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Comment by drewcoo | Hacker News Reader

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Whoa, please don't cross into personal attack. You can make your substantive points without that.

If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.

You are both right, in that they were counterculture. However:

> comedians are supposed to be subversive

No, that's just your preference. Jay Leno and Norm MacDonald are not subversive at all; just funny. Most of the Smothers' comedy was family-friendly, but they did push a few buttons sometimes.

> I hope you talk in a more informed way about time you know

Totally unwarranted.

MacDonald as 'not subversive' is a crackup.

A famous schtick of his on his podcast later on was to get other comedians to accidentally joke about the 9/11 events, and then he'd frame them as monsters for making light of the situation. He got fired from SNL for railing on OJ Simpson and his executive buddies at NBC, he got 'removed' from Silverman's JASH 'collective' for making jokes about 'Arabs', and he subverted the Friar's Club roast by refusing to be rude and only saying 1940s formal-appropriate Vaudeville-act stuff.

The SNL stuff was big news in entertainment at the time. He got interviewed by all the big late-night shows about it and the unfair process, was on Stern, etc etc. The whole nation sort of rallied behind him and agreed that SNL/Lorne Michaels acted unfairly at a time when the entire nation was also seemingly against Simpson.

His outward clean-cut demeanor and presence is exactly what made him so subversive.

Norm MacDonald not subversive at all? Really?

https://ultimateclassicrock.com/norm-macdonald-last-weekend-...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_lXBLqAOW8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SOsfrppKd1k

Ooh. I stand corrected. I'd stopped watching SNL long before that.

Yeah, Norm was a dark lord of comedy, but perhaps he simply didn't much wear the cloak.

Leno, sure, but Norm Macdonald is one of the most subversive comics of my lifetime. A few hours perusing the archives of “I’m Not Norm” on YouTube is time well spent!

https://youtube.com/@ImnotNorm?si=FNOHn2Azn-98HrKn

Norm being not subversive on the view: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Z3PP_SWHUQQ

    Norm MacDonald are not subversive at all

Ahahahaha WHAT

>> I hope you talk in a more informed way about time you know

> Totally unwarranted.

Well, they do like their comedy "subversive", so what else could you expect?

>Totally unwarranted.

if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck...

With your suggestion that Norm wasn't subversive, like other replies have stated, you're not well informed yourself, so hopefully other conversations with you come from a better informed position too.

I watched the Smothers. How about you?

Having a different opinion doesn't make you uninformed. Or didn't they teach you that in middle school?

And yes, I was wrong about Norm, although doing topical satire doesn't automatically make you "subversive." Lenny Bruce was actually subversive and got arrested and sentenced to jail for it. Richard Pryor was subversive. George Carlin was sometimes subversive.

It's hard to say George Carlin was subversive when he was flat out aggressive with pretty much no attempt to sneak through any sort of idea that he could, instead, thwack you with. Late in his life, he went full rantsona, for instance his American Dream content. "There's a special club, and you ain't in it!"

He wasn't joking, and wasn't wrong. I don't think it counts as subversive anymore when you're just going that hard. Nobody's gonna be fooled, they'll sign up or they'll peace out.

To my mind, being properly subversive means getting over with the people… you can't really flip the table unless your feet are under it. Yeah, Richard Pryor was utterly subversive. He could seduce anybody with the openness of his comedy, but it meant something and the real target might not have been what it looked like it was.

Very few comedic geniuses can tell jokes that get the whole audience to laugh, including the target and then it slowly dawns on you that you may have been the target all along - because the joke and supposed target that you laughed at revealed your own hopes, dreams, fears, prejudices, etc. And then you laugh harder.

I grew up watching the Smothers Brothers because my dad was a huge fan. So yeah, now what with your middle school I know you are but what am I level retort.

Bill Hicks was my favorite subversive with his not just making marijuana legal but mandatory and suggesting that everyone should have at least one psychedelic experience (large unspoken asterisk stipulating of those that can). Squeegee that third eye clean!

Doug Stanhope can be unbelievably subversive: '60 Inches Of AIDS On Any Given Sunday' behaves like the insane horniness is the joke, just ridiculously over-the-top as if the things he's saying aren't still simple observation comedy. It's overblown TO make it go down easier because it's too obviously outrageous. Subversive.

Probably the best and biggest subversive ever? Eddie Murphy. He went HARD in the same manner: getting you to laugh at his extremeness when the joke is, it's actually not a joke, it's something he's observed. If he just made a case for some of the stuff he brings to your attention it wouldn't go over, but pick just the right spot to go way over the top…

It is helpful for me to remember that there was a time when Americans hated each other almost as much as we hate each other now. I still can't figure out how we got past it the first time.

As best I can tell, it was because Nixon resigned. People had the sense to recognize that a bad thing happened, and we all agreed for once.

In retrospect it seems positively quaint.

I would suggest that this "first time" you are referring to wasn't actually the first time. At least one time prior (there are probably others), it was settled with a brutal war referred to as the Civil War. I wonder if we will have to drop the word "the" and maybe use Civil War II and revise history books to say Civil War I if things continue to progress in certain directions.

Anyone predicting Civil War II is probably too deep into their own ideology. The Civil War was a regional conflict, which is an important requirement. Democrats and Republicans may be very opposed to one another right now (at least in surface rhetoric; when we bother to discuss deeper than a few big issues we usually find more in common than not), but there's not much regionality to it. Every rural area rebelling against the nearest city isn't exactly the same idea as entire states deciding to secede.

There are states that seem to be seriously considering secession. It would be a rational response to the belief that other states are manipulating the vote.

That would bring along a lot of people who don't hold that belief.

Just to expand with more specifics: There was a movement in the mid-90s that tried to convince everyone that Texas never properly brought back into the union, and was trying to re-declare itself as the Republic of Texas[0]. Part of Oregon wants to become part of Idaho[1]. The idea to split California into three parts[2]. These types of things don't happen when everyone is full of brotherly love and is happy with the status quo. If the GP thinks that Civil War II is so absurd, I'd suggest that's just way more optimism than I would ever be able to achieve. As things are progressing, a situation like Gilead from Hand Maid's Tale is not too far of a stretch.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_of_Texas_(group)

[1] https://duckduckgo.com/?t=h_&q=eastern+oregon+wants+to+join+...

[2] https://abcnews.go.com/US/proposal-split-california-states-m...

>It is helpful for me to remember that there was a time when Americans hated each other almost as much as we hate each other now.

Not to be flippant, but if it helps, there was literally a civil war. So we're waaaaaayyyy better than that today.

> how we got past it the first time

An interesting reflection. After Nixon's shame, the popular discourse seemed able to reflect constructively on his failings and on the Viet Nam war. The country recovered its reputation as a leading democracy.

What the country's enemies within and without have done to information and public discourse in the past decade seems at times almost fatal to the state.

I don't recall the exact numbers, but I read that public opinion was even divided on the Kent State Massacre, with much hostility between the two sides.

Laugh-In vs. Hee Haw.

Yep, been with us at least that long.

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