Norm Macdonald is one of the funniest guys on the planet. As far as I’m concerned, SNL should’ve folded up Weekend Update after they fired him. His 2016 memoir novel Based on a True Story made me laugh out loud every few pages. (The other pages are good too, even when read silently.) Hell, he even got me to sit through an entire hour with David Letterman, which hasn’t happened since Bush was president. The first Bush.
I love Norm and I’ll read any interview with him, even if it’s at The Daily Beast. They asked him about all sorts of stuff, and he made it all funny because he’s the best. Here he is talking about what happened to that show he used to be on:
Did you watch Saturday Night Live this past season?
Oh yeah, yeah. Oh my god, did you see that? And this wasn’t even a tragedy; just a guy got elected. They open the show with Kate McKinnon singing “Hallelujah” by Leonard Cohen. And I was sad Leonard Cohen died, I love Leonard Cohen. But at the end, Kate McKinnon said, “I’m going to get through this and so are you. [The actual quote was, “I’m not giving up, and neither should you.”] I was like, what the fuck are we getting through? That a man was duly elected president? What are you, crazy? Like, at first, I seriously thought she meant Leonard Cohen’s death. And I was like, well I can get through that. I can get through anything. I got through my own father’s death. You think I can’t get through a man getting elected president of the United States? It was so absurd that, for some reason, she was the one that was supposed to let me know that it’s alright to go on. Go on as if nothing happened. Nothing exploded.
Right? I mean, you can hate Trump all you want, but he won fair and square. It wasn’t Russia or Comey or whatever. He won. Those are the rules. Nobody’s life is any different than it was a year ago, unless they work in the White House or get paid to freak out about everything that happens in the White House. Trump is exasperating, and his reality-show management style is not at all suited to his new role, but you’re gonna be okay.
“Nothing exploded.” You tell ’em, Norm.
Oh, and Norm refuses to apologize for making Caitlyn Jenner jokes. And he shouldn’t. Because they’re jokes. He’s a comedian.
Exit quote from the master: “My theory is this: People hated Hillary Clinton so much that they voted for someone they hated more than Hillary Clinton in order to rub it in.”
P.S. Whenever I feel even more depressed than usual, I just watch this and it perks me up every time.