TRIGGERnometry - Legendary Comedy Cellar Owner on Louis CK, Comedy & Cancel Culture

Episode Date: May 14, 2023

Noam Dworman is the owner of the world-famous Comedy Cellar in Manhattan, New York City. The comedy club's stage has been graced by some of the biggest comics who have ever lived - including Dave Chappelle, Chris Rock, Bill Burr, Louis CK and Robin Williams. Join our exclusive TRIGGERnometry community on Locals! https://triggernometry.locals.com/ OR Support TRIGGERnometry Here: Bitcoin: bc1qm6vvhduc6s3rvy8u76sllmrfpynfv94qw8p8d5 Music by: Music by: Xentric | [e-mail] | https://www.xentricapc.com/ YouTube:  @xentricapc   Buy Merch Here: https://www.triggerpod.co.uk/shop/ Advertise on TRIGGERnometry: [e-mail] Join the Mailing List: https://www.triggerpod.co.uk/sign-up/ Find TRIGGERnometry on Social Media:  https://twitter.com/triggerpod https://www.facebook.com/triggerpod/ https://www.instagram.com/triggerpod/ About TRIGGERnometry:  Stand-up comedians Konstantin Kisin (@konstantinkisin) and Francis Foster (@francisjfoster) make sense of politics, economics, free speech, AI, drug policy and WW3 with the help of presidential advisors, renowned economists, award-winning journalists, controversial writers, leading scientists and notorious comedians. 00:00 Intro  01:23 Noam Dworman’s Background 03:40 What is So Special About Stand-up Comedy? 05:47 Is the Comedy Industry Shrinking? 07:26 Positives of Censorship in Comedy 16:54 Importance of Freedom of Expression 20:05 Sponsor Message: Locals  21:06 Have People Become More Orthodox in their Thinking? 22:01 How Have We Reached a Time Where People Are Afraid to Speak Out? 25:49 How Social Media Has Changed Comedy 30:04 Louis CK 37:20 Mob Justice 47:41 Identity Politics & the Education System 53:25 Plans for The Comedy Cellar 54:31 What Makes a Great Comedian? 1:01:57 Will the Comedy Cellar Live On? 1:05:11 What’s the One Thing We’re Not Talking About? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Right now, save 83% off the two-year plan. Get started today at IPVanish.com slash audio and take control of your privacy with IPVANNish. Why do you think that we've reached this point where people are afraid to speak out and people who are afraid to say what they think and to challenge ideas? It started with just more and more solicitousness towards young people to not be offended by this and not be offended by that. Has that changed comedy? Do you think people now say things differently or come and do shows differently or anything like that? It's not just social media. It's the fact that everything is forever. I think what is really important is.

that is not mentioned enough is that we really are living in a golden edge of comedy. The seller must be empty because the world is furious that the seller allowed Louis C.K. to perform. But actually, nothing changed. They were pretending to be much more really bothered than they were. That's why I say, Louis won a Grammy, but it was a secret ballot. I'm sure many of those people who voted for him would never admit that they voted for him or wouldn't have voted for him if their vote was going to go public. But privately, they didn't, you know, they didn't care enough not to give him the Grammy.

If two idiot comedians start a podcast and start talking to people, that's brave. What the fuck is going wrong? Hello and welcome to Trigonometry on the road from the USA. I'm Francis Foster. I'm Constantine Kishin. And this is a show for you if you want honest conversations with fascinating people. Our terrific guest today is the legendary owner of the legendary comedy seller here in New York. Noam Dwarcan.

Welcome to Trigonometry, man. Dwarman. Dwarman. Do you know what happened there? We were talking about Noam Chomsky all day. Who's gone completely mental. And I said to Francis, I better not fuck up Noam, son. I better not call him Noam Chomsky.

I'm so sorry, man. Listen, we've been friends for a long time. But a lot of people who are watching the show will not have any idea who you are because you're a behind the scenes kind of guy. You don't speak up too much, etc. Who are you? What's been a journey through life?

And also tell us about the journey through life of the comedy seller itself, because it's a family thing. Yeah. So, okay, I'm the owner of the comedy seller. I've been the owner of the comedy seller since 2004 or so when my father died. You want to know what I did before that? Yeah. So before that, I went to University of Pennsylvania law school. I passed the bar and then never practiced law. And then I started, people will think I didn't start it, but I started a club called the Cafes. which now has a reputation for having existed all these years, but actually the cafe

wah originally closed in 1968. It was the place where Jimmy Hendricks and Bob Dylan. Anyway, I took that name and restarted a nightclub and I spent like 20 years just on stage playing music. It was very successful until my father died and then I had to make some tough choices and I sold the cafe waugh and I devoted my time to the comedy seller. That's what I've been doing ever since. And your dad started the comedy cellar?

My dad started the comedy cellar with another guy named Bill Grunfest, who's not in the picture down here anymore. This room was vacant. My father was Israeli. My father was also a musician. He had a Middle Eastern nightclub where the cafe was now. And this was a room he didn't know what to do with. And he had like Brazilian musicians down here and stuff.

And this guy named Bill Grunfest, who is now a Hollywood writer, I think he was head writer on Matt About You for a while. He came down and had the idea initially to bring comedians down here. And he was the house MC for a number of years. And then he left and then my father ran it by himself until he died. And just being here, Noam, as somebody who is a comedian, but also a massive comedy nerd, I feel so honored. So firstly, thank you.

But secondly, what do you think is so special about stand-up comedy? Why do you think it moves people and people want to travel from across the country, in fact, across the world to sit in a small room with around 120 people and watch a person on stage saying jokes. Well, there's a lot of things. Working backwards in a certain way, I think right now we're in a golden age of stand-up comedy quality. I was just, I'm in the middle of a project now where I'm digitizing

maybe 500 or 700 VHS tapes from old shows from the 90s. I've been watching some of them this morning. And boy, is it better now? I mean, just the... And it's not just that it didn't age well. You can hear the laughs. The laughs are mediocre and people.

You know, it's just not the same response at all. So part of the reason I think... It's like supply side. Part of the reason is just that comedy is much better. better now. Having said that, people always like to laugh. You know, there's always stand, I mean, sitcoms, humorous things have always been good. And people like to go out. You know, part of the reason we're busy here is not just for comedy, it's that it's a place to go with your friends, have drinks, get a date, whatever it is. So there's always that. So all those things

together. But I think what is really important that is not mentioned in is that we really are living in a golden age of comedy. In the way that music in the late 60s and early 70s, why was music so popular then? But if you realize you go back and listen to it, well, actually, it really was an unusual time for music. It really was better then. So I think comedy right now is really better than it's ever been

and that's creating its own audience. That's so interesting because people would say, well, look, we've got canceled culture now and, you know, the fact is that the Overton window in comedy is shrinking. Do you disagree with that? Yeah, I do disagree with it. I mean, there is cancel culture.

