Marc Maron's Comedy Special is Good, but his Takes on Free Speech are Bad
Maron on my mind…
Finally pulled the trigger on this topic after seeing Marc Maron come up in the House of Strauss BCC Chat. Though this post was probably arriving regardless.
When it comes to topic selection here, this is sometimes how it works. On occasion, there will be a perfect sports/media subject popping up in the news, and I’ll write about it. Other times I’ll get a tip about something nobody is discussing yet and I’ll write about that.
Then there’s this other sort of topic, one I’ll get stuck on internally. I keep thinking about it, but dismiss the subject as not exactly germane to reader interest. Then I realize, after a stretch, that good topics tend to be the ones caught in my mind. Sometimes those posts work best.
Well, I’ve still got Marc Maron on the mind. I don’t know how many people, especially among my subscriber base, care about Maron or his recent “Panicked” comedy special. His show WTF With Marc Maron was massively influential in those early podcast days, but it peaked and lost relevance for whatever reason. Apparently, and I’m just finding this out, Maron is set to retire the podcast. When, “Who will be the liberal Joe Rogan?” became a fashionable question a few months back, Maron, who’s literally also a comedian with a famous podcast, who happens to have done politically liberal radio, rarely was mentioned. Or, if he was spoken of in this context, I missed it.
Now he’s coming up a lot this summer as he promotes his HBO Max comedy special. Maron’s entered the aggregation cycle by calling out “anti-woke” comedians. In response, you see people on the right responding that Maron was never funny. Which made me then wonder: Is Marc Maron funny?
I used to listen to WTF, but had never seen a Maron comedy special. My assumption was, based purely on the podcast, that he wasn’t that funny a guy. There was a sourness to his pod persona that was made bearable by rawness, but little of his conversational rhythm led to laughs. It was also simply easier for me to categorize Maron as someone who never quite excelled at his craft but was perfectly optimized to succeed in this offshoot exploration of it. After all, he’s far more famous for being a podcaster than a standup.
Then I watched the special and…I was shocked by how funny he is. There’s a craftsmanship to his routine that wasn’t apparent in his interviews. Whatever his many self-admitted flaws as a person, he’s a very skilled comedian. He might even be underrated, given that many make the “podcaster” assumption I did.
I also watched the special almost backwards, skipping the first few minutes to get to a part that intrigued me in the trailer. His politics jag, which comes at the very start, is by far the weakest material. Maron is more astute observer of himself than he is about Donald Trump, Trump supporters, or the political moment. He could be right about the presidency going in some hellish direction and still not lend much novel insight into why it happened.
But there’s a moment in the politics portion that pleasantly surprised and it wasn’t Maron (amusingly, in my opinion) lashing his own side with, “You do realize we annoyed the average American into fascism.” Actually, it wasn’t even Maron’s political commentary itself.
The “We had free speech” Retcon
When inveighing against Trump-supporting comedians, Maron says, “They didn’t want their free speech to be infringed upon…which it never was!” He leans into the laugh line inflection on “which it never was!” while pointing at the audience like a prompt. And…crickets.
Maybe a couple polite guffaws, but mostly awkward silence. Maron eventually wins the audience back with the idea, popular on the cultural left, that a group of people supported Trump just because they wanted to say “retard” again. Maron calls such nonexistent people “retards,” and gets a big laugh.
I enjoyed that the audience, even if they politically agreed with Maron, betrayed some visceral knowledge of the truth. There was a lot you couldn’t say in the recent past, if you worked in the Laptop Class. I mean, you could say it, provided you didn’t especially value your job and social standing. But that’s just “consequences,” we were often told back then. Or “cultural pushback,” to use Maron’s euphemism. Or getting “shown the door” as that smug little cartoon put it.
Some of us really don’t like to lie, though. However we feel about Trump, we find mandated lying to be humiliating at some level. I’m sure I’d get mocked for saying this in some media circles, but I hated the feeling, years ago, of completing tests for the Athletic where I had to confess to my “cis hetero privilege” and other arcane theories of advantage. I didn’t believe in these concepts and resented being forced to pretend I did. I flat out despise being compelled to state opinions that I don’t believe, in order to keep my job.
I didn’t blame my former employer either. I understood that they operated under pressure from potential lawsuits, hit pieces, and prying governmental bodies. I also understood that many of my colleagues didn’t mind doing this. I got that my raising a stink would look to the others like some combination of “diva” and “bigot.” Also, if you buy into these ideas, at some level, it’s a lot easier to go along with such mandates. Internal discomfort is just a sign that the “progress” is working.
