What a sight to behold. Yesterday Salon had this to say about Jon Stewart’s replacement, Trevor Noah:
‘How soon before a wingnut dog-whistle backlash begins?’
A few hours later Trevor’s twitter feed was suddenly discovered and was it a doozy:
https://twitter.com/tiffanycli/status/582888256104083456
https://twitter.com/Trevornoah/status/162296270684295168
Teboho in English means a tebo slut! RT @tebohomooko: @Trevornoah noah in Sesotho means snake…
— Trevor Noah (@Trevornoah) February 3, 2012
https://twitter.com/Trevornoah/status/230326875648573440
https://twitter.com/Trevornoah/status/4081446354
https://twitter.com/Trevornoah/status/141229204829249536
And more.
And then the fun began:
Hilarious and a great example how insulated the left has become. Salon asked why Comedy Central didn’t vet this racist, sexist man before putting him front in center of their biggest program.
Kevin Williamson has some answers:
1 – So-called liberals habitually tolerate black anti-Semitism. Jesse “Hymietown” Jackson remains a revered figure in the Democratic party; Al “Bloodsuckers” Sharpton was inflicted upon the general viewing public, or at least a couple of hundred members of it, by MSNBC; progressives are happy to stand with vile anti-Semites such as Louis Farrakhan, and Democratic organizations are happy to host them. So-called liberals tolerate black anti-Semitism because they believe in their hearts that blacks are their wards and that they cannot be expected to know any better. If unfunny anti-Semitism of the Nation of Islam variety is to be indulged, what’s an unkind joke or three?
2 – Comedy Central knows that Jon Stewart’s viewers are cheap dates. They are not very bright, and they are not very interested in the world around them. The function of The Daily Show is to flatter the prejudices of a certain segment of largely white and middle-aged metropolitan liberals. Daily Show viewers are not interested in original insight — indeed, the utterance of an original thought or the indulgence of an unpredictable angle of analysis would undermine the entire structure of the program. Daily Show viewers tune in so that they can be made to feel clever for continuing to believe the things they already believe. There is no reason to believe that Noah is going to fail to deliver those exceedingly modest goods.
3 – Comedy Central was probably counting on the usual double standard, which is, generally, a safe bet. When a couple of nobody RNC staffers ran up a $2,000 bill at a lesbian-bondage-themed strip club — it is a big tent, after all! — that was a national story, with Jon Stewart providing a Muppet reenactment. (Really.) Bill Clinton parties with Jeff Epstein on Pedophile Island? A strange quiet falls upon the land. If Rush Limbaugh had joked about running over Jewish children with his German car, there would be a presidential speech on the matter in the works.
4 – As for the fat-girl jokes and the other offenses against feminist sensibilities, Comedy Central et al. were no doubt counting on what we may as well call, since his name came up, the “Clinton Rule,” which is, roughly: Men with sufficient liberal credentials are allowed to mistreat women, and women without sufficiently liberal credentials are subject to any sort of abuse that can be meted out. Bill Maher can call Sarah Palin a . . . very unkind term for a woman, and the world is hunky-dory. When Sarah Palin is greeted by crowds of well-scrubbed liberals wearing “Sarah Palin Is a . . . ,” T-shirts, the progressive world yawns. If Sarah Palin’s organization uses crosshairs as a graphic element in a campaign ad, then we are having a national emergency about civility in public discourse. So of course a certified liberal can make fat-girl jokes.
All this is true of course, but he also sounds perfect to take over for the unfunny Jon Stewert. He hates America, hates Jews, hates white people…yup, perfect for that liberal groupthink known as Daily Show.
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