I've never been seen any good empirical data of how many people are really on board with cancel culture as opposed to how many people are simply intimidated by it and trying to stay in its good graces. I mean, everybody I know just talks about being afraid to say the wrong thing that very few people I know are really offended. Of course, people who come to the comedy club

mostly don't come here if they're particularly easily offended, right? So we kind of self-select. I've compared this to a speakeasy during prohibition. The people who wanted, you know, who were pro-prohibition didn't show up to the speak-easy is the people who wanted to drink. So we get here the people who really want to drink.

But in general, Look at the people who are huge. Rogan and Shoals and all these people on YouTube who are it seems like the biggest comedians are the ones who are not towing the line

in cancel culture. And the audience is huge. Look at Chappelle. The whole world is against him, but he's still the biggest comedian in the world. Louis, after all he went through, just sold out Madison Square Garden and won a Grammy.

Secret ballot, but he won a Grammy. What does I tell you? One of the things that I think was a little bit eye-opening for us coming from the UK where there's one comedy scene and we have a different culture when it comes to freedom of expression in the UK. We don't have a First Amendment or a First Amendment culture. Whereas we came here with our kind of very British views on these things and talking to you and seeing, you know, seeing Rogan's Club in Austin. And we kind of got the sense that it is a lot freer here.

And that is one of the things. that we took away from that trip. And it seemed like, you know, we came to see a show here. That wasn't really an issue, people being offended and complaining and all that sort of thing. Are the rank-and-file people in England actually offended? Or, I mean... You know, if you talk to people who are regular emcees,

they will tell you the number of people complaining about comedians and jokes has gone through the roof. Yeah, in the UK, for sure. Would that be fair to say? Yeah, I think so. But you don't know what it represents in terms of actual... numbers. That's the thing. Yeah. Yeah. Like the number of tweets about people who are you offended has gone through the loop, but how many people does it represent? Yeah.

You know, has comedy changed in other ways in the time that you've been, I mean, you say it's a golden age. It's obviously got better. But is there anything else that you notice that is kind of in the time that you've been the custodian of this place? Well, it has changed. So in the digitizing project, I'll let you see it. I came across a Lisa Lampinelli set. You know, Lisa Lampenellis? Yeah, I know Lisa Lamponelli. People might not to just explain who she is to be. She was like a modern-day female Don Rickles stuff making like really harsh

in your gut, ethnic jokes and stuff like that. And I went back and listened to it and I had forgotten just how over the top these jokes were. I don't know. I would have to say she couldn't do that set anymore.

Yeah. Even I was like, you know, at some point though I hate to admit it, this stuff does seep into us in some way. not that we're actually offended but it's just like the more has changed

the norms, you're just like certain things you just don't say anymore so when you hear it, it hits you. Do you think that's a good thing? No, I don't think it's a good thing, no. Why not? Because it's false. It's like something we're trained. I mean, like, okay, so like in

remember when George Bush had a shoe thrown at him? Yeah. And we all got the lesson that, well, actually, if you show the soul of your shoe to something, this is the ultimate disrespect. And Arabs and Muslim people I knew were horrified to see this shoe with the president. You know, this is a Pavlovian response. That's not a healthy thing because it's not actually based on anything. So it may not always be a bad thing, but we'd like to think that if we have negative reactions to things which are actually demonstrably negative.

not just something somebody's trained us to react against. And do you think part of the problem is that we talk about these big subjects which are incredibly controversial like race, when COVID was happening in COVID? And it seems that sometimes when you see a comedian on stage, they just have to mention a word. Yeah, you know, and I just realized maybe I didn't answer the question you were asking. You're asking, is it a good thing that people are more sensitive to these matters? He could have stopped me.

Sorry, I thought that's where you were asking. Sorry. No, no. So, that's a tougher question. Yeah. Because I'm torn about it because on the one hand, I don't want comedy to get crucified over time and society to get pussyfussing.

On the other hand, there are certain things I hear being, you know, said or joked about in the 70s and 80s, and I'm like, whoa, I'm glad that's not happening anymore. Well, the most powerful example that comes to mind is the way we used to joke about gay people. So what Lisa Lampinelli would tell jokes about black people, stuff like that, I don't know that it was really mocking, even though it might feel mocking in time.

But it was really open season to mock homosexuals for a long time. And it's not anymore. I think because there was a huge mass, insight and empathy into that changed most many people's views about being gay. So to the extent that it's changed because people don't care to make those jokes anymore because they feel that it's mean, of course that's a good thing. What wouldn't be good is that all of a sudden you can't make a joke about anything gay anymore, you can't make a joke about anything Jewish anymore because you should be able

to joke about anything. But if you're not doing it because you realize that you've been mean or bullying or, you know, cruel, then, yeah, of course it's a good thing. But no, I mean... That's probably why you're torn, right? Because both these are true at the same time. Yeah, they are true. I mean, and also jokes are subjective.

Like, I can make a joke about whatever it may be. Let's say Jewish people in my heart, I'm not being anti-Semitic. He's giving you the stinker. Yeah, yeah, yeah. All of a sudden, my bookings are disappearing. to the air. What kind of jokes? Well, let me tell you.

But somebody who is in the front or second row may feel that it's anti-Semitic. Do you see what I mean? That's the gray area, isn't it? That we're all trying to navigate. Yeah, there's no answer to this, but I think that, and I would say to Jewish people, it's way better to err on the side of being thick-skinned.

and giving people the benefit, that you've got to view people as innocent or proven guilty about what their intentions were. At some point, if it becomes so obvious that somebody actually is full of hate or anti-Semitic, then you might have to say, listen, you know, I'm just not comfortable with this anymore, but usually that's not the case.

