"Good stand-up comedy cannot be safe; it must shock or surprise an audience."

"Some comics can do it magnificently with insights about socks, but the best do it with bracing commentary about the stuff that really matters to us. Sex, race, politics and religion have been the source of some of the best comedy I�ve seen, but the process of figuring out how to talk about difficult issues is going to involve errors that are potentially painful for people in the audience."

Writes the comedian Guy Branum, trying to help Trevor Noah off the hook for all the non-PC stuff in his Twitter archive.

By the way, "insights about socks" is a reference to Jerry Seinfeld. Many, many comedians over the years have observed that socks get lost in the laundry. But this is how you do it "magnificently":



ADDED: By the way, if Trevor Noah can be brushed off and set aright, can we bring back Michael Richards?

"The Problem Isn�t That Trevor Noah Is Offensive. The Problem Is That He�s a Giant Dope."

Headline at Slate.

The problem is not that Trevor Noah tells offensive jokes. It�s not even that he routinely breaks The Daily Show's covenant of speaking truth to power in favor of speaking truth to fat chicks or Thai hookers or, as the Washington Post�s Wendy Todd points out, black Americans who give their kids names that Noah disapproves of. The problem is that Noah�s jokes are so annihilatingly stupid.

Jeez, they're swarming this poor man. A giant dope? Isn't that insult dopey? I read the article, and it seems that Noah's problem is he needs better joke-writers. I'd say: He's getting "The Daily Show"'s joke-writers, so the question is only how he looks, how he delivers the jokes, and how he manages the interviews. If you're not going to rest on the ground that his old jokes were so offensive that he can't be the face of the brand, what's the problem? He's a giant dope? That makes zero sense. It's as if the writer � Jessica Winter � doesn't know that there are writers. That's annihilatingly stupid.

Now, the Wendy Todd article (linked above) makes a much stronger point: It seems that "The Daily Show" may be installing Noah because he's been getting away with mocking black people. Todd, who is black, says:

[On "The Tonight Show"] Noah joked that black people are misidentified as African Americans. �They�re not African, but we�ll play along,� he said, adding, �Many of them really try to connect with Africa, you know? Some of them have these African names. They�ll be like, �Yeah, yeah, that�s my girl Wanda, yeah, yeah. Yeah that�s right, that�s Dashiqua, or dat�s Taniqua.� Noah emphasized all this �hilarity� by using stereotypical B-Boy hand gestures to drive it home � because this is how all black people communicate, obviously. Leno�s predominantly white audience ate it up....

Not only did Noah get away with these routines, now he�s being rewarded for them. And the sadder thing is that the next time we have this �there aren�t enough people of color in the late night arena� conversation, people will point to Noah and say, �See, we gave you another one.�

"Trevor Noah, From Progressive Icon to Villain in 24 Hours."

David Weigel looks at the uproar.

"The Daily Show" chooses Trevor Noah, a South African, to replace Jon Stewart.

The NYT observes that Noah is "nonwhite," but that there's a question "why the network did not choose a woman to crack the all-male club of late-night television hosts."

[Noah] grew up in Soweto, the son of a black Xhosa mother and a white Swiss father, whose union was illegal during the apartheid era. �My mother had to be very clandestine about who my father was,� Mr. Noah said. �He couldn�t be on my birth certificate.�

By the time he started performing stand-up in his 20s, Mr. Noah said he had long been taught that �speaking freely about anything, as a person of color, was considered treason.�

According to the NYT, Michele Ganeless, president of Comedy Central, "said that Comedy Central... drew up 'a shortlist' of possible successors 'and Trevor checked off every box on that list and then some.'" That doesn't make sense. If the "list" is a list of "possible successors," how could one person on that list check off "every box on that list and then some"? Obviously, there's some other list. Presumably, it's a list of things Comedy Central thought would be plus factors. I guess being female wasn't one of them. Ganeless seems to have unwittingly stated that Comedy Central really wasn't hoping to put a woman in the anchor seat. Either that or gushy puffery about Noah caused her to say something she didn't mean to say.

Why is Ganeless president of Comedy Central? Perhaps she was promoted beyond her appropriate level.

Anyway, I'm not sold on Noah. I watched the clip of him that was linked at the beginning of the NYT article � I sat through the Coke-and-Pepsi commercial for "Mixify" � which shows him in a colloquy with Jon Stewart. Noah began with what seems to be the old joke "I just flew in and boy are my arms tired." When the predictable groans ensued, Noah held his arms up in the Ferguson hands-up-don't-shoot position and said:

"No, seriously, I've been holding my arms like this since I got here. I never thought I�d be more afraid of police in America than in South Africa. It kind of makes me a little nostalgic for the old days, back home."

So, get ready for jokes against America told in a not-American accent. I guess, not American was on the Comedy Central checklist of plus factors that Noah checked off (and then some).  Yeah, I know, you don't have to get ready because you don't watch "The Daily Show." I don't either anymore. I used to watch every day. I still record every show, but I can't remember the last time I felt like clicking on the recording. Maybe I got tired of Jon Stewart's incessant yelling in disbelief. How could America be so awful? But does that mean I want to hear Noah's mellifluous murmuring about how awful America is?

I know, I'm old. The show is not intended for me. I saw the commercial for Mixify. Coke and Pepsi's effort to get people to "mix" their soda-drinking with nutritious food was, to me, a ludicrously transparent effort to fend off government regulation, not what they want you to think it is:

#Realtalk: Coke, Dr Pepper and Pepsi understand that balancing your mix of foods, drinks and physical activities can get a little tricky. And since our products can play a part in that equation, we�ve teamed up to help make it easier to find a balanced mix that feels oh so right. That�s where Mixify comes in. It�s like a balance wingman.

Bringing you new combinations to keep your mix fresh and your body right. Like mixing lazy days with something light, following sweaty workouts with whatever you�re craving, and crossing cats with dragons. Because at the end of the day, finding balance keeps you feeling snazzier than the emoji of the dancing lady in red. Balance what you eat and drink with what you do. That�s how you Mixify.

Hashtag Realtalk? A balance wingman? A little tricky? Actually, it's not tricky at all. Don't drink soda. It's not tricky to me, that is, but I take it Coke and Pepsi are trying to trick teach tricks to people who are not me. And maybe those kids will love Trevor Noah.