TRIGGERnometry - Legendary Comedy Cellar Owner on Louis CK, Comedy & Cancel Culture

00:00:00.400 Why do you think that we've reached this point where people are afraid to speak out and people are afraid to say what they think and to challenge ideas?

00:00:07.960 It started with just more and more solicitousness towards young people to not be offended by this and not be offended by that.

00:00:15.460 Has that changed comedy, the introduction of social media? Do you think people now say things differently or come and do shows differently or anything like that?

00:00:23.220 It's not just social media. It's the fact that everything is forever.

00:00:27.160 I think what is really important, is not mentioned enough, is that we really are living in a golden age of comedy.

00:00:33.780 The cellar must be empty because the world is furious that the cellar allowed Louis C.K. to perform.

00:00:38.880 But actually, nothing changed.

00:00:41.620 They were pretending to be much more really bothered than they were.

00:00:44.560 That's why I say Louis won a Grammy, but it was a secret ballot.

00:00:47.980 I'm sure many of those people who voted for him would never admit that they voted for him or wouldn't have voted for him if their vote was going to go public.

00:00:54.260 But privately, they didn't care enough not to give him the Grammy. 0.99

00:00:57.920 If two idiot comedians start a podcast and start talking to people, that's brave. 1.00

00:01:02.580 What the fuck is going wrong? 1.00

00:01:03.820 Hello and welcome to Trigonometry on the road from the USA. 0.99

00:01:18.960 I'm Francis Foster.

00:01:20.080 I'm Constantine Kissin.

00:01:21.140 And this is a show for you if you want honest conversations with fascinating people.

00:01:26.020 Our terrific guest today is the legendary owner of the legendary comedy cellar here in New York, Noam Dworkin.

00:01:32.420 And welcome to Trigonometry, man.

00:01:33.740 Dworkin.

00:01:34.380 Dworkin.

00:01:36.100 Do you know what happened there?

00:01:38.120 We were talking about Noam Chomsky all day.

00:01:40.920 The K in Chomsky.

00:01:42.140 Who's gone completely mental. 0.98

00:01:43.420 And I said to Francis, I better not fuck up Noam, sir. 0.98

00:01:47.060 I better not call him Noam Chomsky. 0.94

00:01:49.180 I'm so sorry, man.

00:01:50.020 That's okay.

00:01:50.400 Listen, we've been friends for a long time.

00:01:51.980 But a lot of people who are watching the show will not have any idea who you are because you're a behind the scenes kind of guy.

00:01:58.440 You don't speak up too much, etc.

00:02:01.280 Who are you?

00:02:02.200 What's been a journey through life?

00:02:03.340 And also tell us about the journey through life of the comedy cellar itself because it's a family thing.

00:02:07.740 Yeah.

00:02:08.060 So, okay.

00:02:08.840 I'm the owner of the comedy cellar.

00:02:11.080 I've been the owner of the comedy cellar since 2004 or so when my father died.

00:02:17.000 You want to know what I did before that?

00:02:18.760 Yeah.

00:02:19.280 So, before that, I went to University of Pennsylvania Law School.

00:02:24.080 I passed the bar and then never practiced law.

00:02:27.500 And then I started, people will think I didn't start it, but I started a club called the Café Wah, which now has a reputation for having existed all these years.

00:02:37.820 But actually, the Café Wah originally closed in 1968.

00:02:41.340 It was the place where Jimi Hendrix and Bob Dylan.

00:02:43.180 Anyway, I took that name and restarted a nightclub.

00:02:46.040 And I spent like 20 years just on stage playing music.

00:02:50.800 It was very successful until my father died.

00:02:53.080 And then I had to make some tough choices and I sold the Café Wah.

00:02:57.400 And I devoted my time to the comedy cellar.

00:02:59.320 So, that's what I've been doing ever since.

00:03:00.760 And your dad started the comedy cellar?

00:03:02.380 My dad started the comedy cellar with another guy named Bill Grunfest, who's not in the picture down here anymore.

00:03:09.440 This room was vacant.

00:03:11.760 My father was Israeli.

00:03:13.240 My father was also a musician.

00:03:14.420 He had a Middle Eastern nightclub where the Café Wah is now.

00:03:17.640 And this was a room he didn't know what to do with.

00:03:22.400 And he had like Brazilian musicians down here and stuff.

00:03:25.080 And this guy named Bill Grunfest, who is now a Hollywood writer, I think he was head writer on Mad About You for a while.

00:03:31.580 He came down and had the idea initially to bring comedians down here.

00:03:36.260 And he was the house emcee for a number of years.

00:03:38.400 And then he left and then my father ran it by himself until he died.

00:03:42.320 And just being here now, as somebody who is a comedian but also a massive comedy nerd, I feel so honored.

00:03:49.720 So, firstly, thank you.

00:03:50.780 But secondly, what do you think is so special about stand-up comedy?

00:03:55.440 Why do you think it moves people and people want to travel from across the country, in fact, across the world,

00:04:01.100 to sit in a small room with around 120 people and watch a person on stage saying jokes?

00:04:10.660 Well, there's a lot of things.

00:04:13.640 Working backwards in a certain way, I think right now we're in a golden age of stand-up comedy quality.

00:04:23.140 I was just, I'm in the middle of a project now where I'm digitizing maybe 500 or 700 VHS tapes from old shows from the 90s.

00:04:37.080 I've been watching some of them this morning.

00:04:39.460 And boy, is it better now.

00:04:42.100 I mean, just the, and it's not just that it didn't age well.

00:04:45.840 You can hear the laughs.

00:04:46.800 The laughs are mediocre and people, you know, it's just not the same response at all.

00:04:53.100 So, part of the reason I think, it's like supply side, part of the reason is just that comedy is much better now.

00:05:00.360 Having said that, people always like to laugh.

00:05:02.560 You know, there's always stand-up, I mean, sitcoms, humorous things have always been good.

00:05:09.900 And people like to go out.

00:05:11.840 You know, part of the reason we're busy here is not just for comedy.

00:05:17.240 It's that it's a place to go with your friends, have drinks, get a date, whatever it is.

00:05:22.020 So, there's always that.

00:05:23.260 So, all those things together.

00:05:24.040 But I think what is really important that is not mentioned enough is that we really are living in a golden age of comedy.

00:05:31.560 In the way that music in the late 60s and early 70s, like, why was music so popular then?

00:05:36.220 But if you realize, you go back and listen to it, well, actually, it really was an unusual time for music.

00:05:42.020 It really was better then.

00:05:44.460 So, I think comedy right now is really better than it's ever been.

00:05:47.500 And that's creating its own audience.

00:05:49.280 That's so interesting because people would say, well, look, we've got cancel culture now.

00:05:54.100 And, you know, the fact is that the Overton window in comedy is shrinking.

00:05:58.320 Do you disagree with that?

00:06:01.200 Yeah, I do disagree with it.

00:06:02.980 I mean, there is cancel culture.

00:06:04.120 I've never been seen any good empirical data of how many people are really on board with cancel culture as opposed to how many people are simply intimidated by it and trying to stay in its good graces.

00:06:26.760 I mean, everybody I know just talks about being afraid to say the wrong thing.

00:06:29.880 Very few people I know are really offended.

00:06:32.100 Of course, people who come to the comedy club mostly don't come here if they're particularly easily offended, right?

00:06:40.620 So, we kind of self-select.

00:06:42.200 I've compared this to a speakeasy during Prohibition.

00:06:46.120 The people who wanted, you know, who were pro-Prohibition didn't show up to the speakeasies.

00:06:50.500 The people who wanted a drink.

00:06:51.520 So, we get here, the people who really want a drink.

00:06:54.020 But in general, look at the people who are huge.

00:06:57.800 Rogan and Schultz and all these people on YouTube who are, I mean, it seems like the biggest comedians are the ones who are not towing the line in cancel culture.

00:07:11.700 And the audience is huge.

00:07:13.160 Look at Chappelle.

00:07:14.240 The whole world is against him, but he's still the biggest comedian in the world.

00:07:17.600 So, Louis, after all he went through, just sold out Madison Square Garden and won a Grammy.

00:07:23.160 Secret ballot, but he won a Grammy.

00:07:28.320 What does that tell you?

00:07:29.660 One of the things that I think was a little bit eye-opening for us coming from the UK where there's one comedy scene and we have a different culture when it comes to freedom of expression in the UK.

00:07:39.760 We don't have a First Amendment or a First Amendment culture.

00:07:42.800 Whereas we came here with our kind of very British views on these things and talking to you and seeing, you know, seeing Rogan's Club in Austin.

00:07:50.080 And we kind of got the sense that it is a lot freer here.

00:07:53.740 And that is one of the things that, like, we took away from that trip.

00:07:57.740 And it seemed like, you know, we came to see a show here.

00:08:01.180 That wasn't really an issue, people being offended and complaining and all that sort of thing.

00:08:05.200 Are the rank-and-file people in England actually offended or, I mean?

00:08:11.760 You know, if you talk to people who are regular MCs, they will tell you the number of people complaining about comedians and jokes has gone through the roof.

00:08:20.800 Really?

00:08:21.260 Yeah, in the UK for sure.

00:08:22.600 Would that be fair to say?

00:08:23.340 Yeah, I think so.

00:08:24.120 But you don't know what it represents in terms of actual numbers.

00:08:26.100 That's the thing.

00:08:26.760 Yeah.

00:08:26.940 Like, the number of tweets about people being offended has gone through the roof.

00:08:29.640 But how many people does it represent?

00:08:31.020 Yeah.

00:08:31.680 Has comedy changed in other ways in the time that you've been?

00:08:34.600 I mean, you say it's a golden age.

00:08:35.780 It's obviously got better.

