The Daily/Nightly Show (Trevor Noah II)

Oh yeah, tweets.  So yesterday was Monday, last week (between time change, Basketball, appointments, and visitors I’m getting very, very confused).  By Tuesday the real blowback had started centered around 8 admittedly unfunny tweets Trevor Noah made-

• Daily Show’s Trevor Noah under fire for Twitter jokes about Jews and women, by Lauren Gambino, Salon

Frankly I don’t understand insult or physical comedy at all.  The Three Stooges leave me cold and if you’re going to insult someone better it should be like Groucho Marx and not Don Rickles.

Well, Art is Art, isn’t it? Still, on the other hand, water is water. And east is east and west is west and if you take cranberries and stew them like applesauce they taste much more like prunes than rhubarb does. Now you tell me what you know.

And yet intellectually I understand there is an audience for Jackass and Andrew Dice Clay.

On Tuesday (last week) damage control started-

• Comedy Central stands by new Daily Show host Trevor Noah, by Lauren Gambino, The Guardian

• Put down the Trevor Noah pitchforks: His offensive, unfunny tweets shouldn’t cost him “The Daily Show” just yet, Mary Elizabeth Williams, Salon

• Trevor Noah is more than his worst joke: Yes, it’s possible to talk about those tweets without losing perspective, by Katie McDonough, Salon

• Trevor Noah fires back: Controversial tweets are “not a true reflection of my character”, by Anna Silman, Salon

Some more measured and thoughtful criticism-

• “Daily Show” co-creator sounds off on Trevor Noah: “When you tweet it, make sure you can back it up”, by Colin Gorenstein, Salon

• “Daily Show” correspondent defends Trevor Noah: “If it wasn’t his tweets, I think they would dig up something”, by Anna Silman, Salon

The latest is that he stole jokes-

• Comedian claims Trevor Noah stole jokes: “He’s a thief”, by Colin Gorenstein, Salon

• ‘Daily Show’ Successor Trevor Noah Finds Himself Catching Criticism, Not Dealing It Out, The New York Times

Milton Berle stole every joke he ever told.

Sigh.  I must admit I really want to like Trevor, just like I want to like Larry.  Larry’s show has gotten much, much better now that he’s had a chance to work out the kinks in the format (monologue, bit, panel (now only 3), Keeping it 100) and I expect the same will happen with Trevor.

And it isn’t fair for us to expect that he will be the same as Jon-

• Trevor Noah and “The Daily Show” problem: Why do we insist on holding a TV host to a politician’s standards?, by Sonia Saraiya, Salon

• Is Trevor Noah really proof of US comedy’s soft power, by Brian Logan, The Guardian