Norm MacDonald Is Not Having Any of Your Jesus Or NAACP Tomfoolery

In this Age of Outrage, we’ve become accustomed to stand-up comics grousing about the various college students and others who just can’t take a freaking joke anymore, but veteran comic Norm MacDonald is in the midst of a mini-outrage tear of his own. MacDonald is one of three judges on NBC’s Last Comic Standing, and for the past two weeks, he’s had oddly stern reactions to some innocuous-seeming jokes. First, on the August 12 episode, contestant Harrison Greenbaum made a crack about the Bible and Harry Potter, and MacDonald offered Greenbaum a stern scolding:

I don’t think the Bible joke was brave at all. I think if you’re gonna take on an entire religion, you should maybe know what you’re talking about. J.K. Rowling is a Christian and J.K. Rowling famously said that, uh, if you’re familiar with the scriptures, you could easily guess the ending of her book…I didn’t like it.

What I loved about MacDonald’s reaction is that it wasn’t immediately clear if he was offended for Jesus, or for Harry Potter. Now, Greenbaum couldn’t have telegraphed that punchline more clearly if he’d told it in Morse code, but as blasphemy goes, it was pretty mild.

Then, on this week’s episode, Harrison Greenbaum told another joke that got MacDonald’s Irish up, this time about the NAACP…READ MORE

By: Tommy Christopher

Tommy Christopher is The Daily Banter's White House Correspondent and Political Analyst. He's been a political reporter and liberal commentator since 2007, and has covered the White House since the beginning of the Obama administration, first for PoliticsDaily, and then for Mediaite. Christopher is a frequent guest on a variety of television, radio, and online programs, and was the villain in the documentaries The Audacity of Democracy and Hating Breitbart. He's also That Guy Who Live-Tweeted His Own Heart Attack, and the only person to have ever received public apologies from both Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck.