comedy central – Moe Lane

What Trevor Noah’s plagiarism tells us about Comedy Central’s racism.

It’s rather… cosmopolitan racism on Comedy Central’s part, actually.

Trevor Noah has been telling a joke that sounds remarkably similar to one that Dave Chappelle told nearly 20 years ago.

The new “Daily Show” host has been accused of stealing joke in the past, but The Hollywood Reporter pointed to a standup routine he performed Saturday that was closely similar to material once performed by another Comedy Central star.

OK, let me admit it: Dave Chappelle has made me laugh – but uncomfortably, because the man is rather good at poking at taboos. This gives him a certain power, because American culture gets to be rather antsy when it comes to admitting that we even have speech taboos. Nonetheless: Dave Chappelle is a ferociously good comedian, and that’s really all that The Daily Show needed to replace Jon Stewart, right? So why did they hire instead a guy who just rips off Chappelle, instead of Chappelle himself? Continue reading What Trevor Noah’s plagiarism tells us about Comedy Central’s racism.

Buried lede: Comedy Central expects Republicans to win in 2016.

You don’t load up a guy like this to replace Jon Stewart if you’re expecting four more years of a Democrat.

On Monday, Comedy Central announced that South African comedian Trevor Noah would be replacing Jon Stewart as host of The Daily Show. To get a feel for Noah’s brand of humor, one could simply watch his debut on the fake news show in December of 2014, when he jokingly declared that present-day America had worse race relations than Apartheid South Africa.

Continue reading Buried lede: Comedy Central expects Republicans to win in 2016.

#rsrh PJTV dresses down Comedy Central.

To quickly set the scenario: Comedy Central seems to be under the strange delusion that it can control media access on public lands with regard to their infotainment special today, despite the fact that the rules pretty explicitly says that they can’t. J.P. Freire of Pajamas Media seems almost eager to have somebody try to stop his team from filming today:

It does seem a bit incredulous that a rally for “reasonableness” should exclude freely based camera crews exercising their First Amendment rights to cover your attendees walking on public property. Unless this is Prague in 1968. And unless Comedy Central own tanks. Or unless it deploys a Comedy Police with enforcement powers.

On the other hand maybe I got this all wrong…I thought you were merely trying to be clever when you said it was a rally for fear. If is that, then I certainly understand your attitudes and rules.

If the network is dumb, it will try to stop people from filming today. If they do, it will not end well for the network: there’s going to be plenty of groups out there who will be willing to fund the court challenges. In other words, I offer this as sincere advice: fighting this isn’t worth the hassle, Comedy Central, especially since you’re wrong. Let it go.

Moe Lane