00:08:36.760 But is there anything else that you notice that is kind of in the time that you've been the custodian of this place?

00:08:41.980 Well, it has changed.

00:08:42.640 So in the digitizing project, I'll let you see it.

00:08:46.020 I came across a Lisa Lampanelli set.

00:08:48.940 You know Lisa Lampanelli?

00:08:49.700 Yeah, I know Lisa Lampanelli. 0.72

00:08:50.980 People might not, so just explain who she is to you.

00:08:53.520 She was like a modern day female Don Rickles stuff, making like really harsh, in your gut, ethnic jokes and stuff like that. 1.00

00:09:02.760 And I went back and listened to it and I had forgotten just how over the top these jokes were.

00:09:09.520 I don't know.

00:09:11.400 I would have to say she couldn't do that set anymore. 1.00

00:09:14.200 Yeah.

00:09:14.380 Even I was like, you know, at some point, though I hate to admit it, this stuff does seep into us in some way.

00:09:25.580 Not that we're actually offended, but it's just like the mores change.

00:09:29.600 The norms, it's just like certain things you just don't say anymore.

00:09:31.760 So when you hear it, it hits you.

00:09:33.880 Do you think that's a good thing?

00:09:35.780 No.

00:09:36.400 You don't?

00:09:36.820 I don't think it's a good thing, no.

00:09:38.320 Why not?

00:09:38.740 Because it's false.

00:09:44.440 It's like something we're trained.

00:09:49.080 I mean, like, okay, so like in, remember when George Bush had a shoe thrown at him?

00:09:55.520 Yeah.

00:09:55.660 And we all got the lesson that, well, actually, if you show the sole of your shoe to someone, this is the ultimate disrespect.

00:10:02.820 And Arabs and Muslim people I knew were horrified to see this shoe with the president.

00:10:07.980 You know, this is a Pavlovian response.

00:10:11.320 That's not a healthy thing because it's not actually based on anything.

00:10:14.560 So it may not always be a bad thing, but we'd like to think that if we have negative reactions to things which are actually demonstrably negative, not just something somebody's trained us to react against.

00:10:29.180 And do you think part of the problem is, is that, you know, we talk about these big subjects which are incredibly controversial, like race, when COVID was happening, COVID.

00:10:41.240 And it seems that sometimes when you see a comedian on stage, they just have to mention a word.

00:10:47.140 Yeah.

00:10:47.380 You know, and I just realized maybe I didn't answer the question you were asking.

00:10:50.620 You're asking, is it a good thing that people are more sensitive to these matters?

00:10:54.120 That's what I was asking.

00:10:55.220 He could have stopped me.

00:10:56.220 Sorry.

00:10:56.740 I thought that's what you were asking.

00:10:57.960 Sorry.

00:10:58.460 No, no.

00:10:59.220 So that's a tougher question.

00:11:02.100 Yeah.

00:11:03.580 Because I'm torn about it because on the one hand, I don't want comedy to get pussified over time and society to get pussified.

00:11:09.860 On the other hand, there are certain things I hear being, you know, said or joked about in the 70s and 80s.

00:11:14.980 And I'm like, whoa, I'm glad that's not happening anymore.

00:11:18.100 Well, the most powerful example that comes to mind is the way we used to joke about gay people. 0.91

00:11:28.800 So when Lisa Lampanelli would tell jokes about black people, stuff like that, I don't know that it was really mocking, even though it might feel mocking in time. 0.54

00:11:40.140 But it was really open season to mock homosexuals for a long time.

00:11:45.080 And it's not anymore, I think because there was a huge mass insight and empathy into, that changed most, many people's views about being gay.

00:12:03.320 So to the extent that it's changed because people don't care to make those jokes anymore because they feel that it's mean, of course, that's a good thing.

00:12:15.060 But what wouldn't be good is if all of a sudden you can't make a joke about anything gay anymore. 0.50

00:12:19.940 You can't make a joke about anything Jewish anymore because you should be able to joke about anything.

00:12:25.740 But if you're not doing it because you realize that you've been mean or bullying or, you know, cruel, then, yeah, of course, it's a good thing.

00:12:33.980 But no, I mean, that's probably why you're torn, right?

00:12:36.740 Because both of these things are true at the same time.

00:12:38.340 Yeah, they are true.

00:12:39.340 I mean, and also jokes are subjective.

00:12:41.040 Like, I can make a joke about whatever it may be, let's say Jewish people, in my heart, I'm not being anti-Semitic. 0.97

00:12:50.100 He's giving you the stinker. 0.98

00:12:51.340 Yeah, yeah, yeah. 0.92

00:12:52.180 All of a sudden my brookings are disappearing into the air.

00:12:56.000 What kind of jokes?

00:12:57.980 Well, let me tell you.

00:13:00.780 But somebody who is in the front or second row may feel that it's anti-Semitic.

00:13:06.280 Yeah.

00:13:06.620 Do you see what I mean?

00:13:07.300 That's the gray area, isn't it?

00:13:08.980 That we're all trying to navigate.

00:13:11.600 Yeah, there's no answer to this, but I think that, and I would say this to Jewish people,

00:13:18.680 it's way better to err on the side of being thick-skinned and giving people the benefit,

00:13:27.940 that you've got to view people as innocent or proven guilty about what their intentions were.

00:13:32.760 At some point, if it becomes so obvious that somebody actually is full of hate or anti-Semitic,

00:13:38.800 then you might have to say, listen, you know, I'm just not comfortable with this anymore.

00:13:41.520 But usually that's not the case.

00:13:43.900 Usually people are just telling jokes.

00:13:44.940 Yeah, and I think sometimes as well is that everybody has the thing that they're particularly sensitive about,

00:13:51.980 whatever it may be, your ethnicity, religion, you know, political views.

00:13:56.220 And I think when somebody makes a joke on that, everybody gets a little bit more touchy about that thing.

00:14:03.480 You know, first of all, being Jewish, you know, I mean, among Jews, Jews are making all the same jokes about Jews

00:14:13.820 that we consider anti-Semitic when they come from non-Jews. 0.94

00:14:16.740 If you, same thing with gay, like all the gay comics now, they make the very same gay jokes, which we used to say, 1.00

00:14:23.960 how could, you can't make those jokes.

00:14:25.460 So you might say that in some way, this is because there is some grain of truth to some stereotypes, right?

00:14:36.600 I was like thinking like, you ever see one of those studies where they take zodiac signs and then, or horoscopes,

00:14:41.340 and then they mix them all up and give it to people who don't correspond to the,

00:14:44.800 and everybody says, oh, this is me, exactly. It's like a very good proof that zodiac is bullshit. 0.99

00:14:50.260 You could not do that with stereotypes. 0.99

00:14:52.500 Like if I tried to stereotype Jew people, these, or- 1.00

00:14:55.860 Yeah, Jews are really athletic, and they're great in the NBA.

00:14:58.660 It was like, what are you talking about?

00:15:00.120 So at some point, we have to probably all acknowledge, you know, there's something to these things that come from somewhere.

00:15:05.640 Our challenges in life to be good people is not to pretend that something that's true is not true,

00:15:11.000 is to say, despite whatever may be true, our highest calling is to judge everybody as an individual.

00:15:18.660 Like that's really the highest calling, right?

00:15:21.020 So, you know, these jokes, I give people some latitude because if they're joking about the same kind of things that I'm observing myself,

00:15:32.600 I have to let that go. I'm just, you know, like, how can I get outraged when I might make the same joke myself?

00:15:40.520 Yeah, it's such a good, you know, it's such a good point that we need to have latitude.

00:15:45.420 And also we need to, we need to accept that not all comedy is for us specifically.

00:15:52.900 You know, my mother's from Venezuela, you know, there may be somebody who does a very good routine about why socialism is great.

00:16:00.000 It doesn't mean that it invalidates my experience, and I may not particularly like it, but if it's crushing in the room, then fair play to them.

00:16:07.980 And another problem is like, you know, this is not that dissimilar from these classic arguments about pornography.

00:16:13.920 And Potter Stewart, he said, I know it when I see it.

00:16:19.740 And that's, you know, I went to law school.

00:16:22.140 That was mocked, but yet people still mention that, you know, because there's something true about that.

00:16:30.880 And this applies to being offended or judging whether somebody is coming from a good place or a bad place.

00:16:39.400 Sometimes you know it when you see it, and sometimes you're wrong when you know it when you see it.

00:16:42.680 But there are certain things which are, come down to some sort of deeper human, unquantifiable perception of matters.

00:16:53.280 And that's, and they'll never be decided.

00:16:56.540 You just can't.

00:16:57.300 No, let me ask you this then.

00:16:59.100 Here you are, there's no problem with, you know, freedom of expression in the New York comedy scene.

00:17:04.460 You're doing great.

00:17:05.280 People can come and do the jokes.

00:17:07.320 Why do you watch our show?

00:17:08.680 Why are we friends?

00:17:09.460 How, what are you interested in that's, that's brought us here?

00:17:14.560 Well, the, the, the fight to be able to talk.

00:17:21.360 You guys are on a much deeper level than comedy.

00:17:23.300 In my opinion, you're fighting to be able to discuss the ins and outs of every matter that comes before society.

00:17:37.260 And in so many issues, you're not allowed to do that.

00:17:42.960 You're, you're, you're supposed to recite a party line.

00:17:46.560 And this is vitally important, what you guys are doing.

00:17:50.960 So, I mean, I don't, you know, you guys do a lot of stuff on trans stuff lately.

00:17:56.400 I'd be shocked to find out you're actually anti-trans in any way.

00:17:59.640 We employ two trans people, so it'd be quite hard.

00:18:02.200 Well, maybe.

