The last time someone named Noah’s actions were so globally significant, animals boarded a boat in pairs, it rained for forty days and the world flooded.
This week, it was the Twitterverse that flooded over because of comedian Trevor Noah’s: a) appointment to the highest throne in the comedic news world as the replacement for Jon Stewart on The Daily Show and b) the prospect of having a figure who has a dark history of off-color jokes about Jews, women, and others take on such an important role.
Noah’s hire takes a bad situation for the program (i.e. the departure of the now-iconic Stewart) and shifts The Daily Show’s comedic value and audience appreciation to what may become an unrecognizable (and frankly, bad) nightly news show.
For 17 years, the American Jewish community has been able to look at Jon Stewart (Leibowitz), not only as the only man in the country who could effectively articulate the goings-on in the geopolitical world, but also as a strongly-identifying cultural Jew, whose self-depreciating humor was easy to relate to, contained, enjoyable, and certainly unique.
On top of his value to the Jewish community, Stewart is a respected figure across the country in that he has worked to make the show balanced, critical of all parties, factually-based, and respectful overall within the realm of satire.
Trevor Noah is a bad candidate to replace Stewart, even without his poor taste in Twitter postings that came to light this week. Comedy Central’s mistake in hiring the comedian to replace Stewart should have caught poor reception to his underwhelming guest starring appearances on The Daily Show and his general absence of redeemable funniness.
This un-funniness, and thus, the quality of Noah as the new host, is only worsened by the inherent anti-Semitic, anti-women, anti-a-lot-of-folks nature of a lot of Noah’s “jokes.” The network tried to gloss over the apparent digital riot by saying that many comedians are universally offensive.
But for Jews, jokes that touch on Holocaust themes are really a third rail of humor. Even within the largely self-depreciative Jewish humor, the Holocaust is frowned upon. One 140-character jab at the Shoah, as part of Noah’s arc of awful and unfunny tweets was as follows:
“Almost bumped a Jewish kid crossing the road. He didn’t look b4 crossing but I still would hav felt so bad in my german car!”
It’s certainly unfair to try to make a March Madness bracket of Noah’s most offensive tweets and put misogyny up against fat-shaming or Holocaust jokes, but it should have been a red flag for the network that this character crosses too many lines. As many folks are already pointing out, Noah will have a difficult time engaging Stewart’s audiences by pre-emptively isolating them through his routines.
Stewart’s loss could have been salvaged by giving a nod to an in-house prodigy like Jessica Williams (who did a great Purim bit in 2013) or even an Aasif Mandvi (who had this great bit with John Oliver on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict). Williams or other Daily Show vets have the nuance and composure to touch on Jewish topics, even poking fun at holidays and Israeli politics, without offending or alienating.
Overall, Noah’s hosting of the program only adds frustration to the grief over Stewart’s retirement. Gone will be the inside Jewish jokes (like when Shaq wished Stewart’s kids a “Baruch Hashem”). And having Noah around instead, just makes the maror this Passover a little more bitter.
Zev Hurwitz is a student at UC San Diego.