Usually people are just telling jokes. Yeah, and I think sometimes as well is that everybody has the thing that they're particularly sensitive about. whatever it may be, your ethnicity, religion, you know, political views. And I think when somebody makes a joke on that, everybody gets a little bit more touchy about that thing. Look, you know, first of all, being Jewish, you know, this. I mean, among Jews, Jews are making all the same jokes about Jews

that we consider anti-Semitic when they come from non-Jews. Same thing with gay, like all the gay comics now, They make the very same gay jokes, which we used to say, you can't make those jokes. So you might say that in some way, this is because there is some grain of truth to some stereotypes, right? I was like thinking like, you ever see one of those studies where they take zodiac signs

or horoscopes and then they mix them all up and give it to people who don't correspond to the end of myself? Oh, this is me exactly. It's like a very good proof that zodiac is bullshit. you could not do that with stereotypes. Like if I tried to stereotype Jew people, these... Jews are really athletic because you're great in the NBA. What are you talking about?

So at some point, we have to probably all acknowledge, well, there's something to these things that come from somewhere. Our challenges in life to be good people is not to pretend that something that's true is not true, is to say, despite whatever may be true, our highest calling is to judge everybody as an individual. Like that's really the highest calling, right? So, you know, these jokes, I give people some latitude because if they're joking about the same kind of things that I'm observing myself, I have to let that go.

I'm just, you know, like, how can I get outraged when I might make the same joke myself? IP vanish protects every device you own, your phone, your laptop, your smart TV. If it connects to the internet, it should be protected. IP Vanish encrypts your connection and masks your IP address, helping keep your browsing private at home and on public Wi-Fi. And with no device limits, one account covers everything. Stream with added privacy. Browse securely.

Connect with confidence. Right now, save 83% off the two-year plan. Get started today at IPVanish.com slash audio and take control of your privacy with IPVanish. Yeah, it's such a good, you know, it's such a good point that we need to have latitude. And also we need to We need to accept that not all comedy is for us specifically. You know, my mother's from Venezuela.

You know, there may be somebody who does a very good routine about why socialism is great. It doesn't mean that it invalidates my experience. And I may not particularly like it, but if it's crushing in the room, then fair play to them. And another problem is like, you know, this is not that dissimilar from these classic arguments about pornography. and Potter Stewart he said I know it when I see it and that's

you know I went to law school that was mocked but yet people still mention that you know because there's something true about that and this applies to being offended or judging whether somebody

is coming from a good place or a bad place sometimes you know it when you see it and sometimes you're wrong when you know it when you see it But there are certain things which are come down to some sort of deeper human unquantifiable perception of matters. And that's, and then you'll never be decided. You just can't. No, let me ask you this then.

Here you are. There's no problem with, you know, freedom of expression in the New York comedy scene. You're doing great. People can come and do the jokes. Why do you watch our show? Why are we friends? What are you interested in that's brought us here? Well, the fight to be able to talk, you guys aren't a much deeper level than comedy, in my opinion, you're fighting to be able to discuss the ins and outs of every matter that comes before society.

and in so many issues, you're not allowed to do that. You're supposed to recite a party line. And this is vitally important what you guys are doing. So, I mean, you know, you guys do a lot of stuff on trans stuff lately. I'd be shocked to find out you're actually anti-trans in any way. We employ two trans people, so it'd be quite hard. Well, maybe. Maybe that's...

Yeah, we beat them every day. but apart from that. And we pay them less. But no, they're great workers. No, we pay them more because they're actually meant. But is that too far? I don't know. I don't fucking know anymore.

Anyway, Carol. Look, you have to be able to discuss everything. Yeah. You have to be able to discuss everything and anything, even to find out that you're wrong. Yeah. And there's a small number of people like you guys who are brave enough

and intellectually curious enough and smart enough to entertain. I don't agree. I don't think we are brave. I don't think there's anything brave about what we do. Like brave is, you know, people who go into combat or people who, you know, do action. Have you ever spoken to people who are considered brave in combat? They say the same thing. I'm not brave. I'm just doing my, you know, like the brave people, but it is brave in some way. Okay. Then here's the question for you. If we are brave to be raising these issues,

what does that say about the society we live in? Right. If two idiot comedians start a podcast and start talking to people, that's brave. What the fuck is going wrong? That's the question, isn't it? Yeah, well, most people, most people are followers. I mean, this is, I asked, um, Yasha Monk on the time. Yeah, we had him on the show.

Yeah, and I asked him, um, do you think you would have the, like, I'd seen some documentary of people just going off to enlist after World War II? I said, do you think you would have the bravery to just go enlist to die. And he said, I don't know. He said, but history teaches us that actually that kind of bravery is a lot more common than people who are willing to buck their peers on ideas. That's what he's you know, people just shut up and go along with stuff. So that just seems to be true. It just, there's a small percentage of people who are wired like you are. And, you know, we need these people. And do you think that things have got worse when it comes to that? As in we, you know,

all better, as in people were more willing to buck the trend. Have we become more orthodox in our thinking? It's gotten, it's gotten worse. It's definitely gotten worse because it's gotten worse. I mean, it's almost a trite thing to say because the left, which always stood for free speech, has now seemed to come to the opposite conclusion. And the right still stands for free speech, but the right is not progressive, right? So they're not going to, you know, so it's gotten way worse.

And when I saw that clip in the Stanford Law School where they were shouting down this judge, whatever it is, I mean, this is not the way law school was when I went. It just was not the way. law school was. And why do you think that is none? Why do you think that we've reached this point where people are afraid to speak out and people are afraid to say what they think and to challenge ideas? I don't know. You have to ask people like John Haidt or whatever who really followed this piecemeal. But I think as I gather what he said is it started with just more and more

solicitousness towards young people to not be offended by this and not be offended by that. and we thought this was just like part of youth, but then they didn't shed it, and it just became more and more a cultural norm that you just don't talk this way and you protect people and it's kind of a hyper concern for, you know, marginalized groups or whatever it is.

And I don't know, it just became that way. I don't know. I don't know. It's weird as well, because one of the things that I really dislike about one of the changes that happened is, you know, the reason people go, people like doing comedy, I feel, and playing sports, is that you, not quite entirely correctly, but you still, you think these places are meritocracies, right? And there's been, in my opinion, a consolidated attack on merit, because as soon as you start picking people based on things other than merit, you're attacking merit, right?

Yeah, well, the failure of meritocracy has. has been, you know, it's a very uncomfortable issue where that issue rears the suckly head. Obviously, what we're talking about, it goes beyond that, like, you know, but where, where, like, for instance, you know, they have, the movement is to stop testing people, stop testing kids, rather than to look, look it in the face of how badly they're doing. Yeah, that's real problem. I have another theory that no movement ever declares victory, right? So it just never declares victory.