00:18:04.020 Maybe, maybe that's.

00:18:05.200 Yeah, we beat them every day, but apart from that.

00:18:07.840 And we pay them less.

00:18:08.860 But, you know, they're great workers.

00:18:10.100 No, we pay them more because they're actually men.

00:18:12.020 You know.

00:18:14.320 But, um, is that too far?

00:18:16.460 I don't know. 0.96

00:18:16.920 I don't fucking know anymore. 0.95

00:18:18.000 Anyway, carry on. 0.96

00:18:18.520 Look, you have to be able to discuss everything.

00:18:21.100 Yeah.

00:18:21.300 You have to be able to discuss everything and anything, even to find out that you're wrong.

00:18:26.000 Yeah.

00:18:26.840 And there's, there's a small number of people like you guys who are brave enough and intellectually curious enough and smart enough to undertake this, you know.

00:18:37.800 But I, I don't agree.

00:18:38.900 I don't think we are brave.

00:18:40.360 I don't think there's anything brave about what we do.

00:18:42.300 Like, brave is, you know, people who go into combat or people who, you know, do acts.

00:18:46.280 Have you ever spoken to people who, who are considered brave in combat?

00:18:49.200 They say the same thing.

00:18:50.820 I'm not brave.

00:18:51.560 I'm just doing my, you know, like the, the brave people, but it is brave in some way.

00:18:55.720 Okay.

00:18:56.220 Then here's the question for you.

00:18:57.960 If we are brave to be raising these issues, what does that say about the society we live in?

00:19:04.200 Right? 1.00

00:19:04.880 If two idiot comedians start a podcast and start talking to people, that's brave. 1.00

00:19:09.300 What the fuck is going wrong? 1.00

00:19:11.660 That's the question, isn't it? 0.99

00:19:13.520 Yeah.

00:19:13.700 Well, most people, most people are followers.

00:19:17.040 I mean, this is, I asked, um, Yasha Monk one time.

00:19:22.380 Yeah, we had him on the show.

00:19:23.660 Yeah.

00:19:23.940 And I, I asked him, um, do you think you would have the, like, I'd seen some, uh, documentary

00:19:30.140 of people just going off to enlist after World War II.

00:19:32.860 I said, do you think you would have the bravery to just go enlist to die?

00:19:37.140 You know, and he said, um, I don't know.

00:19:41.400 He said, but history teaches us that actually that kind of bravery is a lot more common than

00:19:46.500 people who are willing to buck their peers on ideas.

00:19:49.960 That's what he said.

00:19:51.340 You know, people just shut up and go along with stuff.

00:19:54.160 So that just seems to be true.

00:19:56.700 It just, there's a small percentage of people who are wired like you are.

00:20:02.220 And, you know, we need these people.

00:20:07.720 And do you think that things have got worse when it comes to that?

00:20:11.480 As in we, you know, or better, as in people were more willing to buck the trend?

00:20:16.800 Have we become more orthodox in our thinking?

00:20:18.780 I mean, it's gotten, it's gotten worse.

00:20:20.720 It's definitely gotten worse because, um, it's gotten worse.

00:20:25.600 I mean, it's almost a trite thing to say because the left, which always stood for free speech,

00:20:32.360 has now seemed to come to the opposite conclusion.

00:20:37.780 And the right still stands for free speech, but the right is not progressive, right?

00:20:45.120 But so they're not going to, you know, so, um, it's, it's gotten way worse.

00:20:51.800 And when you, when I saw that clip of the, in the, was it Stanford law school where they

00:20:55.920 were shouting down this judge, whatever it is.

00:20:58.340 I mean, this is not the way law school was when I went.

00:21:01.540 It just was not the way law school was.

00:21:03.760 And why do you think that is none?

00:21:05.200 Why do you think that we've, we've reached this point where people are afraid to speak

00:21:09.580 out and people are afraid to say what they think and to challenge ideas?

00:21:12.840 I don't know.

00:21:13.960 You have to ask people like John Haidt or whatever it is who really followed this, um, piecemeal.

00:21:18.320 But I, I think as I gather what they, he said is it started with just more and more solicitousness

00:21:25.660 towards young people to not be offended by this and not be offended by that.

00:21:30.460 And we, we thought this was just like part of youth, but then it didn't, they didn't shed

00:21:38.720 it and it just became more and more a cultural norm that you just don't talk this way and

00:21:44.780 you protect people.

00:21:45.700 And it's kind of a, a hyper concern for, um, you know, marginalized groups or whatever

00:21:52.380 it is.

00:21:53.180 And, uh, I don't know, it just became that way.

00:21:56.200 I don't know.

00:21:56.900 I don't know.

00:21:57.560 It's weird as well, because one of the things that I really dislike about one of the changes

00:22:02.460 that happened is, you know, the reason people go, people like doing comedy, I feel, and

00:22:08.760 playing sports is that you, not quite entirely correctly, but you still, you think these places

00:22:13.300 are meritocracies, right?

00:22:15.200 And there's been, in my opinion, a consolidated attack on merit, because as soon as you start

00:22:21.120 picking people based on things other than merit, you're, you're attacking merit, right?

00:22:24.740 Yeah.

00:22:25.400 Well, the failure of meritocracy has been, um, you know, it's a very uncomfortable issue

00:22:31.520 where that issue rears its ugly head.

00:22:34.140 Obviously the, what we're talking about, it goes beyond that, like, you know, but where,

00:22:38.940 where, where, like, for instance, you know, they have the movement is to stop testing people,

00:22:46.960 stop testing kids rather than to look, look at in the face of, of how badly they're doing.

00:22:54.740 Um, yeah, I, that, that's, I have an, I have another theory that, um, you know, that no

00:23:02.980 movement ever declares victory, right?

00:23:04.540 So that, like, just never declares victory.

00:23:06.180 So every civil rights movement just goes on forever.

00:23:09.980 And I remember one time my father once made an offhand comment that stayed with me that

00:23:14.000 every, well, everything looks, I was, it was mixing music actually.

00:23:17.200 And, uh, I was focusing on, on something and he said, well, don't listen to it that way

00:23:20.480 because everything looks bad under a microscope.

00:23:22.200 But always, that comment always stayed with me.

00:23:24.020 And I think that, you know, we look through something in a microscope and it looks ugly.

00:23:29.820 This could be the culture in the sixties and we got rid of segregation, we got rid of this

00:23:34.480 and, you know, we changed that and then it looks good and they say, okay, let's double

00:23:37.540 the magnification.

00:23:38.540 Oh my God, look at that again.

00:23:40.060 And we just keep doubling the magnification and, and we're, we're like, you know, 1012 or

00:23:45.160 2020 or whatever magnification now as a culture.

00:23:48.020 And we will always double it to expose, to make it look bad.

00:23:53.180 Like, okay, well that's good.

00:23:54.800 There's more.

00:23:55.600 So we're, we're, we're somewhere into that endless loop of just, we'll, so the things

00:24:00.120 that we're reacting to viscerally now, we react to them with the same chemical reactions

00:24:05.400 and the same intensity that we would have reacted to poses on black children trying

00:24:11.200 to go to school.

00:24:11.920 But we're reacting to things which are almost nothing.

00:24:15.620 I mean, if you told them back there, you're like, so in some way that's like a perception

00:24:20.000 problem.

00:24:20.680 We just can't ever say, well, actually things are pretty good.

00:24:24.280 You know, we'll never, we just can't do that.

00:24:25.860 No, my cause is, is, you know, gays or blacks or Jews or whatever it is. 0.68

00:24:29.500 And I will never be satisfied because there's always, I can always double the microscope and 0.87

00:24:34.120 I'll always show you things which look horrible.

00:24:36.840 That, I don't know.

00:24:37.480 Is that a, is that a.

00:24:38.000 And now we can, that's a brilliant metaphor. 0.99

00:24:39.520 And now, and this is what I was going to ask you is, now we can make that shit viral. 0.99

00:24:44.520 You stick it on social media and it gets amplified. 0.99

00:24:47.540 I didn't even think of that.

00:24:48.360 And it gets amplified.

00:24:49.560 And one of the things I was going to ask you about, you see, you know, hundreds, thousands

00:24:52.940 of comedians come through here.

00:24:54.340 One of the shifts I noticed in my lifetime in politics was when social media came, because

00:25:01.260 prior to social media, debates in the House of Commons in England, right, they were all,

00:25:07.460 it was play.

00:25:08.560 There was a lot of play.

00:25:09.820 Even though these two parties disagreed, it was robust debate, but there was a kind of,

00:25:15.040 there was a set of rules.

00:25:16.480 You know what I mean?

00:25:17.140 Yeah.

00:25:17.440 And that, those rules were, they had, there was a decorum.

00:25:20.560 There was a, there was no sense that you were here pandering to a gallery of your own

00:25:25.580 fans who all, whose only interest is that you destroy the enemy, right?

00:25:30.040 Has that changed comedy, the introduction of social media?

00:25:33.700 Do you think people now say things differently or come and do shows differently or anything

00:25:37.960 like that?

00:25:38.420 It's not just social media.

00:25:40.000 It's the fact that everything is forever.

00:25:42.260 Like everything.

00:25:42.700 So, so in, in the nineties, if somebody said something, and it happened, but somebody would

00:25:47.680 say something horrible on stage and the New York Post would actually pick it up.

00:25:51.780 And for 24 hours, people would be talking about it.

00:25:55.680 And then the, the paper would go in the garbage and, or maybe, you know, this is, I'm talking

00:26:01.380 about nineties before the, the paper would go in the garbage and the memory fades.

00:26:05.620 And unless you were going to go to the library and get microfiche, this just, it goes away.

00:26:10.680 Nothing goes away now.

