When everything is political, everything becomes stupid.
That's what Americans can take away from our incessant culture wars, which have taken the fun out of a lot of things that used to bring us all together.
So, when "old school" comic Jim Norton, perhaps best known for his Opie & Anthony guest hits and his stints on the long-running Fox News late night show Red Eye, spoke up about the impulse to seek political validation in everything, it struck more than a funny bone.
"If comedians' political ideology means something to you, you're a stupid person!" Jim Norton GOES OFF on people who look to comedians for political insight. Says if you're unable to make decisions for yourself, you're stupid. @JimNorton https://t.co/iB3IIxeO2f
— Tim Pool (@Timcast) October 21, 2026
While on Tim Pool's podcast, Norton explained why he thinks that it's "stupid" if people adopt political opinions without thinking about them.
To me, telling people where to go do stand-up is so fake. And if you're taking your social cues from comedians, you're an idiot.
Am I looking into the right camera?
If comedians' political ideology means something to you, you're a stupid person. You know, the top podcasts are all comics, yeah. Talking politics. I know they are. And it's an interesting subject and I know all those guys and they're all regular people. Like, none of them are as political as people think they are.
I think that we wind up, when you're getting noticed, we tend to kind of go more towards the people who are being nice to us because it's business, and it feels good.
But anyone who is like watching political podcasts or comedy podcasts and not making your own decisions, you're stupid. If you don't make your own decisions, you're stupid.
This is why Joe is the best. Because he's very humble about politics. He's not a— I think that's why people... this is why he's the king of podcasting. Cause it's, he talks about the issues that people want to know about but he's very reserved and like, hey, look, man, I'm just some dumb comedian. Don't, don't, don't take your advice from me.
But then you watch some of these more liberal guys that I don't know, I guess you can call it comedy, John Oliver. But it's like, if you watch that guy and you think you're learning things, I got a bridge to sell you. I got a couple of them actually.
It is crazy how they go after Joe. You're right. But the other guys act like they're educating, speaking to the unwashed masses.
And Joe was a Bernie guy, by the way. People forget that Joe was one of the first guys to have Bernie on like as a podcaster. He loved Bernie. Yeah. I mean, he's not some, some far right lunatic. Like, you know, once they see you as something they'll never change. And 98% of the problems people have with Rogan or Tony or Theo, it's jealousy.
Norton also appeared on the Joe Rogan Experience and had a longer discussion about this (transcript edited for vulgar language that is in the video).
Here is what Rogan and Norton said about it in this extended transcript, and it is pretty damn interesting because it touches on news and politics.
Jim Norton: You know how it is when you meet somebody. They're always more human when you meet them, and it's harder to not like somebody.
Like, I don't agree with Lauren Boebert, but I met her, and she couldn't have been nicer. And I'm like, I can't dislike her. She was nice to me.
Whenever you meet someone... I had him [George Santos] over, and he was great. He was funny, had a sense of humor about himself, and he was sh*t-talking and catty. And I was like, "F***, I love this guy."
But they accused me of election advertising. So now, so many times I've tried to put ads after, and they continually say it's either shocking content or election advertising.
Joe Rogan: Oh, they're just targeting you.
Jim Norton: They're just targeting me. And it's like, how are you supposed to advertise comedy with some profanity in it if it's shocking content?
Joe Rogan: How was that election advertising? I mean, he's not even running for anything.
Jim Norton: And it wasn't a political rally podcast at all. It was just us talking about what happened, and we chatted politics, but I don't push political views on people.
Joe Rogan: They've got you labeled right-wing, which is kind of funny, isn't it?
Jim Norton: It really is. It is so funny. And people don't know what to... Like, the conservatives, it's so funny. People come see me from Gutfeld because I do Gutfeld a lot, and his people will come see me.
And it's just fun when I talk about my wife to watch the joy drain out of their faces.
"It's a trans woman? Oh, we had no idea. That's not the type of Tucker we like, buddy."
They get very... It's a very weird place to be.
People who like my humor don't necessarily like my personal life, and people who like my personal life don't necessarily like my humor.
It's weird. I guess if nobody feels like you're 100 percent in with them, they don't know what to make of you. [...]
Jim Norton: I don't remember if he had said something after, or if they went back and found things he had said prior that they felt like his politics didn't line up.
It's almost like when they got mad about f***ing Dylan Mulvaney. Like, needing to connect to the belief system of somebody who drinks the same beverage is just such f***ing psychotic thinking.
