We will still try to “get to the same place,” Noah says. While Fox News was a long-lasting opponent for Stewart, Noah says he will broaden the media focus with more about Gawker, Buzzfeed and the rest of the online media.
A speaker of seven languages, Noah will also offer a fresh take on international issues.
Not long after Stewart had announced he was leaving and Trevor Noah was replacing him, some compromising tweets came to light in which Noah made jokes about Jews and women, which many people did not find amusing.
In 2009, Noah tweeted, “Almost bumped a Jewish kid crossing the road. He didn’t look b4 crossing, but I still would have felt so bad in my German car.” In 2012, he tweeted about soccer player Lionel Messi, “Messi gets the ball and the real players try to foul him, but Messi doesn’t go down easy, just like Jewish chicks.” He also tweeted, “South Africa knows how to recycle like Israel knows how to be peaceful.”
He also joked about domestic violence: “Originally, when men proposed, they went down on one knee, so if the woman said ‘no’ they were in perfect upper cut.” Trevor Noah got a rise out of many people over that one, including Roseanne Barr, who tweeted, “U should cease sexist & anti-Semitic ‘humor’ about Jewish women and Israel.”
Concerning the tweets, Noah said they were made some time ago and emphasized that The Daily Show is a different format than Twitter. “Luckily, Comedy Central hasn’t limited me to 140 characters on the show, so I should be able to speak in a better, well-informed way.”
Comedy Central issued a statement defending the new Daily Show host: “Like any comedian, Trevor Noah pushes boundaries. He is provocative and spares no one, himself included. To judge him or his comedy based on a handful of jokes is unfair.”
At least with the domestic abuse joke, Noah might be channeling a painful personal experience into his comedy. As a child, he grew up witnessing violence between his parents. When his mother, Patricia Noah, left her abusive husband and decided to remarry, her ex-husband, Abel Singange, shot Trevor’s mother in the face and the back, shattering her jaw, piercing her skull and leaving her unable to speak properly.
His grandmother, Nomalizo Noah, said Trevor’s father went looking for the boy in a rage and was ready to shoot him, too. “Trevor was always here, there and everywhere, performing on stage, you never knew where he was. So when Patricia’s husband began to hunt him, he couldn’t find him.”
Comedy, in this case, might literally have saved Trevor Noah’s life.
In perhaps a less direct way, Noah points out ways in which comedy is a sustaining force. “Without comedy, what do we have? You look at how people got over 9/11. In South Africa, Nelson Mandela was notorious for telling jokes. Even after 27 years in jail, the man would tell a joke. If we don’t laugh, we would always be extremely depressed.”