00:26:12.600 If you Google somebody, whatever, that becomes the top thing that comes back.

00:26:17.040 And I mean, I worry about it now.

00:26:18.480 I'm so like, well, my great grandkids are going to see what you said about me in the 0.99

00:26:21.920 stupid Slate magazine article, you know? 0.99

00:26:24.200 And, and it really bothers me because people think it's true. 0.99

00:26:27.500 So everybody is, is very aware now that everything is forever.

00:26:31.980 And we're grappling with that.

00:26:36.140 That's changes everything.

00:26:37.760 It just, there's no half-life anymore.

00:26:40.060 Yeah.

00:26:40.380 And also what it does is it eliminates forgiveness.

00:26:45.280 Yeah.

00:26:45.960 Because you can come out and apologize.

00:26:48.340 And we've seen this numerous times where people have transgressed. 1.00

00:26:50.660 Bad fucking move. 1.00

00:26:51.560 Yeah. 1.00

00:26:52.140 And actually it makes it worse.

00:26:54.880 So you're at the point.

00:26:55.920 And I look, I believe if you've done something wrong, absolutely, absolutely apologize.

00:27:00.140 That's vital.

00:27:00.860 Otherwise you're never going to be able to build that bridge again.

00:27:03.940 But what's the point in an apology if it's only going to make the mob stronger?

00:27:09.280 Well, what is the point?

00:27:10.300 Why does somebody apologize?

00:27:11.800 I mean, are you apologizing for a strategic reason or are you apologizing because you're

00:27:14.460 sorry?

00:27:15.220 If you apologize because you're sorry, then you should say you're sorry.

00:27:18.900 And, um.

00:27:19.940 But are you going to say you're sorry if it means that the mob is going to become ever

00:27:23.940 more emboldened and do more to destroy you? 0.63

00:27:26.400 Yeah, maybe not.

00:27:27.220 So you're right.

00:27:28.600 So like, like Louis, um, in retrospect, I wonder, I don't speak about this, but I wonder

00:27:37.560 if like maybe he should have never admitted and never said he was sorry because they just

00:27:41.340 used that against him.

00:27:43.420 Um, because when you say sorry, part of saying sorry is, I guess there's different scenarios.

00:27:48.460 When you, the admission that you've done something that you could still deny or hasn't been clear

00:27:54.520 or whatever it is.

00:27:56.300 Yeah.

00:27:56.620 They, they used to be like you would, you would confess and say, well, he admitted it and

00:28:02.120 he said he's sorry.

00:28:02.980 Like Bill Clinton, when he finally came clean, this worked for him.

00:28:07.580 Um, it wasn't held against it.

00:28:09.140 Yeah.

00:28:09.260 Now, sometimes that just backfires.

00:28:14.280 I think when you are already caught red handed, if you are actually sorry, that probably doesn't

00:28:21.820 hurt you to say sorry.

00:28:23.420 It sounds like we're getting personal advice.

00:28:25.220 Yeah.

00:28:27.500 You can go through different scenarios, but there's different times when the apology,

00:28:33.520 I, I still think there's times when apology helps you.

00:28:36.560 Yeah.

00:28:37.840 And sometimes it might also might hurt you short term, but longer term, you will be happy

00:28:43.920 that you did the right thing.

00:28:45.320 And no, one of the things that really stayed with me from our last conversation.

00:28:48.640 It helped, it helped Joe Rogan.

00:28:50.380 It worked when Joe Rogan, all that N-word stuff came out.

00:28:53.720 His apology was good and it was read as sincere.

00:28:57.540 And I think it really did help him.

00:28:59.520 Yeah.

00:29:00.660 But he couldn't deny having said it.

00:29:02.220 That's the thing.

00:29:02.780 Yeah.

00:29:02.940 Right.

00:29:03.140 Because it's forever.

00:29:04.340 Yeah.

00:29:04.960 And one of the things that really stayed with me from the last time we were here and we

00:29:08.740 weren't on camera, but we were just chatting was Louis.

00:29:11.240 You mentioned him a couple of times now.

00:29:12.900 You had a very interesting take on that whole thing that I hadn't really heard from many

00:29:16.320 people.

00:29:17.380 Would you, would you talk about it?

00:29:18.940 Well, what was, what was your recollection?

00:29:20.440 Well, my, my, I don't want to put words in your mouth, but my recollection is you were

00:29:23.960 kind of like, well, I think what society is grappling with really is the fact that there

00:29:29.080 have always been and will always be people who do bad things.

00:29:32.560 And get away with it because society does not have a criminal justice system or the justice

00:29:37.240 system or whatever is never going to properly take care of every situation in which someone

00:29:41.120 did something they shouldn't have done.

00:29:42.220 Right.

00:29:42.520 And we have to have a system where we maximize as much as possible justice, getting justice

00:29:50.640 for people who are victims of something, who have been affected by something.

00:29:53.340 But that will inevitably mean that we have to find a line where it's like, well, this was

00:29:58.720 not a good thing to do.

00:29:59.900 But do we just get on Twitter or in the newspapers and end someone's career?

00:30:04.680 Let's say that's how that was the real conversation.

00:30:07.380 And your, my recollection of your take was you said, if this had been a bar person that

00:30:12.340 I employed, who, who'd done what, who was alleged to have done what Louis did, I couldn't

00:30:17.900 fire that person. 1.00

00:30:19.320 Oh yeah.

00:30:19.780 So how are you expecting me not to give this guy stage time?

00:30:23.180 I thought the whole thing was, was ridiculous in many ways that, that, um, we all know people

00:30:28.500 who've done things.

00:30:29.980 If I had a bartender who came and told me, you know, 10 years ago, I was in a violent 0.60

00:30:37.040 gang and, um, you know, we beat this shit out of people that I'm, you know, I'm sorry 0.89

00:30:42.260 about it. 0.98

00:30:42.600 I would say, oh, that's terrible.

00:30:45.260 You know, but I would, I would never in a million years think, well, I'm not, you can't

00:30:48.220 work here or you're fired or whatever it is.

00:30:50.520 Nobody does that.

00:30:52.680 Um, so the notion that I was supposed to take action against somebody who had done something

00:31:03.460 15 years ago in some other context without even getting to the idea that I don't even

00:31:09.760 know what really happened is conflicting stories is no, nobody's under oath.

00:31:13.660 Nobody, you know, this, we haven't heard anything, right?

00:31:15.840 Just a few sentences in the New York times that I, and I knew stuff about that New York

00:31:20.460 times article, which, um, which made it unreliable.

00:31:24.640 I can tell you that too.

00:31:26.020 So yeah, I think this was very much for show, but on the other hand, and this goes back to

00:31:32.660 what we were saying earlier, I didn't know it initially, but it had zero effect on business,

00:31:37.920 zero effect on business.

00:31:40.000 The, the, you would think from the papers, the seller must be empty because the world

00:31:45.620 is furious that the seller allowed Louis C.K. to perform, but actually nothing changed.

00:31:51.660 So there weren't that many people who were, who were that bothered by it, bothered by it

00:31:58.280 enough that they would stop coming to the comedy seller.

00:32:00.780 You know, they may have been bothered by what Louis admitted to doing, but you know, they,

00:32:09.020 they were, they were pretending to be much more really bothered than they were.

00:32:12.480 That's why I say Louis won a Grammy, but it was a secret ballot.

00:32:16.760 I'm sure many of those people who voted for him would never admit that they voted for him

00:32:20.800 or wouldn't have voted for him if their vote was going to go public, but privately they

00:32:24.120 didn't, you know, they didn't care enough not to give him the Grammy.

00:32:26.100 And, and that's the problem though, is not enough people are willing to stand up and

00:32:30.660 say, look, I've thought about this.

00:32:33.200 These are my opinions and this is why I'm doing this.

00:32:36.000 Yeah.

00:32:36.540 Yeah.

00:32:36.820 That's the real issue.

00:32:37.920 Because if there were more of us who go, look, there is nuance to this issue, to this

00:32:42.860 story, to whatever it may be, just because it's gone viral on a social media platform and

00:32:48.320 everybody's saying that this person is, you know, an abuser, whatever else, doesn't mean

00:32:53.780 that's the whole truth.

00:32:55.020 Well, let me tell you a story about the times.

00:32:57.380 I don't know if you use this or not use it, but this is, but I interviewed Malina Rizik,

00:33:01.440 who I like very much.

00:33:02.420 She's the writer who, who broke that story.

00:33:06.940 And originally there was a rumor around on gawker.com, I think it was, about these stories about

00:33:16.860 Louis.

00:33:17.260 And the, the, the, the rumor was that he had blocked the door.

00:33:20.560 I wouldn't let these women leave. 1.00

00:33:22.400 So this was what everybody knew.

00:33:23.980 So then the, the story came out and then she interviewed the, the women in question. 0.95

00:33:31.120 And there was nothing about this in the story.

00:33:32.620 So I asked her, did you ask the women whether he blocked the door?

00:33:37.560 Because that was the part of the story, which was most disturbing because that could actually

00:33:42.940 be a crime.

00:33:43.520 And she said, yeah, I did ask them.

00:33:47.000 He didn't block the door.

00:33:48.840 I said, well, why didn't you write that in your article?

00:33:51.700 She says, I didn't think it was relevant.

00:33:54.220 I said, well, you would have thought it was relevant if they had said yes.

00:33:57.780 She said, yeah, but they said no.

00:34:00.360 This is, I mean, you could listen to my, it's like, so that immediate, like, like, like,

00:34:03.880 that's the kind of thing you don't know what you're reading.

00:34:08.840 I mean, I was outraged by that.

