I really am conflicted on this one. It's not that I want to see him blocked from becoming a TV host, it's that his comments really go to the heart of the issue of what is racism and where you draw the line between insensitive remarks (more acceptable) and offensive ones (more unacceptable).
I've collected some of the better pieces I've found on this:
Caitlin Dewey over at the Wash Post crunches the numbers. Noah tweeted 8,904 times since 2009; six were offensive; that means .067 percent of his output on Twitter is objectionable.
six tweets, out of almost 9,000?! That’s not exactly a representative sample.
Also at the Wash Post, Wendy Todd takes the extreme opposite position. Trevor is offensive not just to Jews and women, but also African Americans. She raises the question of whether it's okay to make fun of a racial or ethnic group if the joke depends on stereotypes.
Back in 2012, Noah made his first American appearance, on “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno.” The bulk of his routine was composed of jokes about black Americans. The United States, he said, was not “the America he was promised,” and “America has the credit of a black man.”
Then Noah joked that black people are misidentified as African Americans. “They’re not African, but we’ll play along,” he said, adding, “Many of them really try to connect with Africa, you know? Some of them have these African names. They’ll be like, ‘Yeah, yeah, that’s my girl Wanda, yeah, yeah. Yeah that’s right, that’s Dashiqua, or dat’s Taniqua.” Noah emphasized all this “hilarity” by using stereotypical B-Boy hand gestures to drive it home — because this is how all black people communicate, obviously. Leno’s predominantly white audience ate it up.
The
Huff Post falls somewhere in between, offering a half-hearted defense of Noah:
But, the backlash serves as a reminder not to jump too quickly into a cycle of Internet rage.
Comedians should -- and will -- be called out for jokes that miss the mark. After all, comedy is at its best when it skewers deep-seated, ignorant stereotypes -- not when it plays into them.
Vox claims the Daily Show occupies (or tries to occupy) the moral high ground, in which case even the suggestion of racist remarks should pull Noah out of contention.
here's what makes Noah's situation different: his new platform as the host of The Daily Show. He's not a standup comedian anymore. He's about to step into a job that discusses high-profile political and social issues. Noah needs to be trusted to be able to do that in a way that is smart and fair and certainly not bigoted.
And as you would expect,
conservatives are having a field day with this:
Noah, at first a symbol of liberal intolerance, is just days away from being transformed into a hero for standing up to political correctness.
Of course, if you believe all publicity is good publicity, then this is a real coup for the Daily Show.