Then again, I've drank p*ss, so I don't expect a whole lot of people to line up politically and rally behind me with f***ing yellow flags.
But I just don't care. I don't give a f***. I don't care who believes it. I'm a f***ing Sabbath fan. I don't give a sh*t who those guys vote for. It's so stupid, inconsequential to me.
Joe Rogan: Well, it's just a symptom of this bizarrely disconnected society where everybody's so separated.
Jim Norton: It is. And it's got to be driving you crazy, or maybe you detach from it, because you see things... I mean, I know you, so I'll see them say, like, "He's this right-wing..." And I'm like, "You guys don't really know Joe."
To see yourself painted in such a way has got to be, at one point, frustrating. And then you have to just let it go, right?
Joe Rogan: Yeah, you've got to let it go.
But the most frustrating thing was seeing it on CNN. I was like, "Okay, so this thing that I thought was the news forever, now I know you're not accurate at all, because you're attacking me and you're painting me in this very bizarre light because it's convenient for you."
Jim Norton: There's a weird thing, and maybe this is because I'm in my 50s and I remember thinking the news was real and accurate, because you remember Walter Cronkite and all that sh*t.
It's this constant sense of disappointment. Like, f***, they're really not what... I'm still an idiot who believes in the adults, and they're going to do the right thing.
And it's just constantly a confirmation that they're liars. They're f***ing biased liars.
Joe Rogan: And they're paid to lie. They're just propagandists.
That is what has happened to America over the past few decades. The nation has transformed from the "land of the free" where we pretty much all believe in "live and let live" to adopting political tribalism.
There used to be so such a thing as Americans laughing at each other's politics and pretty much all believing that we've got to get along with one another.
A great bit by a left-leaning comedian whose politics I don't agree with, but which encapsulates that you can laugh at people you love despite them being "wrong" in your view, is Dana Gould.
Gould is perhaps best known as a writer for The Simpsons, but has been an outstanding stand-up comedian for decades.
In this bit at the Laugh Factory, he explains that his father, whom he has described elsewhere as "Archie Bunker without the elegance and sophistication," believes that gay people are responsible for California's warm weather.
Here's the bit:
It's so funny. When you live in L.A. or New York, you forget what it's like to live in America. And it really is true.
I'll give you this example. My parents were visiting last February, and I remember that specifically. I was talking to my dad, just a regular guy, and I said, "See, Dad? This is why I live in L.A. Middle of February, 75 degrees."
My father went, "Of course it's warm. Bunch of queers."
And my wife is immediately like, "You can't let him get away with that. You have to say something."
Like, say what? He thinks gay people give off heat. There's no argument to have!
That's the big thing. If you watch the news, you forget there aren't two sides to every story. Some sh*t just is.
But you always get that because they have to stretch one hour's worth of news, which is about all that happens during the day, and they have to stretch it out for 24 hours.
So you get a lot of two sides of a one-sided tale.
"We're joined now by the parents of two of the children killed in the amusement park catastrophe, and, in the interest of fairness, a spooky weirdo in Army fatigues who thinks dead kids are hilarious."
We don't have to listen to him! I don't really think we need to talk to him at all.
That brings us to Patton Oswalt, a comedian who has made fun of both Republicans and Democrats, but who has lurched further into anti-Trump activism as time has gone on.
In this [explicit] comedy bit, he makes fun of both Bush voters and Obama voters because of the inevitable disappointments of their presidencies.
It's fascinating to hear this same Patton Oswalt then talk about how comedians shouldn't "kow-tow" to Donald Trump in an interview with the Daily Beast.
Patton Oswalt has one piece of advice for hosts caught up in President Donald Trump’s ongoing battle against late-night TV: Never give in.
“The most obvious lesson is: if you kowtow to Trump, he hates you,” Oswalt, 57, who just debuted a new comedy special, Tea & Scotch, told Obsessed: The Podcast.
“If you don’t kowtow to him, he might still hate you, but he’ll respect you, and other people will respect you, and you will have a career going forward.”
“Think of all of the entertainers that have kowtowed to him, and have any of them benefited from that? Has there been any benefit?” he posited.
“Does Trump have anyone’s back when the chips are down? Does he have anyone’s back? He has no one’s back. No one.”
“And he has said that. He’s openly said that,” Oswalt said, referencing Trump’s remark that he doesn’t “think about Americans’ financial situation.”