So every civil rights movement just goes on forever. And I remember one time my father once made an offhand comment that stayed with me that everything, well, everything looks, I was mixing music actually. And I was focusing on something. And he said, well, don't listen to it that way because everything looks bad under a microscope. But that comment always stayed with me. And I think that, you know, we looked through. something in a microscope and it looks ugly. This could be culture in the 60s.

And we got rid of segregation. We got rid of this and we changed it. And then it looks good. And they say, okay, let's double the magnification. Oh my God, look at that. And we just keep doubling the magnification. And we're like, you know, 10012 or 2020, whatever, the magnification now as a culture.

And we will always double it to expose to make it look bad. Like, okay, well, that's good. There's more. So we're somewhere into that endless loop. So the things that we're reacting to viscerally now, we react to them with the same chemical reactions and the same intensity that we would have reacted

to poses on black children trying to go to school. But we're reacting to things which are almost nothing. If you told them back there, so in some way that's like a perception problem. We just can't ever say, well, actually, things are pretty good. We just can't do that. No, my cause is, you know, gays or blacks or Jews or whatever it is.

And I will never be satisfied because there's always, I can always double the microscope and I'll always show you things which look horrible. I don't know, is that a... And now, and this is what I was going to ask you, is now we can make that shit viral.

You stick it on social media and it gets amplified. I didn't even think of that. And it gets amplified. And one of the things I was going to ask you about, you see hundreds, thousands of comedians comes through here. One of the shifts I noticed in my lifetime

in politics, was when social media came. Because prior to social media, debates in the House of Commons in England, right? They were all, it was play. There was a lot of play. Even though these two parties disagreed, it was robust debate,

but there was a set of rules. You know what I mean? And those rules were, there was a decorum. There was no sense that you were here pandering to a gallery of your own fans, whose only interest is that you, you destroy the enemy, right?

Has that changed comedy, the introduction of social media? Do you think people now say things differently or come and do shows differently or anything like that? It's not just social media, it's the fact that everything is forever. Like everything, so in the 90s, if somebody said something, and it happened,

if somebody would say something horrible on stage, and the New York Post would actually pick it up. And for 24 hours, people would be talking about. And then the paper would go in the garbage, and or maybe this is I'm talking about 90s before the paper go in the garbage and the memory fades and unless you were going to go to the library

and get micro-fiche this just, it goes away. Nothing goes away now. If you Google somebody, whatever, that becomes the top thing that comes back. And I mean, I worry about it now. I'm so like, well, my great-grandkids are going to see what you said about me

in the stupid Slate magazine article, you know? And it really bothers me because people think it's true. So everybody is very aware now that everything is forever. And we're grappling with that. That changes everything. There's no half-life anymore. Yeah.

And also what it does is it eliminates forgiveness. Yeah. Because you can come out and apologize, and we've seen this numerous times where people have transcript. Bad fucking move. Yeah. And actually, it makes it worse. So you're at the point.

And look, I believe if you've done something, something wrong. Absolutely, absolutely apologize. That's vital. Otherwise, you're never going to be able to build that bridge again. But what's the point in an apology if it's only going to make the mob stronger? Well, what is the point? Why does somebody

apologize? I mean, are you apologizing for a strategic reason or are you apologised because you're sorry? If you apologize because you're sorry, then you should say you're sorry. And But are you going to say you're sorry if it means that the mob is going to become ever more emboldened and do more to destroy you? Yeah, maybe not.

So, you're right. So like Louis, in retrospect, I wonder, I don't speak about something, I wonder if like maybe he should have never admitted and never said he was sorry because they just used that against him. Because when you say sorry, part of saying sorry is, I guess there's different scenarios. When you, the admission that you've done something that you could still deny or it hasn't and clear, whatever it is. Yeah, they used to be like you would confess and say, well, he admitted it and he said he's

sorry. Like Bill Clinton, when he finally came clean, this worked for him. It wasn't held against it. Yeah, now sometimes that just backfires. I think when you are already caught red-handed, if you are actually sorry, that probably doesn't hurt you to say sorry. It sounds like we're getting personal advice when the allegations come out.

You can go through different scenarios, but there's different times when the apology, I still think there's times when apology helps you. And sometimes it also might hurt you short term, but longer term you will be happy that you did the right thing. And one of the things that really stayed with me from our last conversation. It helped Joe Rogan. It worked when Joe Rogan, all that N-word stuff came out.

But his apology was good and it was read as sincere and I think it really did help him. Yeah. But he couldn't deny having said it, that's something. Right, because it's forever. And one of the things I really stayed with me from the last time we were here and we weren't on camera but we were just chatting was Louis. You mentioned him a couple of times now. You had a very interesting take on that whole thing that I hadn't really heard from many people. Would you talk about it?

What was your record? Well, my rec, I don't want to put words in your mouth, but my, my, I don't want to put words in your mouth, But my recollection is you were kind of like, well, I think what society is grappling with really is the fact that there have always been and will always be people who do bad things and get away with it. Because society does not have a criminal justice system or the justice system or whatever is never going to properly take care of every situation in which someone did something they shouldn't have done, right? And we have to have a system where we maximize as much as possible justice, getting justice for people who are victims of something who have been affected by. something, but that will inevitably mean that we have to find a line where it's like, well, this was not a good thing to do, but do we just get on Twitter or in the newspapers and end someone's career, let's say, that's how, that was the real conversation.

And my recollection of your take was, you said, if this had been a bar person that I employed who had done what, who was alleged to have done what Louis did, I couldn't fire that person. Oh, yeah. So how are you expecting me not to give this guy stage time? I thought the whole thing was ridiculous in many ways. That we all know people who've done things. If I had a bartender who came and told me, you know, 10 years ago I was in a violent gang.

And, you know, we beat this shit out of people. I'm sorry about it. I would say, oh, that's terrible, you know. But I would never in a million years think, well, I'm not, you can't work here or you're fired or whatever it is. Nobody does that. So the notion that I was supposed to take action against somebody who had done something 15 years ago in some other context, without even getting to the idea that I don't even know what really happened. There's conflicting stories.

There's nobody's under oath. You know, we haven't heard anything, right? Just a few sentences in the New York Times that I, and I knew stuff about that New York Times article, which. which made it unreliable. I can tell you that too. So, yeah, I think this was very much for show. But on the other hand, and this goes back to what we were saying earlier,

I didn't know it initially, but it had zero effect on business. Zero effect on business. You would think from the papers, the seller must be empty because the world is furious that the seller allowed Louis CK to perform. But actually, nothing changed.