00:34:10.380 And then later on, I was interviewed by the Times and they wanted, when Louis came back,

00:34:17.240 this was after he came back and they wanted a statement from me.

00:34:20.220 I said, I'll give you my statement if you promise to run it verbatim. 0.99

00:34:23.860 And I'm so stupid. 0.99

00:34:24.800 She says, I don't see any problem with that. 1.00

00:34:26.400 No, that's not a yes, right?

00:34:27.540 Now we know that.

00:34:30.060 You're the Louis.

00:34:31.840 But I couldn't, so I gave her my statement.

00:34:33.860 I said, listen, I don't get it.

00:34:35.120 You know, Bill Clinton was, you know, Monica Lewinsky was just disinvited from a, this was

00:34:40.000 a, from a party, remember that story?

00:34:41.840 Because Bill Clinton was going to attend and Mike Tyson is starring on Broadway.

00:34:46.900 So I, you know, these people are accused of basically the same thing or worse as Louis.

00:34:52.360 So I don't see any, I don't see any objective standard here.

00:34:56.620 And I like to operate by principles and objective standards.

00:35:02.220 And I, so something like that.

00:35:03.300 And she says, if you're going to mention Bill Clinton, we can't run the statement.

00:35:08.040 And I said, but that's my answer.

00:35:09.780 You want to know, I'm the newsmaker here.

00:35:11.360 You want to know what my reason, this is actually what I'm thinking when you're asking me,

00:35:16.060 why did I do this?

00:35:17.400 She said, well, we're not going to run it if you're going to use Bill Clinton.

00:35:21.280 So they rewrote my statement and I, and I signed off on it.

00:35:25.040 And it doesn't mention Bill Clinton.

00:35:26.620 But they actually massaged the news to satisfy them to the extent that, you know, I was the

00:35:35.000 news, which I must've been because they wanted, you know, the story was about me.

00:35:38.980 People have no idea that this kind of stuff goes on.

00:35:42.620 But I think they're becoming more aware of it now though, when they've seen how the mainstream

00:35:47.680 media have not been honest in a wide variety of different subjects.

00:35:51.760 It's crazy when you think about it.

00:35:54.820 Like they're asking me, why did you, if it was a TV show like Face the Nation, I would

00:36:01.100 have said that.

00:36:01.700 They couldn't have stopped it.

00:36:02.580 But just to think, to be a journalist and to think that it's okay to put your own fingerprints

00:36:11.280 on the story is such a corruption of what journalism is.

00:36:16.360 Your fingerprint should never be on the facts of the story as reported.

00:36:20.160 Well, I mean, it's been my experience that no amount of faith in the media survives first

00:36:25.740 contact with the media.

00:36:26.760 I mean, and that seems to be your experience.

00:36:29.100 But do you think that in covering the story, like the big beasts, the Louis CKs of the world,

00:36:38.600 you know, I was actually troubled by what the revelations were, the allegations at least

00:36:42.640 were to some extent.

00:36:43.460 But nonetheless, it sounds like, from your experience, that these are just scalps.

00:36:48.880 This is a scalp for the journalist to get. 0.99

00:36:51.740 They don't give a shit about Louis CK playing here or not playing here or anything. 0.96

00:36:55.480 It's just somebody, a big guy they can take down so they can pin it on the wall and just 0.98

00:37:00.040 go, we got this guy.

00:37:01.700 Well, you're troubled by the allegations, of course.

00:37:04.260 And I mean, I had a big fight with Michael Barbaro about this.

00:37:07.240 And of course, he didn't run that in the interview either, where he was accusing me of blaming

00:37:10.500 the victim.

00:37:11.080 I'm like, what are you talking about?

00:37:12.280 Like, what did you point to me?

00:37:15.360 One thing I've ever said to blame them.

00:37:16.880 Of course, the allegations are troubling because they're allegations of misbehavior.

00:37:24.440 The mistake is that to think that we want to embrace a secondary system of justice, a scarlet

00:37:34.020 letter system of justice, where a mob decides, based on New York Times stories, a couple sentences

00:37:41.740 as biased as biased as what I've been describing, to decide they know what's happened.

00:37:47.200 And now we're going to mete out punishments way worse than any court of law would ever have

00:37:54.620 contemplated for what these allegations are.

00:37:57.480 People do things that are bad, and that's just the way it is, and you can't get to the bottom

00:38:07.900 of it.

00:38:08.360 But it's deeper than that.

00:38:10.400 Even if you could get to the bottom of it, I am not, I don't know, I just, I don't feel

00:38:16.840 like I would punish any employee.

00:38:22.480 Louie's not my employee, but just, you know, if I found out that they had done something

00:38:27.000 bad in their life.

00:38:28.300 If I had joked, like, if everybody does something bad in their life that they should be ashamed

00:38:32.200 of, were to disappear, like that last scene in Infinity Wars, you just see people, everybody

00:38:37.800 like, you too?

00:38:39.440 Him?

00:38:39.980 Like, I never, grandma?

00:38:41.440 Like, that's the way it is?

00:38:42.760 Like, who are we kidding?

00:38:47.340 But that's reality, right?

00:38:48.800 Yeah.

00:38:48.900 People do, how many dudes do we know who have not at some point in their life done something

00:38:55.980 they were ashamed of in a sexual situation with a woman? 0.97

00:39:01.720 It was, I can't believe I fucking, you know, I got carried, you know, like, this is bad. 0.96

00:39:04.520 I'm not forgiving them at all. 0.72

00:39:06.360 Not at all.

00:39:07.680 Not at all.

00:39:09.100 I'm just saying that this is the way human people are, and if something rises to the level

00:39:15.120 of a crime, then we have a system for that.

00:39:18.960 And that system, you know, considers people innocent, so proven guilty, and then you really

00:39:23.620 have to prove that they're guilty.

00:39:25.980 And like I had said to this New York Times reporter, I said, there's one little thing

00:39:28.960 that you spent two sentences on.

00:39:30.980 This could have been like five hours of testimony from this side, from that.

00:39:35.340 Like, we don't really know all the nuance of what we're describing here.

00:39:39.600 Certainly not in any way to say, and because of these two sentences, nobody should ever hire

00:39:43.760 this person again.

00:39:44.580 They should become a ward of the state.

00:39:46.920 Like, you know, not even 7-Eleven should hire them.

00:39:49.000 Literally, they should get a check from the government and stay home, because this, you

00:39:53.500 know, and that's, you know, they don't follow anything through to their logical consequence,

00:39:57.460 because that's what rage is.

00:39:58.520 It's not a, you know.

00:39:59.720 It's absolutely, and it's not just what rage.

00:40:01.880 For me, when I saw that, the Me Too movement, I made the point, which a lot of people at the

00:40:08.420 time got very upset by, and they were like, this is justice.

00:40:10.640 I said, no, this is not justice.

00:40:11.980 This is revenge.

00:40:13.060 And revenge and justice are two very different things.

00:40:16.720 Yeah, yeah.

00:40:17.440 And I think that, you know, the urge for justice, I mean, it's righteous in some way, but there's

00:40:30.540 a lot of damage that's, collateral damage that's caused by that.

00:40:34.360 It's just a lot.

00:40:35.020 And, of course, the inconsistent application of it is repulsive.

00:40:41.880 I mean, it's just repulsive.

00:40:42.700 I mean, you're even seeing it, it's kind of like with Clarence Thomas.

00:40:46.600 I don't know the nature of, I don't know if you could follow this, you know, he has a

00:40:50.420 rich person who he's friends with, who, you know, he's taking vacations with and maybe

00:40:55.940 had bought some real estate.

00:40:57.920 I don't know.

00:40:58.420 And people are outraged by this.

00:41:01.960 This is nothing in an objective sense compared to, I'm going to give the vice president's

00:41:07.300 son millions of dollars for a fictitious job because I know his dad is overseeing the

00:41:14.900 policies that directly affect me.

00:41:16.680 So, everybody's furious at Clarence Thomas.

00:41:20.880 This very, very same people who, you know, who are defending like this, this Hunter Biden

00:41:25.260 doesn't make policy.

00:41:26.340 Like, you know, so the application of it is so inconsistent.

00:41:30.540 And you see this over and over and over again.

00:41:32.760 So, Bill Clinton, he's pretty credibly accused of rape, as credibly accused as, you know, and

00:41:42.020 nobody cares. 0.98

00:41:43.040 The problem is it's all, if it's a team game, then people don't give a shit about the truth 0.98

00:41:47.960 anymore. 0.98

00:41:48.340 It's about the team.

00:41:49.240 Well, yeah, the people who was, who told us, listen, lying about sex is different.

00:41:55.300 I don't know if you guys are old enough.

00:41:56.240 This was the Bill Clinton thing.

00:41:57.400 Yeah.

00:41:57.760 So now, of course, you know, and that was even a little glib because Bill Clinton was

00:42:03.340 accused of lying about sex, but he was lying about sex in the context of trying to get

00:42:07.520 himself out from under what was, what amounted to a sexual assault charge from Paula Jones.

00:42:13.040 So he was perjuring himself, perjury's a serious guy, he's perjuring himself in, and this was

00:42:18.280 a matter of evidence which had been passed recently that this is considered relevant

00:42:22.820 to these charges or this kind of lawsuit.

00:42:26.140 And so he lied about sex in that context.

00:42:29.220 And the very same people who were, you know, that's just lying about sex. 0.95

00:42:32.640 Like, and Trump paid off that mistress and, you know, like, and, and the, the hypocrisy 0.97

00:42:37.980 is so rank and they don't like, I don't know. 0.53

00:42:43.360 Do they not see it in themselves or they don't care or I don't know what it is, but you're

00:42:47.140 right.

00:42:47.300 It's just, it's all team oriented.

