Trevor Noah Backlash

There's a raging internet controversy right now on the newly announced replacement host of the Daily Show, Trevor Noah. As a blogger I am required to throw on my 2 cents on all raging internet controversies.

In Canada, at least, pennies are gone and two cents rounds down to worthless. Seems appropriate.

Noah has a twitter problem. His twitter account or seems is controlled by a raging misogynist, anti-semite, and transphobe; also named Trevor Noah. The usual suspects (including me) are upset by this.

The outrage seems a little out of place, though, given that the previous host Jon Stewart had a lot of the same problems.

Noah is quite new to the show, joined just this year, and has only had a handful of segments. That might have something to do with the outrage. And a lot of people have lingering affection for Stewart that might help them look past his problems.

I'm in a somewhat rare position here, because I got fed up with Stewart a few years ago and quit watching. I was appalled by his coverage of the Occupy Wall Street protests, he was far more concerned with dumping on the protesters than with getting at the root causes. Sure, he's a comedian, he has different priorities. Fine. But I'm looking for more than comedy, so I quit watching.

After I quit I was a little embarrassed at how long it had taken, by what I'd been willing to overlook before then. Like the conflict of interest in his reporting of American Atheists' 9-11 Memorial lawsuit. Stewart was on the board of the memorial... he was party to that lawsuit and didn't feel the need to disclose that.

Or like the unceasing onslaught of transphobic jokes. I ignored that stuff for far too long... 9 years I watched that show.

Or all the racism. OK, admittedly that's mostly Stephen Colbert, not Stewart. Whatever, close enough.

It would be nice if the change in hosts could be an improvement. But of it's just more of the same, I'm not sure it merits this much outrage. No more so than if one bigoted host on any other show was swapped out for the next.

The Daily Show doesn't deserve this much attention.