So there weren't that many people who were that bothered by it Bothered by it enough that they would stop coming to the comedy seller You know they may have been bothered by what Louis admitted to doing But you know They were they were they were they were they were they were I say Louis won a Grammy But it was a secret ballot I'm sure many of those people who voted for him would never admit that they voted for him or wouldn't

voted for them if their vote was going to go public. But privately, they didn't, you know, they didn't care enough not to give them the Grammy. And that's the problem, though, is not enough people are willing to stand up and say, look, I've thought about this, these are my opinions, and this is why I'm doing this. Yeah. Yeah, that's a real issue. Because if there were more of us who go, look, there is nuance to this issue, to this story, to whatever it may be, just because it's gone viral on a social media platform and everybody's saying that this person is you know, an abuse or whatever else, doesn't mean that's the whole truth. Well, let me tell you the story about the Times.

I don't know if you can use this or not use it, but this is, but I interviewed Molina Rizek, who I like very much, who is the writer who broke that story. And originally, there was a rumor around on gawker.com, I think it was, about these stories, about Louis. And the rumor was that he had blocked the door. I wouldn't let these. So this was what everybody knew.

So then the story came out, and then she interviewed the women in question. And it was nothing about this in the story. So I asked her, did you ask the women whether he blocked the door? Because that was the part of the story, which was most disturbing, because that could actually be a crime.

And she said, yeah, I did ask them. He didn't block the door. I said, well, why didn't you write that? in your article. She says, I didn't think it was relevant. I said, well, you would have thought it was relevant if they had said yes. She said, yeah, but they said no. It's like, so that immediately, like, like, that's the kind of thing. You don't know what you're reading. I mean, I was outraged by that. And then later on, I was interviewed by the Times and they wanted, when Louis came back, this was after he came back, and they wanted a statement from me. I said, I'd say, I

I'll give you my statement if you promise to run it verbatim. I'm so stupid. She says, I don't see any problem with that. No, that's not a yes, right? Now we know that. You're the lawyer. But I couldn't, so I gave her my statement. I said, listen, I don't get it.

You know, Bill Clinton was, you know, Monica Lewinsky was just disinvited from a, this was a party, remember that story? Because Bill Clinton was going to attend. And Mike Tyson is starring on Broadway. So, you know, these people are accused of basically the same thing. or worse as Lewis. So I don't see any objective standard here

and I like to operate by principles and objective standards. So something like that. And she says, if you're going to mention Bill Clinton, we can't run the statement. And I said, but that's my answer.

You want to know, I'm the newsmaker here. You want to know what my reason. This is actually what I'm thinking when you're asking me, why did I do this? He says, well, we're not going to run it if you're going to use Bill Clinton. So they rewrote my statement. And I signed off on, and it doesn't mention Bill Clinton,

but they actually massaged the news to satisfy them to the extent that, you know, I was the news, which I must have been because they wanted, you know, the story was about me. People have no idea that this kind of stuff goes on. But I think they're becoming more aware of it now, though, when they've seen how the mainstream media have not been honest in a wide variety,

of different subjects. It's crazy when you think about it. Like, they're asking me, why did you... If it was a TV show like Face a Nation, I would have said that. They couldn't have stopped it. Just to think, to be a journalist

and to think that it's okay to put your own fingerprints on the story is such a corruption of what journalism is. Your fingerprint should never be on the facts of the story as reported. Well, I mean, it's been my experience that no amount of faith in the media survives first contact with the media. I mean, and that seems to be your experience. But do you think that in covering the story, like the big beasts, the Louis C.Ks of the world, you know, I was actually troubled by what the revelations were, the allegations at least were to some extent.

But nonetheless, it sounds like from your experience that these are just scalps. This is a scalp for the journalist to get. They don't give a shit about Louis C.K. playing here or not playing here or anything. It's just somebody, a big guy that can take down so they can pin it on the wall and just go, we got this guy. Well, you're troubled by the allegations, of course. And I mean, I had a big fight with Michael Barbaro about this. And, of course, he didn't run that in an interview either, where he was accusing me of blaming the victim. I'm like, what are you talking about?

Like, what did you point to me one thing I've ever said to blame the victim? Of course, the allegations are troubling because they're allegations of misbehavior. The mistake is that to think that we want to embrace a secondary system of justice, a scarlet letter system of justice, where a mob decides based on New York Times stories, a couple sentences, as biased as what I've been describing, to decide they know what's happened and now we're going to meet out punishments way worse than any court of law would ever have contemplated for what the allegations are people do things that are bad and um that's just the way it is and you can't get to the bottom of it but it's deeper than that even if you could get to the

bottom of it um i am not i don't know i just i don't feel like I would punish any employee, Louis is not my employee, but just, you know, if I found out that they had done something bad in their life, I had joked you, like if everybody done something bad in their life, they should be ashamed of, would it disappear like that last scene in Infinity Wars? You just see people, everybody like, you too? Him? Like, I never, grandma?

Like, this is the way it is? Like, who are we kidding? But that's reality, right? Yeah. People do, how many dudes do we know who have not at some point in their life done something they were ashamed of in a sexual situation with a woman? I can't believe I fucking, you know, I got carried. You're like, this is bad. I'm not forgiving them at all.

Not at all. Not at all. I'm just saying that this is the way human people are. and if something rises to the level of a crime, then we have a system for that. And that system considers people innocent or proven guilty, and then you really have to prove that they're guilty.

And like I had said to this New York Times report, I said this one little thing that you spend two sentences on, this could have been like five hours of testimony from this side, from that. We don't really know all the nuance of what we're describing here. Certainly not in any way to say, and because of these two sentences,

Nobody should ever hire this person again. They should become a ward of the state. Like, you know, not even 7-Eleven should hire them. Literally, they should get a check from the government and stay home. Because this, you know, and that's, you know, they don't follow anything through to their logical consequence. Because that's what rage is. It's not a, you know. It's absolutely.

And it's not just rage. For me, when I saw that the Me Too movement, I made the point which a lot of people at the time got very upset by. And they were like, this is justice. I said, no, this is not justice. this is revenge. And revenge and justice are two very different things. Yeah, yeah. And I think that, you know, the urge for justice, I mean, it's righteous in some way, but there's a lot of damage that's collateral damage that's caused by that. It's just a lot. And of course, the inconsistent application of it is repulsive. I mean, it's just repulsive. I mean,

it's just for Paul. I mean, you even seeing it is kind of like with Clarence Thomas. I don't know the nature of, I don't know if you could follow this. You know, he has a rich person who he's friends with, who, you know, he's taking vacations with and maybe had bought some real estate. I don't know. And people are outraged by this. This is nothing in an objective sense compared to I'm going to give the vice president's son million dollars, millions of dollars for a fictitious job because I know his dad is overseeing the policies that directly affect me. So everybody's furious to Clarence Thomas.