00:42:49.340 And this is the danger of one of the dangers of mob justice.

00:42:54.600 People who are hated.

00:42:55.860 I experienced this in my own organization.

00:42:59.420 People who are disliked never get a fair shake.

00:43:01.820 That's just the way it is.

00:43:02.940 That's one of the lessons of life.

00:43:04.580 And I see it over and over and over again.

00:43:07.320 And people who are beloved will always get a pass.

00:43:12.040 Yeah.

00:43:13.040 And, and people who have the right opinions are going to be judged much less harshly than

00:43:18.320 those who have the wrong opinions and may even do a far, you know, a far worse, a far

00:43:24.180 less, less worse crime.

00:43:25.800 I don't know if it's the case here, but certainly in the UK, the nicer comedian is on stage,

00:43:30.260 the worse they are off stage and vice versa.

00:43:32.780 Oh, I don't know about that.

00:43:33.760 Oh, no, no, no.

00:43:34.500 Like if the male, all the male feminists, they're secretly groping someone in the green room 1.00

00:43:37.980 is how it tends to work.

00:43:39.340 I don't, I don't doubt that at all. 0.86

00:43:42.240 I mean, Trump is, you know, he has a consensual affair with a mistress.

00:43:46.240 You can stop me.

00:43:47.480 Allegedly.

00:43:48.100 Yeah.

00:43:49.280 Allegedly.

00:43:50.480 We have to say that in the UK so we don't get sued.

00:43:53.060 You don't have that problem.

00:43:53.420 Allegedly has a consensual.

00:43:54.500 And, um, allegedly consensual.

00:43:57.180 Allegedly.

00:43:59.160 Allegedly.

00:43:59.400 I'm pretty sure it was consensual.

00:44:00.740 Give him an amount of money.

00:44:01.580 And then, and then she's obviously hitting him up for money because nobody just, and people

00:44:06.320 want to see, could anybody actually be upset with him about it?

00:44:10.100 It makes no sense.

00:44:11.680 But he's hated, so he's never going to get a fair shake.

00:44:14.040 Yeah.

00:44:14.260 And the other thing that upset me about the Louis thing was,

00:44:18.020 people going, oh, you know, I used to really like him and now I can never like him again.

00:44:24.740 And you just go, when did we want our artists to be perfect human beings?

00:44:30.480 Artists are flawed.

00:44:31.620 Like, I read an article in The Guardian a few weeks ago about protests outside a Picasso

00:44:36.160 exhibition because apparently he wasn't great with women. 0.86

00:44:39.340 Huh?

00:44:40.480 And you go, who cares?

00:44:42.720 Yeah, listen, you know, that's the problem.

00:44:45.780 You get sucked into a certain line of thought.

00:44:48.040 And if you follow to his natural conclusion, the, the outcomes are just, the cure becomes

00:44:53.720 worse than the disease.

00:44:54.680 I had a similar experience years ago.

00:44:56.780 This is, you know, when things weren't like they were now, I had, um, but this was at the

00:45:00.780 time when, when Louis Farrakhan was in the news for saying Hitler was a great man or whatever

00:45:04.880 it is.

00:45:05.280 When he first came out that he was, you know, really an anti-Semite.

00:45:08.120 And I had a musician I was working with who walked in with a Farrakhan t-shirt.

00:45:14.020 I remember, and, and, and I didn't even, I, I couldn't rule out that he was wearing it

00:45:20.700 on purpose. 0.99

00:45:21.160 Like, just like to fuck with me a little bit. 0.99

00:45:24.380 And I remember, what am I going to do about this? 1.00

00:45:25.900 Am I going to make a comment?

00:45:26.960 You know?

00:45:28.120 And I said to myself, I'll just let it go. 1.00

00:45:29.880 Like, don't be a jerk. 1.00

00:45:30.580 Like, who cares? 1.00

00:45:31.520 Like, and then who cares is actually very constructive.

00:45:33.780 Now, of course, if you, if you transplant that today, if I had to, if I had an

00:45:38.080 employee who wore a Farrakhan t-shirt and I told him like, go change or whatever, people

00:45:43.420 would be outraged, right?

00:45:44.480 I'd be, but if I had someone who came in and wore some sort of, uh, anti-black t-shirt

00:45:49.780 and I said it was okay, people would freak out at me for that too.

00:45:54.820 So it's just, you know, and, but obviously the totally contradictory, they're both basically

00:45:59.460 the same, right? 0.92

00:46:00.180 He's a vicious anti-Semite. 1.00

00:46:01.580 This person's a racist. 0.99

00:46:02.820 So again, they, they, they, they, they'll pick and choose. 0.95

00:46:06.840 They will, they'll, well, I'm not going to say it again.

00:46:09.480 So, so my attitude is it's just better if we just let things go.

00:46:14.180 I don't want more laws, but if, if there was a law which forbid business owners from taking

00:46:22.120 any actions whatsoever based on the private lives, politics, and any sense of their employees,

00:46:29.200 I think that would be great.

00:46:31.080 So I can just say, listen, I have no choice.

00:46:32.740 I, I know they're a Nazi, but you know, I'm compelled to, to hire Nazis because it's, 0.86

00:46:38.860 it's impossible.

00:46:40.220 It's an impossible, it's not good.

00:46:41.740 But see, you cannot, you only get to say that.

00:46:43.860 Well, there's two reasons you get to say that. 0.99

00:46:45.360 First of all, you don't give a shit. 1.00

00:46:46.380 You own your own club and who gives a fuck. 1.00

00:46:48.340 But really the reason you get to say that is you're Jewish, right? 0.99

00:46:51.900 You can say that a, just a non-Jewish person couldn't say that. 1.00

00:46:57.060 No, couldn't say that.

00:46:57.800 Right?

00:46:58.200 And that's kind of the world we're in, I think.

00:47:00.500 Like, that is the world we're in.

00:47:01.560 And so even those of us who I think resent the very idea of identity politics, I think 0.99

00:47:06.980 it's really stupid and quite dangerous, actually. 0.99

00:47:09.660 We're still playing by their rules, aren't we? 1.00

00:47:12.980 Yeah.

00:47:13.500 Sometimes it's impossible to get out from under it, you know.

00:47:16.200 I try to get out from under it in my own home.

00:47:18.960 You know, my wife is Puerto Rican and Indian. 1.00

00:47:23.780 But my kids are all, you know, extremely aware of identity and everything.

00:47:30.040 And that's purely from what they're learning in school.

00:47:32.060 And it upsets me, you know.

00:47:33.940 I don't know if you've heard this story.

00:47:35.680 My daughter came home in the first grade.

00:47:37.940 Now, my daughter, I don't think she had any idea that my wife and I were different colors.

00:47:41.320 I don't know what it was like through the eyes of a first grader, but there never been

00:47:46.020 any indication that she understood anything much about race.

00:47:50.360 And she came home and says, Daddy, you're white, right?

00:47:53.780 Like, and I said, yeah.

00:47:55.480 She says, do you treat people badly?

00:47:58.100 I'm like, no.

00:47:58.640 What are you talking about?

00:47:59.400 Did you ever see Daddy treat anybody badly? 0.92

00:48:01.320 She says, well, we learned in school that white people treat people badly.

00:48:05.860 I said, you learned that white people, she said, or maybe that white people used to treat 0.98

00:48:08.840 people badly. 0.59

00:48:10.140 Like, she couldn't process it. 0.82

00:48:12.380 And I wanted to go up to the school and, you know, scream bloody murder.

00:48:16.860 But I didn't because I'm a coward, because I know that I'm kind of high profile and somebody

00:48:20.740 would, you know, and then I'd go viral, whatever it is.

00:48:23.220 It was really angering.

00:48:24.300 My daughter was, I still believe in Santa Claus, because her mother's not Jewish. 1.00

00:48:29.160 My daughter's still believe in Santa Claus.

00:48:31.560 And I don't know, to make themselves feel better, these, you know, expert educators

00:48:37.880 think that they need to start teaching her stuff at an age where she really can't comprehend

00:48:42.400 it. 1.00

00:48:43.180 This is why I hate this shit, man. 1.00

00:48:45.000 This is why. 1.00

00:48:46.100 They're re-racializing society and they're brainwashing kids into shit that you have to 1.00

00:48:51.100 put in their heads for them to actually. 1.00

00:48:53.480 A seven or eight year old doesn't think about race and this person's this and this person's

00:48:58.740 that and these people did, because they're smarter than these 30 year old educators.

00:49:03.900 They know not to do that.

00:49:06.020 Well, you know, one of the things I've said to people in the past is, you know, maybe it

00:49:12.160 would be healthy to start by visualizing where we'd like to be someday.

00:49:16.980 If the goal is to be a non, a society, you know, multiracial society that doesn't consider 0.98

00:49:23.920 race, that considers race as, you know, as Sam Harris wants to say, as inconsequential

00:49:27.420 as hair color, like, then much of what we're doing now is obviously wrong because there

00:49:34.160 is no path from what we're doing now to what we claim we want, the eventual outcome.

00:49:38.700 Even on the issue of, when that issue of blackface came up, I'm not soft on blackface. 0.92

00:49:44.580 But there was this thing where you have little kids who, you know, want to go as Black Panther.

00:49:53.760 And it's kind of tragic in a sense.

00:49:56.980 No, we will never let you little kids go as Black Panther because we want you to always 0.99

00:50:02.560 be imprisoned to the past mocking of black people as blackface.

00:50:08.820 As opposed to maybe at some point we have to say, well, okay, we can teach about the

00:50:14.020 past, but we can also embrace a new future where actually every little kid can dress up

00:50:19.920 as his heroes of whatever color.

00:50:23.720 Maybe that's naive.

