeToo struggles. But for some perspective, here’s what Macdonald actually said about #MeToo:
He also mentioned organizing a call between Louis C.K. and Roseanne Barr. “Roseanne was so broken up [after her show’s reboot was canceled] that I got Louis to call her, even though Roseanne was very hard on Louis before that. But she was just so broken and just crying constantly. There are very few people that have gone through what they have, losing everything in a day,” Macdonald said. “Of course, people will go, ‘What about the victims?’ But you know what? The victims didn’t have to go through that.”
I generally disagree with Macdonald’s sentiments — that last part certainly seems to downplay the suffering of #MeToo victims. But I also think what he said was more a matter of clumsy phrasing than of bad character. And an unfiltered comedian’s half-baked and unassuming thoughts on #MeToo are hardly worth crying over. They’re not worth canceling him from “The Tonight Show” over, either.
Expecting comedians to have politically correct — or even just correct — opinions is a very silly standard that only sets us up for these useless weekly exercises in outrage clickbait. We hold comedians to lower standards of discourse so that they can do good comedy and vocalize the impolite thoughts that polite people never would. That’s what we normally find funny.
And it’s one thing for corporate overlords or political institutions to cancel on comedians — but it’s quite another thing for a comedian to do it to one of his peers.
Fallon seemed to empathize with Macdonald, and was in an unfortunate position where he likely faced a lot of pressure from the network’s top brass. (I also agree with Macdonald that Fallon has been “unfairly criticized” in recent years.) But if the comedy community can’t even draw the line in empowering wannabe-censors from punishing clumsy phrasing or insensitive opinions, we could be in a lot of trouble.