This very, very same people who, you know, who are defending like this. Hunter Biden doesn't make policy. So the application of it is so inconsistent. And you see this over and over and over again. So Bill Clinton, he's pretty credibly accused of, rape as credibly accuses, you know, and nobody cares. The problem is it's all, if it's a team game, then people don't give a shit about the truth anymore.

It's about the team. Well, yeah, the people who told us, listen, lying about sex is different. I don't know if you guys are old enough. This was the Bill Clinton thing. Yeah. So now, of course, you know, and that was even a little glib because Bill Clinton was accused of lying about sex, but he was lying about sex in the context of trying to get him. out from under what amounted to a sexual assault charge from Paula Jones.

So he was perjuring himself. Perjury is a serious guy. Perjuring himself. And this was a matter of evidence which had been passed recently that this is considered relevant to these charges or this kind of lawsuit. And so he lied about sex in that context. And the very same people who were, you know, that's just lying about sex. And Trump paid off that mistress.

And, you know, like, and the hippocet. So, hypocrisy is so rank, and they don't, like, I don't know, do they not see it in themselves, or they don't care, or I don't know what it is. But you're right, it's just, it's all team-oriented, and this is the danger of, one of the dangers of mob justice. People who are hated, I experience this in my own organization. People who are disliked never get a fair shake. That's just the way it is. That's one of the lessons of life.

And I see it over and over and over again. and people who are beloved will always get a pass. Yeah. And people who have the right opinions are going to be judged much less harshly than those who have the wrong opinions and may even do a far, you know, a far less less crime.

I don't know if it's the case here, but certainly in the UK, the nicer comedian is on stage, the worst they are off stage and vice versa. Oh, I don't know about that, yeah. Oh, no, no, no. Like if all the male feminists, they're secretly groping someone in the green room, is how it tends to work. I don't doubt that at all.

I mean, Trump is, you know, he has a consensual affair with a mistress. You can stop me. Allegedly. Yeah, yeah. Allegedly. And obviously. We have to say that in the UK so we don't get sued. You don't have that problem.

Allegedly has a concern. And allegedly consensual. Allegedly. Allegedly. I appreciate it was consensual, giving an amount of money. And then she's obviously hitting him up for money because nobody just are. and people want to see could anybody actually upset with him about it?

It makes no sense. But he's hated, so he's never even getting a fair shake. Yeah, and the other thing that upset me about the Louis thing was people going, oh, you know, I used to really like him, and now I can never like him again. And you just go, when did we want our artists to be perfect human beings? Artists are flawed. I read an article in The Guardian a few weeks ago.

about protests outside a Picasso exhibition, because apparently he wasn't great with women. Huh? And you go, who cares? Yeah, listen, you know, that's the problem. You get sucked into a certain line of thought, and if you follow to his natural conclusion, the outcomes are just the cure because it's worse than a disease.

I had a similar experience years ago. This is, you know, when things weren't like they were now, but this was at the time when Lewis Farrakhan was in the news for saying Hitler was a great man, whatever it is. When he first came out that he was, you know, really an anti-Semite. And I had a musician I was working with who walked in with a Farrakhan T-shirt.

I remember and I didn't even I couldn't rule out that he was wearing it on purpose. Like, just like to fuck with me a little bit. And I read, what am I going to do about them? Am I going to make a comment? And I said, I said, just let it go. Like, don't be a jerk. Like, who cares? And then who cares is actually very constructive. Now, of course, if you transplant that today, if I had an employee wore a Farrakhan

T-shirt and I told him like, go change or whatever, people would be outrage, right? I'd be, but if I had someone who came in and wore some sort of anti-black t-shirt, and I said it was okay, people would freak out at me for that too. So it's just, you know, but obviously, it's totally contradictory. They're both basically the same, right? He's a vicious anti-Semite. This person's a racist. So again, they'll pick and choose. They will, they'll, I'm not going to say it again. So my attitude is it's just better if we just let things go. I don't want more laws, but if there was a law which forbid business owners from taking any actions whatsoever based on the private lives, politics, and any sense of their employees, I think that would be great. So I can just say,

I say, listen, I have no choice. I know they're a Nazi, but, you know, I'm compelled to hire Nazis because it's impossible. It's an impossible. It's not good. See, you only get to say that. Well, there's two reasons you get to say. First of all, you don't give a shit.

You own your own club and who gives the fuck. But really, the reason you get to say that is you're Jewish, right? You can say that. Just a non-Jewish person couldn't say that. No, couldn't say that. And that's kind of the world we're in, I think. That is the world where the best. So even those of us who I think resent the very idea of identity politics, I think it's really

stupid and quite dangerous actually, we're still playing by their rules, aren't we? Yeah, sometimes it's impossible to get out from under it, you know? I try to get out from under it in my own home. You know, my wife is Puerto Rican and Indian, and I... But my kids are all, you know, extremely aware of identity and everything, and that's purely from what they're learning in school. And it upsets me, you know. I don't know, you've heard the story.

My daughter came home in the first grade. Now, my daughter, I don't think she had any idea that my wife and I were different colors. I don't know what it was like to the eyes of a first grader, but there never been any indication that she understood anything much about race. And she came home and says, Daddy, you're white, right?

And I said, yeah. She says, do you treat people badly? I'm like, no, what do you ever see Daddy treat anybody badly? she says, well, we learned in school that white people treat people badly. I said, you learn that white people? She said, or maybe that white people used to treat people badly. She couldn't process it. And I wanted to go up to the school and, you know, scream bloody murder.

But I didn't because I'm a coward because I know that I'm kind of high profile and somebody would, you know, and then I'd go viral, whatever it is. It was really angering. My daughter was still believe in Santa Claus because her mother's not Jewish. My daughter's in Santa Claus. And I don't know, to make themselves feel better, these expert educators think that they need to start teaching her stuff at an age where she really can't comprehend it.

This is why I hate this shit, man. This is why they're re-racializing society and they're brainwashing kids into shit that you have to put in their heads for them to actually. A seven or eight-year-old doesn't think about race and this person's this and this person's that and these people did, because they're smarter than these 30-year-old educators.