This is precious given that Donald Trump is the gift that hasn't stopped giving in the media for a decade. He's gotten more negative coverage from the American media than any human being in history. That's including Adolph Hitler, Joseph Stalin, and Taylor Swift.
And indeed, Trump Derangement Syndrome has caused such fatigue that tens of millions of Americans have stopped watching certain late-night "comedy" shows (Jimmy Kimmel, Stephen Colbert, anyone?).
No one is "kow-towing" to Donald Trump, the insipid "No Kings" commentary notwithstanding.
So, when Bill Maher met with Donald Trump again recently, despite their political differences, it was refreshing. Maher is no Trump fan, but he met with him, and found that he was a human being. They have political differences. They talked about them and both survived.
Indeed, it was interesting what Maher said in the aftermath.
“Many people hated that you met him,” host Steve Inskeep said. “Some people liked that you met him. I’m thinking about the conclusion you drew, which was that, if I can summarize, you found a sane person at dinner who plays a crazy person on TV, as opposed to an actual crazy person.”
As the Independent put it, Maher told Inskeep that "critics who condemned the meeting were acting out of emotion rather than logic, dismissing their backlash as a competition to see who could hate the president the most."
“He is a crazy person in the extent that he definitely has a form of Tourette syndrome,” Maher said. “He just blurts out whatever is on his mind often. It’s funny, he’s both, at the same time, the most full of sh*t person and also the most honest.”
There you have it. Donald Trump is the perfect Rorschach test of one's politics. Whatever people want to see in him is what they see.
The fascinating part of all of this is that conservatives can laugh at a liberal's politics because they knows both sides of the argument and can appreciate the parody. They know it's an exaggeration or a distortion, and don't take it seriously. The best liberal comedians also let everyone in on the joke by making themselves into a caricature as well.
They are laughing at politics, not just laughing at your politics.
But Woke liberals do not know the right's arguments and thus have no social cue to know if a conservative's "comedy" is funny or not. And when they find out someone is conservative, they don't allow themselves to laugh at it, lest anyone "out" them as bigoted or racist or xenophobic or whatever.
That is why they don't react with laughter to a Shane Gillis' crude but valid observation about some females' skimpy outfits at the gym.
Finally listened to the Shane Gillis monologue. Women. If THIS is what's gonna send you into a days long tizzy, you're in for a very hard life.
— 🍹 Princess Consuela Banana-Hammock (@kimmie_c_) October 12, 2026
They are attacking Gillis because they believe (wrongly) he is "MAGA adjacent," just like they attack Sydney Sweeney for being scantily clad but stand up for Instagram thirst-trappers.
But if you get your social cues from The View, you would think that Shane Gillis' jokes were tantamount to calling for violence against women.
And the woke left cannot let it go, either. That's because the real goal isn't for us to get along, it's for the left to achieve cultural hegemony, thereby dictating what we are allowed to laugh at.
SNL cast member Kenan Thompson just appeared on stage at an Axios event to berate Gillis and feign like he should teach him how to be a stand-up comedian.
@axios @nbcsnl @kenanthompson @sarafischer “Please, Kenan, tell me more about how to be a successful comedian.” https://t.co/3GjycX69W8
— Steve McGuire (@sfmcguire79) October 21, 2026
“I’m sure we would have a conversation… like a little kid," if Gillis came back to SNL. (As if.)
Thompson's attempt at "teaching" Gillis anything about comedy failed miserably. Commenters pointed out that Kenan Thompson has been a mainstay on an unfunny SNL "comedy" show for decades, while the actual standup comedian Shane Gillis is setting records with his live performances.
"Shane Gillis still hasn’t figured out that comedians today are supposed to be gutless, making fun only of people who don’t belong to protected classes," one commenter snarked.
Modern liberals cannot win through the power of their ideas or through the cleverness of their comedy, so they rig the culture.
It's why they don't believe in merit. They don't believe in open competition. They don't believe in freedom of choice. Once you step outside their bubble, you realize everything they do is fake, including their performative outrage.
There is no unseeing it, once you see it. Their humor isn't funny, it's angry. It's divisive. It's tribalistic. You will laugh, or else, or you aren't one of us. The point is, the right should not fall into this trap.
If we are going to maintain our sanity, and our sense of humor, we've got to be able to accept one thing: We're never going to get everyone to agree with us politically.
After all, that is the point of freedom, and that is why it is important to defend it.
So, laugh at everyone. That is how we defeat the left.
