Norm Macdonald's "complicated legacy": Some women are accusing the comedy icon of sexual harassment

The Daily Beast

As The Daily Beast's Cheyenne Roundtree points out, a recurring theme in the late comedian's comedy was "dismissing women--how they can’t do math, can’t drive, and while on SNL, he was especially vicious toward Madonna. In fact, a Macdonald fan account uploaded a nearly 20-minute video simply titled 'Sexist Jokes Compilation' in 2019. Macdonald also wasn’t fond of too many female comics, although he had soft spots for (Roseanne) Barr and Sarah Silverman, one of the few female comedians who paid tribute to him after his passing." Macdonald also spoke out against the #MeToo movement and defended Louis CK in wake of his sexual misconduct allegations. "I’m happy the #MeToo movement has slowed down a little bit," he told The Hollywood Reporter in 2018. "It used to be, 'One hundred women can’t be lying.' And then it became, 'One woman can’t lie.' And that became, 'I believe all women.' And then you’re like, 'What?' Like, that Chris Hardwick guy I really thought got the blunt end of the stick there." Yet in wake of Macdonald's death last week, some women have come forward on social media accusing Macdonald of sexual harassment. One anonymous women uploaded a photo of her and Macdonald alleging that he had put his hands down her pants and groped her behind. "Molestation taking place at this moment," she captioned the image. A waitress at Portland's Helium Comedy Club whom The Daily Beast is identifying as Sofia alleges she was serving Macdonald when he grabbed her hair and yanked her head back as if he was going to kiss her. "Macdonald’s behavior was also no secret to comedy clubs’ management, according to sources," reports Roundtree. "Sofia says The Helium Club implemented policies about who could serve Macdonald in the green room when he performed, while Cap City in Austin refrained from booking him after he allegedly made fellow performing female comedians and the venue’s wait staff uncomfortable. The Daily Beast reached out to Macdonald’s team for comment. The Daily Beast also reached out to Cap City for comment multiple times but did not receive a response back. Rich Miller, who oversaw booking at Helium Comedy Club and now Cap City, declined to comment for this story. Sadly, but not unexpectedly, the women who voiced their experiences, and even those who simply reshared their posts, were dogpiled on. They were branded liars, subjected to trolls who made disgusting comments about their appearances, and ultimately questioned as to why they would dare tamper with Macdonald’s legacy after his death." Nancy Norton, a fellow comedian who uses they/their pronouns, wrote on Facebook their experience performing before Macdonald. “He took the stage (and) he asked the audience, ‘yeah, you liked Nancy? Yeah, I’ll tell you who else liked Nancy, my hard c*ck," wrote Norton. "'Yeah, my hard cock really liked Nancy.' True to his original style, he repeated this over and over and over with different phrasing for like what seemed several minutes. God, I felt humiliated and reduced, but I didn’t say anything to him.” Meanwhile, a longtime female fan of Macdonald's who worked on Last Comic Standing when he was a judge in 2015, says: “If you say, ‘Norm Macdonald,’ I think, ‘Hates women.' May not be his whole person, but that was my takeaway from Last Comic Standing.” The female staffer added: “Norm was just extremely disappointing, unfunny, and uneven in his temperament toward comedians, and themes emerged—he was especially hostile and degrading toward younger women and alternative comics. His critiques of male comics would be about their comedy, but he would get very personal and condescending to the women, whose sets would be identical to ones he just praised.”