00:50:24.420 I don't know.

00:50:24.860 But you'd think that is the goal, right?

00:50:27.880 Wouldn't that be, it's like, wouldn't that be beautiful?

00:50:29.880 Someday in the future, this didn't matter anymore.

00:50:32.120 And if you're a little, if you're a little white kid, love Black Panther, he could dress

00:50:35.460 up as Black Panther for Halloween.

00:50:36.760 No, no, no, no.

00:50:38.340 We shall never allow that because we will always want to be imprisoned by what happened

00:50:43.200 in the past.

00:50:43.940 That doesn't seem to be smart.

00:50:46.800 No, it doesn't.

00:50:47.540 And one of the things that I, one of the things that I think sums this up beautifully is the

00:50:52.080 fact we talk about slavery and the West African slave trade, which was obviously awful, but

00:50:57.080 we don't talk about the fact that we have modern slavery and it enslaves millions of

00:51:03.080 people all around the world.

00:51:04.700 Yeah, Coleman Hughes has talked about that, that we're more psychologically obsessed with

00:51:11.840 slavery in the past than slavery today.

00:51:14.880 Now, of course, slavery is obviously something we need to be extremely concerned about and

00:51:22.020 study and, and try to untangle to the extent that it's real, how it still impacts our history

00:51:31.740 today.

00:51:32.480 Having said that, you know, that doesn't mean that every single thing which is attributed

00:51:35.700 to slavery is actually, you know, because of slavery, right?

00:51:38.960 Yeah, yeah.

00:51:39.580 And you guys feel like you have the right to talk about that.

00:51:43.700 Like, well, let's, somebody said that slavery is responsible for today's economic prosperity.

00:51:48.880 Some economists disagree.

00:51:50.180 Let's have a interview with an economist who has, people will call you a racist.

00:51:56.020 It's an empirical issue, right?

00:51:57.560 Yeah.

00:51:58.000 Well, it, it, it ought to be, but it's not.

00:52:00.600 And I, I, that's, I think one of the big problems in society now is so many things are

00:52:05.320 an empirical issue, but we don't talk about them in that way at all.

00:52:08.560 It's all, it's all about people's feelings and emotion and that gets melded into, which is

00:52:14.400 why we're all uncomfortable talking about it.

00:52:17.120 Actually, all of us, because it's, we know that, that that is not an issue about which

00:52:22.540 people can be empirical in modern society.

00:52:24.580 I think that's where we've got to.

00:52:25.800 Anyway, we've got about 10 minutes left.

00:52:28.440 Now, what are your, what are your plans for, for the seller?

00:52:32.980 You know, what do you see, what do you see coming and culturally and in every, like, just

00:52:39.240 what are you thinking about?

00:52:40.500 Well, we just bought a new building around the corner that used to be a McDonald's and

00:52:45.500 we're going to open another club.

00:52:49.260 Of course, in New York, it takes, it takes forever to get anything open.

00:52:56.180 So we're building a new club.

00:52:57.060 It's going to take a long time.

00:52:58.960 Zooming out, I'm very much, and this came from, you know, the way my father lived his

00:53:03.980 life, I'm very much, I see everything that I do essentially as trying to enjoy myself.

00:53:12.440 And I really don't distinguish very much between my work, my music, my kids, whatever it is.

00:53:17.520 So what's in store for me is, you know, whatever interests me and, you know, money is, you know,

00:53:28.240 a very fortunate byproduct of everything that I've done, but I'm, I consider myself so fortunate.

00:53:33.540 Like my father used to say that most people, he said, no, most people hate their jobs.

00:53:39.220 Most people can't wait for the weekend.

00:53:41.340 This is never be one of those people, you know.

00:53:43.080 So that's why I didn't become a lawyer.

00:53:45.500 And I just, you know, every day I just do whatever I want to do.

00:53:50.680 Like, it makes me happy.

00:53:51.980 Noam, you've seen some of the greatest comedians in the world come through here.

00:53:56.060 What makes a great comedian?

00:53:58.500 Being funny?

00:53:59.400 No.

00:54:03.100 There's no, there's no one thing.

00:54:04.360 It's like what makes a great musician.

00:54:05.360 There's no one thing, but it is, it is, it, it, repetitively you see is a healthy dose

00:54:13.820 of charisma.

00:54:15.540 That's a big thing.

00:54:16.420 The same, the same exact lines and, you know, coming out of two different mouths is not the

00:54:20.560 same line.

00:54:24.240 Of course, you have to be funny, whatever that means.

00:54:26.980 Um, and I, I think that, although I hate to say this because it's, you know, I, I hear

00:54:35.500 the comedians saying it all the time.

00:54:37.220 The audience does read you if you're not, uh, honest and true to yourself.

00:54:42.920 They, they, they really can smell a hack.

00:54:45.680 And so you do have to be yourself.

00:54:49.140 And, and, and these are, I think the same general rules that apply almost to all art

00:54:56.180 forms.

00:54:56.580 I don't think it's unique to comedy.

00:54:58.360 I remember reading the first, uh, page of Isaac Stern, the famous classical violinist,

00:55:03.460 his autobiography, and he talks about his mindset that he gets on a stage.

00:55:07.860 I think classical music now is important to understand.

00:55:10.000 This is just notes written on the page.

00:55:11.740 There's no latitude, right?

00:55:13.560 There's no latitude, there's no, like, and he says, you have to get out there and you

00:55:16.860 say, you will listen to me.

00:55:18.540 And like, he talked about this, this amazingly bold, charismatic mindset of a classical musician.

00:55:26.080 Like, listen to me, you know, this is an attitude that, um, that performers have in every, uh, art

00:55:34.980 form of performance that I think is common in the successful ones.

00:55:39.680 There's something about them.

00:55:40.900 And they just understand about gripping that audience, whatever it takes.

00:55:45.320 And when you see, you know, people like Patrice O'Neill, who used to grip, who used to grace

00:55:50.640 your stage.

00:55:51.920 Grace is not young.

00:55:54.380 We had a, we had a rocky relationship with, with Patrice actually.

00:55:57.760 Yeah.

00:55:57.880 How come?

00:55:58.320 Um, well, Patrice used to, if, listen, Patrice was a genius and Patrice is one of the most.

00:56:08.880 Can I just stop you there?

00:56:09.780 What do you mean by Patrice was a genius?

00:56:11.800 What does that mean?

00:56:14.220 Patrice was a top, you know, 10th of 1% insightful person.

00:56:21.220 And he saw things and spoke honestly about real things in the human condition that people

00:56:29.920 were feeling and thinking about, which stayed with people.

00:56:33.480 And, and I think, um, have really stood the test of time.

00:56:36.220 And maybe his, his respect has only grown since he, he died.

00:56:41.660 Um, and the comedians revere him.

00:56:43.960 Mm-hmm.

00:56:44.520 We do.

00:56:44.900 Yeah.

00:56:45.600 Having said that, you've seen the cold, you know, was, or how do you pronounce that

00:56:52.780 word?

00:56:53.000 O-E-V-E-R-E-U-V-E-R-E-U-V-E-U-V-E-U. 0.99

00:56:55.980 Is that the right word?

00:56:56.740 Yeah, I think so.

00:56:57.160 Of Patrice, right?

00:56:58.920 Day to day, Patrice was a, was a, was a more mixed bag.

00:57:03.200 So if Patrice didn't do well, he would take a flamethrower to the room.

00:57:08.500 I mean, he would be, you know, lay into people in the audience. 0.98

00:57:11.500 He did not give a shit about the fact that there was a show that had to continue for another hour and 15 minutes after he left the stage. 0.97

00:57:21.480 And that obviously caused friction with, you know, money-grubbing club owners like me. 0.99

00:57:30.300 You know, on top of everything, artistry-wise, in my opinion,

00:57:36.860 there is still a certain social contract that a performer has with an audience who has made their plans,

00:57:43.980 gotten a babysitter, put down their money, and comes and expects to see your good-faith effort to entertain them.

00:57:51.800 And he was one of those comedians, rest in peace, I love the guy, who didn't feel he had to honor that social contract.

00:58:00.580 If this is about me, if I'm not feeling it, or if I'm pissed off, I have no responsibility to the room or the audience or whatever it is.

00:58:08.560 So that was the nature of our friction.

00:58:11.400 But nobody ever, we never, I mean, he always worked here, and nobody ever thought he wasn't funny.

00:58:16.480 But wasn't that part of what made him great?

00:58:19.620 Yes, it was.

00:58:20.800 And this is, I mean, yeah, you can't slice and dice people, and oftentimes a negative quality in somebody is also part of what has made them successful

00:58:35.800 and contributes to their positive qualities. 0.54

00:58:37.960 People, there was some dumb club owner who was complaining about Seinfeld being snooty to him or sarcastic with him. 0.53

00:58:44.060 And I'm like, do you think Seinfeld would be Seinfeld if he, like, you want to take out the essence of Seinfeld 0.94

00:58:50.520 and think that everything you love about Seinfeld would still exist?

00:58:54.380 This is who he is.

00:58:55.180 That's why he's funny.

00:58:56.500 That's his sensibility.

00:58:57.600 That's why he became the most successful comedian in the world.

00:59:00.420 And that's why you got a little sarcasm in person.

00:59:03.920 So you can't pick and choose.

00:59:06.440 The Patrice thing was significant.

00:59:07.820 You know, it was, there were, I think there was a chair thrown.

00:59:11.760 Like, it was really, like, when Patrice went out, we were all, like, sweating bullets.

00:59:15.900 Like, you know, let's just, but we always put him on because we always recognized what a great talent he was.

00:59:23.840 There was a time he didn't perform here for a while.

