New ‘Daily Show’ host sparks backlash with offensive tweets

South African comedian Trevor Noah has issued series of jokes over the years at the expense of Jews, Israel, women

By ToI Staff and JTA 31 March 2015, 3:10 pm Edit
South African comedian Trevor Noah appearing on 'The Daily Show', December 2014. (screen capture: YouTube/Comedy Central)
South African comedian Trevor Noah appearing on 'The Daily Show', December 2014. (screen capture: YouTube/Comedy Central)

A day after Trevor Noah, a 31-year-old South African stand-up comedian, was named to replace Jon Stewart as the next host of “The Daily Show,” a series of anti-Jewish, anti-Israel and anti-women tweets by Noah were being highlighted Tuesday amid a rising tide of online protest at his appointment.

Noah made three memorable appearances as a correspondent on the show starting in December of last year, in which he skewered American (and more generally Western) views and stereotypes of Africa.

Born to a black South African mother and a white Swiss father (when interracial relationships were illegal in apartheid South Africa), Noah is already a star in his home country, where he has filmed several stand-up specials. In 2012 and 2013 he became the first South African comedian to perform on “The Tonight Show” and “The Late Show with David Letterman” respectively, and in 2012 he was the subject of a documentary called “You Laugh But It’s True.”

JTA highlighted this 2010 tweet on Monday as proof that Noah “probably won’t be appearing at next year’s American Israel Public Affairs Committee conference.

Then there was this, from 2009.

https://twitter.com/Trevornoah/status/4081446354

And Buzzfeed followed up with this one from 2012.

https://twitter.com/DAVIDMDRAIMAN/status/582735008986570753

And this one from last year.

https://twitter.com/trevornoah/status/465769407047028736

It also highlighted a series of offensive tweets about women:

https://twitter.com/Trevornoah/status/225302619692871681

https://twitter.com/Trevornoah/status/141229204829249536

https://twitter.com/Trevornoah/status/124793524095950848

By Tuesday morning, Time was reporting the “backlash” against Noah over his Twitter history, including what it called “a few jokes that were quickly deemed ‘anti-Semitic’ and ‘sexist.'”

Viewers had been calling on Comedy Central to appoint someone well-known like Tina Fey or the fan-favorite “Daily Show” correspondent Jessica Williams to succeed Stewart (overall, the insistence on having a female host in the male-dominated world of late-night comedy was also a constant).

Fans of the Show were always going to be keenly interested in his views on the hot-button political topics that Stewart has never been afraid to address — especially the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Stewart has been one of the only mainstream American comedians to harshly critique Israel’s stance towards the Palestinians. Even HBO “Real Time” host Bill Maher, one of this era’s most outspoken and unapologetically liberal comics, is usually seen as more pro-Israel than Stewart (and has even been pegged by some as anti-Muslim because of his views on Muslim extremists).

Meanwhile former “Tonight Show” host Jay Leno, who will travel to Israel in June to host the Genesis Prize award ceremony for the second consecutive year, recently told the Associated Press, “It seems like (Israel has) the worst PR in the world,” adding “I don’t understand how Israel is the bad guy here. It doesn’t make any sense to me.”

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