Marc Maron Decries Fueling Rise of Comedy Podcasts
Regrets, podcaster Marc Maron has a few.
The liberal standup helped spark a crush of comedy podcasts with his long-running “WTF with Marc Maron” showcase.
The program interviewed stars large and small, even a sitting U.S. president. Now, Maron is stepping back from his signature showcase. He’s burned out, he says, after a 16-year run.
He leaves “WTF” with a heavy heart.
Andrew Breitbart famously embraced the “more voices, not less” ethos. Not Maron.
The comedian has claimed Cancel Culture isn’t real and comics who call it out are “fascists.” And he’d rather some of his successors never fired up their podcast mics in the first place.
His “WTF” platform, along with fellow pioneer Adam Carolla, paved the way for a crush of comedy podcasts, from “We Might Be Drunk” with Mark Normand and Sam Morril to “This Past Weekend” with Theo Von.
The biggest of them all remains “The Joe Rogan Experience.” That show began shortly after “WTF” bowed but has become a pop culture staple in recent years.
That’s where the problem begins for Maron.
Legacy Media outlets and the Left, but we repeat ourselves, contend Rogan and his podcasting chums helped President Donald Trump win re-election. Trump and future Vice President J.D. Vance appeared on multiple comedy podcasts, including Von’s showcase and “The Tim Dillon Show.”
Trump’s appearance on “The Joe Rogan Experience” grabbed the most headlines.
Many of the shows in question had open invitations to Vice President Kamala Harris during the 2024 campaign. Team Harris repeatedly declined the offers.
Maron isn’t happy to hear “more voices, not less.” Especially if said voices engage with right-leaning politicians.
“I feel like I’ve partially done an amazing thing for culture, but on the other side of that, I feel like I’ve released the Kraken …It’s always twofold when you’re at the beginning of a new medium. There’s a lot of like, ‘Wow, the freedom of it!’ And you know, I think those words are said before anything turns into a horrendous malevolent force.”
The far-Left Cracked.com correctly connected that “force” to Team Rogan. Why?
Consider Maron’s previous rant against his peers.
The wave of what he calls the anti-woke, pro-fascism movement is powered by his fellow comics, he wrote in a 2024 blog entry posted days before the election.
When comedians with podcasts have shameless, self-proclaimed white supremacists and fascists on their show to joke around like they are just entertainers or even just politicians, all it does is humanize and normalize fascism….Popular podcasts became tribal and divisive years ago. Now they may be in the position to become part of the media oligarchy under the new anti-democratic government.
The post Marc Maron Decries Fueling Rise of Comedy Podcasts appeared first on Hollywood in Toto.