00:59:25.540 He had a thing with my father or some sort of fight, but that's another matter altogether.

00:59:29.220 He was very mean to my father one time.

00:59:31.240 And who were the people who produced the greatest work on the stage, looking back?

00:59:37.180 Who were the people that when you saw them, you went, wow, that's so different from what?

00:59:42.040 Anybody else is doing.

00:59:44.220 So different?

00:59:46.100 Or brilliant?

00:59:47.340 Yeah.

00:59:47.640 The ones who were brilliant, you know, it's no, this is the thing.

00:59:52.240 It's obvious to everybody who the brilliant ones are.

00:59:56.620 There's no club owner or booker who has any particularly deep insight.

01:00:03.260 Like, when Chappelle was, like, 18 or 19, whatever he was, the first time he came on, and my father said something like this, you would not have needed to speak English. 0.86

01:00:13.560 You could have just been in the room hearing a foreign gibberish tongue and said, holy shit, that 19-year-old must be something special. 0.95

01:00:21.840 It's obvious. 0.97

01:00:23.020 And all these greats, like Jon Stewart, Dave Chappelle, Michael Che, you know, all of them, virtually all, not 100% of all of them, but almost all of them.

01:00:33.400 But I can remember the first time I saw them because it was like, it was ingrained in my memory.

01:00:41.680 And that's not just, like, I've forgotten the people.

01:00:45.460 It really is something real.

01:00:46.760 I can remember them very well because they were just, they cut something into your brain.

01:00:52.380 And it may not have been necessarily what they were saying.

01:00:56.760 It's the whole thing together.

01:00:58.460 And, Noam, this is perhaps a sad question to ask, or it depends on your answer, I suppose.

01:01:02.540 But if you inherited this from your father who built it up, do you think if your kids were interested in continuing to run it,

01:01:10.260 I'm not asking about them specifically.

01:01:12.060 I'm asking more about stand-up comedy as a genre.

01:01:14.960 Like, are people 20 years from now still going to want to come out and sit in and have the meat suit experience,

01:01:21.300 sitting here with 120 other strangers and watching a guy on stage, or are they just going to be on their phones?

01:01:28.060 No, I think, well, let me answer and tell you what it made me think of.

01:01:33.180 Absolutely.

01:01:33.740 I think that the idea of people wanting to go out with human contact, live, seeing something real,

01:01:41.320 I don't, I think this is human nature, and I don't think it's, I don't think it's going away.

01:01:47.100 I really don't think it's going away.

01:01:48.520 As much as everybody is on their phones now all the time, business is way, way busier than it's ever been.

01:01:55.920 So I think social contact is one of the basic human instincts.

01:02:01.880 I don't know if it's interesting to you, I did not want to take over the Comedy Cellar

01:02:06.980 because I did not want to be, compared to my father, who was a much, really a larger-than-life person.

01:02:16.480 So I worry about that for my kids.

01:02:19.400 I had already had major success with something I liked doing, and then my father and I kind of had to take over the Comedy Cellar,

01:02:29.040 and I did not, I was not immediately embraced or respected by the comedians.

01:02:36.520 And I knew that, they weren't mean to me, but it's the kids taking it over.

01:02:44.520 And this is a group of people who were, by nature, looked to make fun of everything.

01:02:49.840 So it was only after I think that I actually made certain moves and expanded the place and grew the place

01:02:57.500 and various things where I kind of rose to the occasion that I think if I get some respect now, it's because I earned it.

01:03:05.020 I don't know necessarily if my kids will be able to do that.

01:03:08.800 And if they can't, it can be psychologically damaging to them.

01:03:15.760 And, you know, there's a lot of kids out there of famous people or successful people who were miserable

01:03:23.020 and just they can never get out from under the shadow of their parents, Ron Reagan Jr. types, you know, like, you know.

01:03:29.900 I've never heard of him. I didn't know he existed.

01:03:31.780 Oh, you didn't know? I think that's your point.

01:03:33.360 Oh, no. So he spoke. Anyway, so I want my kids, this is such a fantastic lifestyle.

01:03:41.380 Like, you come to work and it's fun, whatever it is, and the money's good, and you meet interesting people.

01:03:45.880 So I would love to have that. I'd love for my kids to have that for themselves.

01:03:50.060 But I also want them to have a certain sense of their own accomplishments.

01:03:55.200 And I don't know how much room for growth there will be or what they can do.

01:03:59.780 If they can't accomplish or put their own, you know, what's the word, put their own stamp on the business,

01:04:08.280 they may never feel that good about it. I don't know.

01:04:11.360 No, it's been a pleasure. It's great to chat.

01:04:14.140 Was the answer?

01:04:15.220 That's great.

01:04:16.040 Because, you know, you have a deadpan stare, you know.

01:04:18.820 Yeah, it's just our faces.

01:04:19.900 You're like a comedian, always worried about how good your answer was.

01:04:22.840 Listen, it's been a pleasure to chat.

01:04:25.440 We're going to take you to locals where we ask questions from our audience.

01:04:28.620 But before we go there, we always end the main interview with the same question,

01:04:31.740 which is, what's the one thing we're not talking about as a society that you think really should be?

01:04:37.000 Oh, you know, does everybody have to answer this question?

01:04:39.660 Yes.

01:04:40.380 You will answer the question?

01:04:42.900 Well, this is, you know, because we've really talked about the things we should be talking about,

01:04:49.060 I would say that this may be not exactly the answer to your question,

01:04:54.660 but personally, one thing that disturbs me that is not being adequately spoken about,

01:05:01.080 and this is a very personal matter to me,

01:05:03.440 is what I consider to be the very important defenses for the state of Israel,

01:05:10.780 which young Jewish people, and I'm not excusing whatever things Israel does wrong, 1.00

01:05:21.260 but young Jewish people, even intellectual Jewish people, 0.99

01:05:25.320 are so ignorant about the history of that country 0.99

01:05:30.660 and why it's in the predicament that it is 0.95

01:05:33.440 and how it has tried to extricate itself from that predicament,

01:05:37.800 that they are unable to have the argument anymore.

01:05:44.200 They basically just nod their head in shame.

01:05:48.120 And I think this is actually dangerous,

01:05:50.740 not only for Israel, but for the Jewish people all over the world.

01:05:54.500 And I don't know what can be done about that,

01:05:56.540 but that is something that's on my mind.

01:05:58.840 And this is not to say that Israel is right about everything, 0.87

01:06:01.260 but there is something that needs to be,

01:06:05.220 there are things that are not being said.

01:06:07.480 And as they say, you know, if you're not for yourself, who will be?

01:06:10.080 If Jewish people can't make their own arguments, 1.00

01:06:12.780 no one is going to make it for them, and that worries me.

01:06:14.900 So what needs to be said?

01:06:16.900 I'm not going to go into the whole, you know,

01:06:18.260 but like I ask smart, young Jewish people,

01:06:22.200 do you know how it is that Israel came into the occupied territories?

01:06:27.140 No.

01:06:28.480 Like this is like the most fundamental question about the whole couple.

01:06:30.800 Like, why is that territory occupied?

01:06:33.740 Do you know about the Clinton attempts to make peace?

01:06:38.000 Do you know what the second intifada was?

01:06:39.620 No.

01:06:40.680 They don't know any of this stuff.

01:06:42.400 So in their minds, they've internalized that,

01:06:45.000 you know, we are like Afrikaners.

01:06:46.820 We're an apartheid state, you know.

01:06:49.240 And so like when I went to college,

01:06:52.500 I took a semester abroad in Israel.

01:06:55.340 And this was a perfectly okay thing to do.

01:06:57.380 I read stories all the time now about like kids at Columbia

01:07:00.200 and I would never think about taking a semester abroad in Israel.

01:07:02.920 We have a Jewish star in the window of the olive tree upstairs.

01:07:06.840 This has been there my whole life.

01:07:09.040 And most of my existence,

01:07:12.160 this was seen by the general public as no different

01:07:14.840 than an Italian flag in a pizzeria.

01:07:16.920 Nobody really gave it any thought.

01:07:18.800 In recent years, people say to me,

01:07:20.280 good for you or are you taking a stand, are you?

01:07:23.380 You know, like they're seeing it as this almost like

01:07:25.220 a defiant political statement on my part

01:07:27.780 as opposed to just it's an ethnic symbol.

01:07:30.620 Like every ethnic restaurant, you know, it's an Israeli restaurant.

01:07:33.940 Every ethnic restaurant has some sort of ethnic symbol.

01:07:36.760 No, no, Jewish people, their ethnic symbols are controversial.

01:07:40.280 This is very dangerous, I think.

01:07:42.520 No.

01:07:43.180 Yeah.

01:07:43.480 No, I'm dwarming.

01:07:44.340 Dwarming, yeah.

01:07:44.800 Thank you so much, my brother.

01:07:48.880 I really recommend people come in.

01:07:50.580 If they are ever in New York,

01:07:51.600 they come and check out A Night of Comedy here,

01:07:53.280 the Comedy Cellar, the best club.

01:07:55.620 Some people would argue in the world.

01:07:57.160 I don't know.

01:07:57.660 I hope so.

01:07:58.100 I hope so.

01:07:58.520 Some people would.

01:07:59.780 Thank you so much for joining us.

01:08:01.140 Follow us over to Locals,

01:08:02.380 where we ask your questions of Noam.

01:08:04.520 Take care and we'll see you over there.

01:08:07.500 By the way, do you think that's a good thing,

01:08:08.880 comedians having opinions on serious matters

01:08:11.160 and stuff like that?

01:08:14.800 Do you think that's a good thing?

TRIGGERnometry - May 14, 2023

Legendary Comedy Cellar Owner on Louis CK, Comedy & Cancel Culture

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