Many who do buy into The Ideas lack a certain capacity to understand those of us who don’t. They might assume that people who resented the recent cancellation culture had no true, good faith misgivings. We merely wanted to say “retard” because we’re mean spirited and that’s that. I don’t think they fully get that what galled a lot of us was the growing sense that you had to either lie or shut up about a growing range of subjects. Unfortunately this isn’t just a matter of pride and manners. There are adverse consequences to squelching people’s honest observations, as anyone concerned about Donald Trump firing the Bureau of Labor Statistics head would readily concede.
I found it easier to shut up than to lie, especially when the topics weren’t at all germane to my old job in NBA media. I remembered, during the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation battle, seeing sports journo colleagues inveighing on Twitter against the Supreme Court nominee on the basis of Christine Blasey Ford’s allegations. I mused that this was all fine for them to do, free of consequence, because such an opinion was favored within media culture.
Then, out of idle curiosity, I looked up the allegations, and saw there was zero evidence to support them. But was I going to air that observation? On a matter that had nothing to do with me? You wouldn’t be fired on the spot, but you’d certainly become a problem at your outlet. People might deny it now, but back then, colleagues would indeed work hard to push you out on the basis of something like that. Full agreement on all cultural hot button issues was required.
Topic after topic was exactly like this. You’d think comedians would be immune to such pressures but the same pressures informed show cancellations. The atmosphere of “don’t get fired” permeated the industries that were public facing. Anyone could become fodder for some righteous viral storm. CEOs were terrified of their employees and were all too happy to axe anyone suddenly unpopular in the Slack channel.
Have a take contrary to the #MeToo fervor? Better shut up. Think it’s insane for people to riot over George Floyd? Better shut up. Notice that even though the NBA is striking over Jacob Blake, he happened to be a knife wielding maniac? Better shut up. Trans? Be serious. “Free speech” has argued over definitions but it’s just so that, back in the recent past, you’d be banned from the major social media channels for saying “men aren’t women.”
Perhaps you’re fine with that sort of societal set up, but many of us aren’t. It wasn’t the absolute worst of times, but it was pretty grim that reasonable people weren’t allowed to politely air opinions that were majoritarian takes mere years ago. Hell, many of the disallowed perspectives were probably still majoritarian during the Back Channel days. The people who saw this societal shift as “progress” because it flattered their priors have little theory of mind for those who saw it as dystopian.
I won’t delve deeply into the governmental aspect of how free speech got curbed in the Social Media Era (2012-2022). The most salient example was the New York Post getting kicked off all the major platforms for publishing a story about Hunter Biden. I’m still uncertain as to how much censorship in this time had a federal influence. Donald Trump winning in 2016 certainly galvanized a sense within social media companies that they had a duty to nudge us all into the “correct” perspective.
Perhaps these companies helped “annoy the average American into fascism” because they were so obsessed with preventing what they saw as fascism in average Americans. The issue was that many making the rules back then saw “fascism” in any opinion that contradicted the latest conventional wisdom. Then Elon Musk bought Twitter in 2022 and “conventional wisdom” fractured.
None of this is to say that Donald Trump, who frequently sues people over what they say, cares about free speech as a principle. It’s just so that the countervailing ideology which preceded him presided over a stultifying atmosphere of preference falsification in the cultural and corporate spaces. You can pretend it away, but it happened. Those of us who hated it didn’t just want to say “retard,” though, yes, there was a humorlessness to the cultural minding. We just wanted to be able to say “there are four lights” when we saw four lights.
Guys like Maron don’t understand because, for whatever reason, they always agreed with the prevailing orthodoxy. Though if I’m honest, now that we’re all a bit more honest, I doubt he repeatedly agreed. Perhaps it’s uncharitable but I made my assumptions following the moment Maron distanced himself from once close friend Louis CK by divulging private conversations. I think the aging comedian, having caught a case of sudden Internet fame, was terrified of losing it. I believe he bent towards what was in fashion. Now that it’s no longer in fashion, he struggles to understand those who never pretended.
Ethan, I want to start by saying I'm a huge admirer of your writing. Your commentary is consistently some of the most thought-provoking out there, which is why I feel compelled to push back on this piece and the broader trends it sometimes represents.
