Norm Macdonald, the funniest person, has died.

I’m writing this within the hour of hearing the news so there’s a chance, a chance, I’m being hyperbolic, but I don’t think so. For a lot of people, especially in comedy, it was an understood fact: Norm is the funniest person, without qualification. I know comedy is subjective, but c’mon.

You’d be hard pressed to find someone who has given us more perfect moments, someone who better combined writing with a unique voice, or someone who’s timing and quick thinking could level any room. 

I was tempted, in my grief, to take the coward’s way out and just post his most beloved clips and say, “Remember this one?” There’s almost too many to choose from, and I’ll let you find them at your own pace. Instead let’s do something way worse: talk about comedy.

Norm has given me so much joy. I’ve never worked with him, or met him, or even seen him perform live. I do stand up though, which entails a lot of road trips, oftentimes with someone I barely know. But every single trip, whether it’s with my closest friends or a near-stranger, we always end up talking Norm jokes.

There’s a lot of material to dig up on YouTube (who else performed on the ESPY’s and The View, and alienated both crowds?) but maybe the most impressive thing to me is his work at the Weekend Update desk on SNL. 

What’s special about what Norm did at SNL is that monologue jokes suck. The greats of late night don’t make me laugh but once every 500 jokes. It’s a complete wasteland of stamped out material designed to be discarded every single night. They exist because they have to. Norm turned it into something else. A challenge to have 20 swings a night to try and knock the cover off a baseball. Why in the world should I be thinking about Better Than Ezra or “the human snake” as much as I do? Because Norm took fleeting news and made it permanent, a nearly impossible job (Also, I still like “Good”).

I think most other comics look at this and even if they hate the material, and it’s not all great, recognize the enthusiasm for the work. Norm had spoken at least a couple times about looking for the perfect joke, and not in an obsessive painstaking way either. It was out of pure enjoyment for stand up and joke telling. He wasn’t doing soulless “joke math,” it felt like he was trying to invent formulas from the ground up with all the mess that might come with it. Deconstructing while creating like if Andy Kaufman was also Jerry Seinfeld, but funnier than both of them.

I think that quest for the perfect joke led in a lot of directions. But like a great comic you can really go a lot of directions as long as you’re still you. Norm Macdonald could be mean, but avoided being wrong. It’s obviously rude to mention it in front of the co-star, but Carrot Top’s movie was inarguably “box office poison.” He was silly. He gave us the name “Turd Ferguson” that will live on on “funny” name tags for years to come. Dark and contemplative when discussing how the framing of cancer as a “battle” implies a cowardly loser. He somehow managed to satisfy so many kinds of comedy fans without ever coming off as pandering or without abandoning his identity. Norm jokes sound like Norm jokes and good luck retelling one without doing a bad impression of his voice.

I don’t want to write about a dead guy unless I think it’s important, and Norm was important. Not in any kind of historic or philosophical way, although someone might make that case. Norm’s important because he’s funny, that’s it, and not enough people value that for my liking.

He had a life mission to be funny and he worked at it relentlessly. Maybe most tellingly when choking back tears on his final Letterman appearance, he tells Dave he loves him, but it’s not to be ignored that he also says, “I love stand up.” 

Rest in peace to Norm Macdonald, the funniest person.

Recommend If You Like is not owned or funded by a billionaire or even a millionaire. We do have a Patreon. Even sites owned by billionaires and millionaires have Patreons so please don’t hold that against us. And we’re paying all of our writers, photographers and graphic designers. So please consider our Patreon. If you can't afford to become a patron, please sign up to our mailing list. It's free and we're asking here instead of a pop-up. Pop-ups are annoying.