Norm Macdonald continues to create headaches for Netflix’s publicity department even as he tries to undo some of the damage he has already caused while promoting Norm Macdonald Has a Show. The comedian recently came under fire for comments he made about the #MeToo movement and a remark about Louis C.K. and Roseanne Barr facing professional consequences for their words and actions: “Of course, people will go, ‘What about the victims?’ But you know what? The victims didn’t have to go through that … Who has ever gone through such a thing? All their work in their entire life being wiped out in a single day, a moment.”
Macdonald has since walked back his statements and apologized “if [his] words sounded like [he] was minimizing the pain that their victims feel to this day.” But while further diffusing the controversy on the Howard Stern Show, Macdonald made yet another incredible blunder. Via the Hollywood Reporter:
You’d have to have Down Syndrome to not feel sorry for— #MeToo is what you want for your daughters and you want that to be the future world, of course. And I meet all kinds of women with terrible stories of what’s happened to them. So, I wasn’t talking about the victims. They asked me about Roseanne.
The reaction on social media was about what you could reasonably expect.
Look, no one should feel good about Macdonald invoking Down Syndrome as a reason someone might not sympathize with victims of harassment, which is a terrible, nonsensical thing to say. But I bet Jimmy Fallon is breathing a sigh of relief right now that the comment didn’t happen on The Tonight Show—Macdonald’s scheduled appearance on Tuesday was canceled after his initial remarks.