A core strength of your work has been diagnosing the "mandated lying" and "preference falsification" that defined life for many in the "Laptop Class." You effectively describe the feeling of being "compelled to state opinions" you don’t believe just to keep a job.
But this piece reveals the central contradiction that runs through much of your cultural analysis, even after the vibe-shift. And with the utmost respect, it's a contradiction that points to a recurring intellectual blindspot in your work. You rightly demand that your cultural commentary be seen as a good-faith description of the world as it was, and that those who spoke out against the era's overly punitive attitudes and social prohibitions be understood as nuanced individuals acting on conviction, not simple bigotry. The problem is that you consistently refuse to extend that same charity in the other direction.
When you analyze Marc Maron, you don't engage with his ideas; you pathologize his motives. You don't get credit for a mountain of bad-faith aspersions just because you offer a half-hearted concession that he's funny. That praise is immediately buried when you note that you'd forgotten he existed, that he's lost his relevance, and that many on the right now dismiss him as unfunny. This framing serves the same purpose: to paint a portrait of a man driven by nothing more than cynical careerism and a terror of losing fame. You conclude he’s not acting on principle but is simply bending "towards what was in fashion." It doesn't seem to occur to you that the simpler explanation might be the true one: that Maron actually believes what he's saying.
This isn't a one-off, either; it’s a recurring pattern. You're quick to assume that progressive figures in sports media are simply virtue signaling or performing morality. We saw this in your analysis of Mina Kimes's comments on Around the Horn, where the immediate implication was that she was conforming to a progressive orthodoxy, not acting on conviction. Yet, when the conversation turns to figures like Sydney Sweeney, who others accuse of sending subtle right-leaning dog whistles, your threshold for evidence suddenly becomes extremely high, and you demand a level of skepticism that is absent in your other analyses. The irony is that you're often right to apply this charity when defending figures often championed by those on the right, like Sweeney or Aaron Rodgers, from accusations of subtext they never explicitly stated. What's unclear is why that same analytical framework can't survive exposure to public pronouncements of cultural progressivism. This is the core issue. It cannot consistently be the case that progressives are merely performing while figures embraced by free speech advocates are being unfairly misinterpreted. An analytical framework that only works in one direction isn't an analysis; it's just a way to pick sides.
If Maron were the simple sycophant you describe, surely the easier, more profitable path today would be to join the "anti-woke" bandwagon he so openly criticizes. If we accept your premise that social and cultural pressures are meaningful, it's hard to conclude that Maron's actions are anything but oppositional. He is putting himself in direct conflict with many of the most influential voices not just in comedy, but in the country. Perhaps you could convince me that sports media or Hollywood still abide by progressive maxims, but I can't imagine a less credible place to make that claim than in the world of comedy podcasts and stand-up comedy. Your critique of Maron as a conformist might have landed in 2020, but in 2025 it feels like an old band tiredly playing the hits. Your writing is often at its worst when it seems unwilling to acknowledge a crucial fact: your perspective is the new cultural orthodoxy, and Maron is the one swimming against the tide, even if he’s wrong.
The fact that you highlight Maron's own self-critique, his admission that his side "annoyed the average American into fascism," is telling. Your analysis deploys the exact same refusal of good faith that Maron was, however briefly, acknowledging. You fail to see that you are deploying the exact same tactic. They reduce your side to a caricature of people who just want to "say 'retard' again," and you reduce them to a caricature of hollow, snobby progressive elites. You've successfully identified the intellectual flaw in your opponents, only to have your own analysis become the most glaring example of it.
I tend to think of such people as part of a herd, like an individual buffalo in the middle of a rampaging buffalo herd. Those of us who aren’t in the herd can see the rampage, the fences being torn down, ground being chewed up, all of the property damage incurred.
The buffalo in the middle of the herd, the entire time the rampage was going on, they look to the left and the right and simply see the other buffalos running next to them. Their friends who were usually next to them were right next to them throughout, just running together. They’re completely oblivious to the chaos on the perimeter of the herd, or under their feet. But everyone outside the perimeter of the herd can see it plainly.
Having said that, some number of them *could* see at least some of it and were just lying. Hard to know who was lying to both themselves *and* you, and who was only lying to you. It’s funny that they accused people of gaslighting so often. They’re still prone to hiding the ball, leaving relevant information out of stories lest it hurt the team, conveniently not noticing the sins of their own club, etc.