They know not to do that. Well, you know, one of the things I've said to people in the past is, you know, maybe it would be healthy to start by visualizing where we'd like to be someday. If the goal is to be a non-society, you know, multiracial society that doesn't consider race, it considers race as, you know,

as Sam Harris wants to say, as inconsequential as hair color, right? Then much of what we're doing now is obviously wrong because there is no path from what we're doing now to what we claim we want the eventual outcome. Even on the issue of when that issue of blackface came up, I'm not soft on blackface. But there was this thing,

you have little kids who want to go as Black Panther. And it's kind of trash. In a sense, no, we will never let you little kids go as Black Panther because we want you to always be imprisoned to the past Mocking of black people as blackface as As opposed to maybe at some point we have to say well, okay, we can teach about the past But we can also embrace a new future where actually every little kid can dress up as his heroes of whatever color maybe that's naive. I don't know, but you'd think that that's That is the goal, right?

Wouldn't that be beautiful? Someday in the future, this didn't matter anymore. And if you're a little white kid loved Black Panther, he could dress up as Black Panther for Halloween. No, no, no, no. We shall never allow that because we will always want to be imprisoned by what happened in the past. That doesn't seem to be smart.

No, it doesn't. And one of the things that I think sums this up beautifully is a fact, we talk about slavery and the West African slave trade, which was obviously awful, but we don't talk about the fact that we have modern slavery and it enslaves millions of people all around the world. Yeah, Coleman Hughes has talked about that. We're more psychologically obsessed with slavery in the past than slavery today. Now, of course, slavery is obviously something we need to be extremely concerned about

and study and and choice. to untangle to the extent that it's real, how it still impacts our history today. Having said that, you know, that doesn't mean that every single thing which is attributed to slavery is actually, you know, because of slavery, right? Yeah, yeah. And you guys feel like you have the right to talk about that. Like, well, let's, somebody said that slavery is responsible for today's economic prosperity. Some economists disagree.

Let's have an interview with an economist who has it. People will call you a racist. It's an empirical issue, right? Yeah. Well, it ought to be, but it's not. That's, I think, one of the big problems in society now is so many things are an empirical issue, but we don't talk about them in that way at all. It's all about people's feelings and emotion, and that gets melded into,

which is why we're all uncomfortable talking about it, actually, all of us, because we know that that is not an issue about which people can be empirical in modern society. I think that's where we've got to. We've got about 10 minutes left. No, what are your plans for the seller? What do you see coming and culturally and in every? Like, just what are you thinking about? Well, we just bought a new building around the corner that used to be at McDonald's

and we're going to open another club. Of course, in New York, it takes... It takes forever to get anything open. So, building a new club, it's going to take a long time. Zooming out, I'm very much, and this came from, you know, the way my father lived his life, I'm very much, I see everything that I do essentially as trying to enjoy myself. And I really don't distinguish very much between my work, my music, my kids, whatever it is. So what's in store for me is, you know, whatever interests me and, you know,

And, you know, money is, you know, a very fortunate byproduct of everything that I've done, but I consider myself so fortunate. Like my father used to say that most people said, no, most people hate their jobs. Most people can't wait for the weekend. Yeah. This has never be one of those people, you know. So that's why I didn't become a lawyer. And I just, you know, every day I just do whatever I want to do.

Like, that makes me happy. Noam, you've seen some of the greatest comedians in the world come through here. What makes a great comedian? Being funny? No. There's no one thing. It's like what makes a great music. There's no one thing. But it is

repetitively you see there's a healthy dose of charisma. That's a big thing. The same exact lines and coming out of two different mouths is not the same line. Of course you have to be funny Whatever that means

And I think that Although I hate to say this because it's You know I hear the comedian singing all the time The audience does read you if you're not Honest and true to yourself They really can smell a hack And so you do have to be yourself And these are

I think the same general rules that apply almost to all art forms. I don't think it's unique to comedy. I remember reading the first page of Isaac Stern, the famous classical violence, his autobiography. And he talks about his mindset that he gets on a stage. I think classical music now is important to understand. This is just notes written on the page. There's no latitude.

There's no latitude. And he says, you have to get out there. And you say, you will listen to me. And like he talked about this amazingly bold, charismatic mindset of a classical musician, like, listen to me, you know. This is an attitude that performers have in every art form of performance that I think is common in the successful ones. There's something about them. They just understand about gripping that audience, whatever it takes. And when you see, you know, people like Petrie.

O'Neill who used to grace your stage. Grace is not young. We had a rocky relationship with Patrice, actually. Yeah, how come? Well, Patrice used to if, listen, Patrice was a genius,

and Patrice is one of the most... Can I just stop you there? What do you mean by Patrice was a genius? What does that mean? Patrice was a top, you know, 10th of 1% insightful person. And he saw things and spoke honestly about real things in the human condition that people were feeling and thinking about, which stayed with people. And I think have really stood the test of time.

And maybe his respect has only grown since he died. And the comedians revere him. We do. Yeah. Having said that. You've seen the cold, you know, how to pronounce that word, O-E-V, or, like, that, of, is that the right word?

Yeah, of Patrice, right? Day to day, Patrice was a more mixed bag. So if Patrice didn't do well, he would take a flamethrower to the room. I mean, he would be, you know, lay into people in the audience. He did not give a shit about the fact that there was a show that had to continue for another.

hour and 15 minutes after he left the stage. And that obviously caused friction with, you know, money-grubbing club owners like me. You know, there's a, on top of everything, artistry-wise, in my opinion, there is still a certain social contract that a performer has with an audience who has made their plans, gotten a babysitter, put down their money, and comes and expects to see your, you're good faith effort to entertain them. And he was one of those comedians. Rest in peace, I love the guy, who didn't feel he had to honor that social contract.

This is about me. If I'm not feeling it or if I'm pissed off, I have no responsibility to the room or the audience or whatever it is. So that was the nature of our friction. But nobody ever, I mean, he always worked here and nobody ever thought he wasn't funny. But wasn't that part of what made him great? Yes, it was. And this is, I mean, yeah, you can't slice and dice people.

And oftentimes a negative quality in somebody is also part of what has made them successful and contributes to their positive qualities. People, there was some dumb club owner was complaining about Seinfeld being snooty to him or sarcastic with him. I'm like, do you think Seinfeld would be? Seinfeld of he like you want to take out the essence of Seinfeld and think that everything you love about Seinfeld would still exist this is who he is that's why he's funny that's that's his sensibility that's why he became the most successful comedian in the world and that's why you got a little sarcasm in person so you can't you can't pick and choose the Patrice thing was significant you know it was there were there were I think there was a chair thrown like it was really like we were when Patrice went out we were all like sweating bullets like you know it's like you know it was It's just, but we always put him on, because we always recognized what a great talent he was. There was a time he didn't perform here for a while.

