Forums

[ThurgreedMarshall]

Originally Posted by Sidd Finch

Kumbaya yourself, bitch.

Seriously, and without trying to argue -- I think it certain that fat jokes or Jewish jokes or even violence against women jokes go over better in some places than they do in 2015 in the US.

Why is this certain? Because we can all think of jokes that went over a lot better 20 or 30 or 40 years ago, that would not go over very well today. For many reasons -- because people are more sensible, sensitive, or just jaded -- depending on the joke or the audience.

BUT -- Is South Africa of 2015 a place where fat/Jewish/violence against women jokes go over better than here? I have no fucking clue. I was trying to get past the tweets "issue" to talk about how his different background may have affected his comedy. Will that make TDS better or worse? I don't know, (and the answer probably depends on who you ask and on what day). But it will certainly make the show different -- which is a good thing, because having someone try to do a Jon Stewart imitation would suck, and just giving the show to one of the people who occasionally hosted it would also, I think, make for a sucky show.

A man born and raised in South Africa, of mixed race, who was 11 when Mandela came to power, is necessarily going to bring some things to the table that were not there before. That will include good things (different perspective, like some of his videos show), and some risky things (less "sensitivity" to certain boundaries, as others of his videos show -- but which were funny and worth that risk, IMO). So, it'll be interesting.

Plus, he can do that cool click when he says Xhosa. I've been to South Africa, and also Zimbabwe, and no matter how much I tried I couldn't get that right. It's really cool when someone does it right -- it sort of echoes even as they get to the next word or two.

Agreed.

But someone is going to need to tell him that if he tries to make The Daily Show too international, he's going to fail. Even the informed liberals in this country don't really give a shit about anyplace else in the world (although John Oliver has done a great job informing people despite that fact). Keep going after the crazy ass conservatives in this country.

TM