I think I recall hearing in passing that Saturday Night Live alum Norm MacDonald is a Christian, but until today I had never seen him display his faith in the context of his show business career. That doesn't mean he never had, just that I hadn't seen it, which is probably more on me than on him.
No matter. After seeing this (for which we owe a tip of the hat to Steven Crowder), you'll want to cheer loudly for MacDonald - and you should:
Probably all you need to know about this guy is that Roseanne Barr thinks he's funny. This is the woman who thought it would be funny to purposely butcher the National Anthem at a baseball game and then grab her crotch as she was talking off. So maybe Harrison Greenbaum is funny by that standard, which is to say, he's every bit the hack she is.
Now let's get to the Bible part. Even leaving aside for a second whether it's OK to make the Bible a target in standup comedy, what was even supposed to be the joke here? A guy on the Subway quotes Matthew 4:4 and his favorite book is something else, and that's not a fair fight? What? That's supposed to be funny? Why not just cut to the chase and point-blank tell the audience the thing you really want them to know: "I hate the Bible." Instead, he concocted some phony real-life dialogue in which he attempts to hold up Harry Potter as some sort of new age equivalent of the Word of God - which Norm MacDonald, who obviously knows a lot more than this guy does about either book, completely destroys.
Beautiful.
Best of all MacDonald destroys Barr's idiotic narrative that making jokes about the Bible is "brave." Are you kidding me? In the present-day culture, that's the easiest thing in the world to do. The crowds will love you and two of the three judges will love you. Only the rare, principled showbiz professional will call you out for the hack you are.
Well done, Norm MacDonald. I will remember this, and that's worth more than you realize.