He had a thing with my father or something like that, but that's another matter once. He was very mean to my father one time. And who were the people who produced the greatest work on the stage, looking back? Who are the people that when you saw them, you went, wow, that's so different from what anybody else is doing? So different?

Or brilliant? Yeah, the ones who were brilliant, you know, it's no, this is the thing. It's obvious to everybody who the brilliant ones are. There's no club owner or Booker who has any particularly deep insight. Like when Chappelle was like 18 or 19, whatever he was, the first time he came on, and my father said something like this, you would not have needed to speak English. You could have just been in the room hearing. a foreign gibberish tongue

and said, holy shit, that 19 year old must be something special. It's obvious. And all these grades like John Stewart, Dave Chappelle, Michael Chey, you know, all of them, virtually all. Not 100% of all them, but almost all of them.

I can remember the first time I saw them because it was like, it was ingrained in my memory. And that's not just like I've forgotten the people. It really is something real. I can remember them very well because they would just, they cut something into your brain. It may not have been necessarily what they were saying. It's the whole thing together.

And no, this is perhaps a sad question to ask, or it depends on your answer, I suppose. But if you inherited this from your father, who built it up, do you think if your kids were interested in continuing to run it? I'm not asking about them specifically. I'm asking more about stand-up comedy as a genre. Are people 20 years from now still going to want to come out and sit in and have the meat suit experience sitting here with 120 other strangers

and watching a guy on stage or are they just going to be on their phones? No, I think, well, let me answer and say what made me think of. Absolutely. I think that the idea of people wanting to go out with human contact, live, seeing something real.

I don't, I think this is human nature and I don't think it's I don't think it's going away I really don't think it's going away as much as everybody is on their phones now all the time business is way way busier than it's ever been so I think social contact is is one of the basic human instincts and if it's interesting to you I did not want to take over the comedy

seller because I did not want to be compared to my father who was a much really a larger than life person. So I worry about that from my kids. And I'd already had major success

with something I liked doing and then my father and I kind of had to take over the comedy cellar and I did not, I was not immediately embraced or respected by the comedians. And I knew that.

They weren't mean to me but they're like it's, you know, it's the, the kid taking it over, you know. And this is a group of people who were by nature look to make fun of everything, you know. So it was only after I think that I actually did, made certain moves and expanded the place

and grew the place and various things where I kind of rose to the occasion that I think if I get some respect now, it's because I earned it. I don't know necessarily if my kids will be able to do that. And if they can't, it can be psychologically damaging to them. And, you know, there's a lot of kids out there

of famous people or successful people who are miserable and just they can never get out from under the shadow of their parents. Ron Reagan, Jr. types, you know, like, you know. I haven't heard of them. Didn't know he existed. Oh, you didn't know? I think that's your point.

Yeah. Oh, no, so he spoke. Anyway, so I want my kids, this is such a fantastic lifestyle. Like you come to work, and it's fun, whatever it is, and the money's good, and you mean interesting people. So I would love to have that.

I love my kids to have that for themselves. But I also want them to have a certain sense of their own accomplishments. And I don't know how much room for growth there will be or what they can do. If they can't accomplish it, put their own, you know, what's the word, put their own stamp on the business, they may never feel that good about it. I don't know.

No, it's been a pleasure It's great to chat Was the answer That's great Because you have a deadpan A deadpan stare You're just our faces You're like a comedian

Always worried about How good your answer was Listen, it's been a pleasure to chat We're going to take you to locals Where we ask questions from our audience But before we go there We always end the main interview With the same question

Which is what's the one thing We're not talking about As a society That you think really should be Oh, you know Everybody has to answer this question Yes Yes. You will answer the question?

Well, this is, you know, because we've really talked about the things we should be talking about, I would say that this may be not exactly the answer to your question, but personally, one thing that disturbs me that is not being adequately spoken about, and this is a very personal matter to me, is what I consider to be the very important defenses for the state of Israel, which young Jewish people, and I'm not excusing whatever things Israel does wrong, but young Jewish people, even intellectual Jewish people,

are so ignorant about the history of that country and why it's in the predicament that it is and how it has tried to extricate itself from that predicament, that they are unable to have the argument anymore. They basically just nod their head in shame. And I think this is actually dangerous, not only for Israel, but for the Jewish people all over the world.

And I don't know what can be done about that, but that is something that's on my mind. And this is not to say that Israel is right about everything, but there is something that needs to be, there are things that are not being said And as they say, you know, if you're not for yourself, who will be? If Jewish people can't make their own arguments, no one is going to make it for them. And that worries me.

So one needs to be said. I'm not going to go into the whole, you know, like, but like I ask smart, young Jewish people, do you know how it is that Israel came into the occupied territories? No. Like this is like the most fundamental question about the whole couple. Why is that territory occupied? Do you know about the Clinton? attempts to make peace. Do you know what the second Intifada was? No. They don't know any of this stuff.

So in their minds, they've internalized that we are like Afrikaners. We're a apartheid state. And so like when I went to college, I took a semester abroad in Israel. And this was a perfectly okay thing to do. I read stories all the time now about like kids of Columbia and I would never think about taking a semester abroad in Israel. We have a Jewish star in the window of the She upstairs. This has been there my whole life. And most of my existence, this was seen by the general public as no different than an Italian flag in a pizzeria. Nobody really gave it any thought. In recent years, people say to me, good for you. Or you're taking a stand, are you? You know, like, they're seeing it as it's almost like a defiant political statement on my part, as opposed to just, it's an ethnic

symbol. Like every ethnic restaurant, it's an Israeli restaurant, every ethnic restaurant has some sort of ethnic symbol. No, no, Jewish people, their ethnic symbols are controversial. This is very dangerous, I think. Noam. Noam, Dwarman. Dwarman, yeah. Thank you so much, my brother. I really

recommend people come in, if they're ever in New York, they come and check out, and I have comedy here, the comedy seller, the best club. Some people would argue in the world. I don't know. I hope so. I hope so. Some people would. Thank you so much for joining us. Follow us over to locals where we ask your questions of Noam. Take care, and we'll see you

there by the way do you think that's a good thing comedians having opinions and on serious matters and stuff like that