Thank You Marc Maron
Truth Teller Tells Truth.
There is a very funny bit in Marc Maron’s new HBO special, Panicked, where he says that if Hitler were alive today, Theo Von would have him as a podcast guest:
I think if Hitler were alive today, he'd probably appear on Theo Von's podcast. And Theo would be like, "See, y'all did a lot of meth, right? I mean, all the Nazis were all fucked up on meth, right, Hitler? That shit will make you crazy, dog. I did some meth once. I was up for three days and then I ate a live bird. No shit, Hitler. A live bird, bro! Hey Hitler, you probably didn't even hate the Jews. That was just the meth making you crazy, dog. Hey Hitler, do you want to apologize to all the Jews right now on my show? No? I get it."
I want to provide two quick pieces of context for this bit. One is that the specific flavor of soft Holocaust denial Maron characterizes here—that Hitler didn’t actually hate Jews, he was just high on meth—is one that already exists in comedy. It was articulated in an episode of Joe Rogan’s podcast not even two months ago; I quoted it in my newsletter about Shane Gillis’s desire to buy Hitler memorabilia:
Shaffir: […] Wait, that's so funny. I mean, it's a whatever bit. But calling Hitler a f—ot will get you in trouble for the wrong reason.
Normand: That's true.
Gillis: But he's top five all time.
Normand: Top five.
Gillis: Yeah. Biggest fucking turds on earth.
Normand: He's the Michael Jordan of f—ots.
Rogan: Cranked out of his mind the entire time. Like a poster boy for "don't do drugs.”
Shaffir: It was actually, Eichmann was—drove it more, because Hitler was like, "Whatever you need..." Eichmann was the one. That's what I think I remember, is him going, "Let's find—we need an Other." He was the smarter one about it. He goes, "We need some Other." And he goes, "Let's do the Jews. They stay to themselves." But he was like, "Well, anyone will do."
Rogan: Really?
Shaffir: He was the writer of all it. And Adolf was like, "Yeah, that'll help us get nationalism going."
Rogan: He was like the Dick Cheney to George W?
Shaffir: Yeah.
Gillis: Adolf was like, "Dude, just let me spit. Tell me who."
Needless to say, Shaffir is laughably wrong about Eichmann’s role in the Holocaust, and his wrongness is made even more laughable by the fact that he is literally the son of a Holocaust survivor. Hitler’s drug use, meanwhile, has been a longstanding hobby horse of Rogan’s, going back to 2019 if not earlier. Last year he interviewed pop historian Norman Ohler, the author of a book about methamphetamine use throughout the Third Reich, arguing (questionably) that Hitler’s meth addiction was largely responsible for his crimes. We’ve seen shades of this historical revisionism elsewhere in the Rogansphere, for instance Chris Distefano’s belief that a lot of Nazi soldiers had no choice but to be Nazi soldiers: “They had to fight in the Nazi army or they would be killed. And then they're all drugged out, so then the suicide rate tripled.”
Seth Simons
And now the second piece of context. In a recent interview on Vulture’s Good One podcast, Maron described his reservations about the Hitler joke:
My concern was I was, you know, I was indicting Theo as an antisemite. Which I don’t know that he is or not. But the tag to it is, you know, “I get it.” It doesn’t necessarily imply it, it would just what he would say. One way or the other. He’d be like, “I got Jewish friends, but I get it.” You know, it’s not, I don’t think it’s as deep an indictment as it could be read.
As it happens, I saw Theo Von perform his new hour at Gramercy Theatre last month, and I am happy to indict him as an antisemite. Here's what he had to say about Jews:
I got my Yeezys on. [Cheers.] Couple Nazis in here. Even the Nazis need a trainer. Yeah, I like them. Kanye, you know, Kanye with—these shoes are so comfortable. If he would have kept these bitches on, he never would have said a lot of that shit. You can't say nothing, once you put these bitches on, you good. It's so relaxing. I call jobs I don't even have in these bitches and tell them I ain't coming in. I'm like, "I can't make it." They were like, "Who this?" I'm like, "Who's this, bitch? I quit.”
I like these shoes. Supporting a Black-owned business, you know. And them Jews shut him down, dude. Jews shut that brother down. I thought I was racist. I was like, "Hold my beer. I'm tapping into that brother." My Jewish buddy's like, "you got to turn those shoes into the police." I'm like, "I just got them." He's like, "Bro, those are antisemitical." I said, "They're 10 and a halfs. I don't know what they did before I had them, but I'm gonna give 'em a second chance." That's the kind of shoe owner I am.
My buddy's like, "No, dude. Those are anti-Jew shoes." I'm like, "Whoa, bro." I've never been anti-Jews, okay. I've been like, "Oh shit, Jews?" But I've never been anti-Jews, dude. And if you haven't been, "Oh shit, Jews," you don't know enough good Jews, dude. Even my Jewish friends are like, "Ah shit, Jews." We didn't have any Jews growing up, you know. I don't think we did. That means somebody probably—we didn't. I know we didn't. We didn't. We didn't have a CD player, so I don't think we could afford a Jew.
But you gotta respect Jews at the same time, man. You gotta respect Jews. They've been down 0-3 in every series and they figure shit out. And I mean that wholeheartedly. It's like, fuck, man, these motherfuckers are good at this shit. That's the fucking feeling sometimes. You know what I mean? They figure shit out. You put a Jew at rock bottom, they start selling gravel.
And sometimes you hear people say stuff like, "Well. Jews are shady. Jews are shady." But then I'm thinking that they're from the desert. so shade was the first business. Couple Hebrews sat under a branch, they're like, "This is a fucking LLC, right." Jerry Branchburg. Jerry fucking Branchburg? Yeah, we didn't have any Jews in our area growing—I don't think anyway. I don't know. I gotta ask my mother.
To be clear, this was by far one of the tamest parts of the hour, which included a long bit about how young Black men need to stop shooting each other, and another about how Von respects the closeted gay men of old more than the out gay men of today. (He also began his set, as many comedians do, by joking about his appearance: “I’m built like a Black girl with Down syndrome. And no offense if you’re a Black girl with Down syndrome. I don't even know if Black people have Down syndrome. I've never seen it. I've also never seen Black people eat pizza.”) That said, the bit is still definitionally antisemitic, relying on the sort of tired stereotypes that might have resulted in a brief outrage cycle five or six years ago but which are now simply the norm in Von’s milieu. Just a few weeks ago Andrew Schulz said Jews don’t run the banks—that’s a conspiracy theory. It’s the Irish who run banks; Jews run hedge funds.
Seth Simons
Perhaps Von’s bit is not quite as antisemitic as his promotion of outright neo-Nazis like Candace Owens and Tucker Carlson—or Donald Trump, for that matter, who’s made no shortage of explicitly antisemitic remarks that somehow don’t factor into the national discourse about antisemitism—and perhaps it is not even the worst thing about Von, who can’t seem to stop saying bizarre, bigoted things about gay people, Black people, Asian people, and immigrants. But like the Rogan conversation excerpted above, it’s an example of how much overt bigotry is completely normalized among comedy’s A-list—and how important it is for the art form’s actual truth-tellers, like Marc Maron, to call it what it is.
