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.
You write “When you analyze Marc Maron, you don't engage with his ideas; you pathologize his motives.”
That’s… not what he is doing? I think Ethan engages perfectly well with the ideas and points out where Maron is wrong about the very real censorship that went on among the left from 2019-2022-ish, but regardless, Can you point to where Ethan is pathologizing his motives?
Maron absolutely believes what he says. He believes his comedy was better than those with more fans and larger laughs, often calling them sell outs or pandering to idiots. Similarly he believes Americans are too dumb to understand how Democratic policies help everyone and often calls into question the intelligence of the American people.
Throughout all of Marc Maron's life the problem was others. If only people knew of the genius between his ears could Mark begin to the enjoy life of a millionaire podcaster who interviews well known and famous people. Until then, resentment and struggle.
None of us will know the struggle of Maron's genius.
I liked this essay a lot more than you, but I do think you're raising a good point. I think Maron does believe what he's saying, and the question is why. Ethan points toward career resentment, which I'd argue isn't bad faith or pathology, since it was the very basis of Maron's podcast, his raison d'etre for a long time.
But I've also wondered how losing his partner a few years ago changed him, the effect that woman had on his life. I can't remember her name now, but the death was shocking, and I've seen that kind of loss mutate into Very Righteous Anger on topics that may or may not have anything to do with anything. This feels like one. It's just a suspicion, possibly incorrect, but I would bet these are things she said to him at one point, and he's not ready to let that go.
Haha was recently listening to you and Ethan talk about boobs being back. Too funny. Agree with your support of Ethan's reasoning and your second point further adds weight and context to Marc's circumstance. Losing someone sucks, losing someone at the beginning of a lockdown is just begging for a return to old, familiar ways or attitudes.
You accuse Ethan of describing Maron as a “simple syncophant”, which he didn’t do, at all, explicitly or implicitly. And you want to be taken seriously with a 100,000 word breakdown of small article?!?
That sounds exactly like a person who would support “From the River to the Sea” rhetoric and blockades of collegiate libraries from student use while censoring “COVID probably came from a lab”, “men aren’t women”, and “‘drag queen happy hours’ are taking sexual kinks public in front of kids”.
To me it's much simpler though: Ethan is rightly decrying cancel culture at a cellular level while ignoring the broader cultural phenomenon that right wing media wasn't - has never been - silenced in the slightest. And I'm not saying they should be. But they should be called out for the bad faith bullshit. They have always continued to say whatever the hell they want - facts notwithstanding - while shouting from their megaphones: "but but but MY FREEDOM OF SPEECH!" whenever anyone disagrees with them (usually factually).
This is classic Nietzschian lamb and eagle stuff: the alt right commentators pretending they are lambs deserving of succour and protection when actually they are eagles doing and saying whatever they please, whenever they please, and damn the consequences.
The New York Post was banned from social media for what turned out to be a true story. There were “disinformation” bodies set with prodding from the government tasked with minimizing disfavored speech that also turned out to be true, like Covid resulting from a lab accident or the Covid vaccines not being completely effective at stopping transmission. If you don’t think that counts as being silenced, I don’t know what to tell you.
Well, firstly there is no conclusion regarding the lab leak theory. You might believe it, I might believe it, but no-one actually knows for certain. IIRC 11 different US government agencies investigated it and none found it to be conclusively true or untrue, they split down the middle on whether it was lab leak or zoonotic. I read plenty about that at the time and it was heavily debated in media, so not sure what was stopping you from doing so. Hell, the Australian PM got himself in hot water with China calling for the Chinese to allow a proper international investigation! But somehow we weren't talking about it freely?
Re covid vaccines and transmission, were you even listening closely to what the public health officials said? I was because my partner is immunocompromised. We were told at the time that the most important effect of the vaccines was to lower the incidence of severe Covid effects and keep people out of hospital. No scientist I ever saw said "this will 100% prevent you getting the virus or transmitting it". No vaccine does that, none. So that's another false premise.
And btw, the disinformation units were set up within social media companies to monitor and flag disinformation as disinformation. Remember the posts were still allowed, they were simply flagged as based on spurious or non-existent evidence. That should absolutely still be a thing, especially when a large section of the populace lacks critical thinking and research skills and is fed misinformation-driven AI slop daily in their social media. Misinformation on topics of fact is poisoning global society.
There is the mainstream media and there is the right wing media, and the right wing media has never been silenced but this ignores how the right wing media even came into existence and it was because of the shunning of right leaning ideas in the mainstream media.
Also there are examples of right leaning media being frequently suppressed on YouTube, Spotify, Twitter and other "neutral" tech platforms. Not just Hunter Biden but Joe Rogan had episodes removed and others put behind an advisory warning. This almost never happens with bad medical advice from the left. Oprah Winfrey could promote all manner of quackery on her show and win Emmy Awards for it.
That's not how "right wing media" came to be at all, its history is far deeper. Every developed country has had right leaning media (specifically newspapers) since at least the end of WW II, and in some countries like the UK it goes back to the early 1800s. Most of this media has been a mouthpiece for the rich to further their agenda, as it remains today.
For example, Rupert Murdoch, who was actually pretty progressive as a young man, realised there was a big buck to be made in it and got heavily into media all over the developed world in the 70s and early 80s. He then pushed his newspapers and cable channels further and further right, at times toppling governments and further entrenching his power and wealth. He was the most influential media mogul on the planet from the mid 80s through the late 2010s when the social media giants truly took over.
As for Oprah, I agree. But why are people taking medical advice from unqualified non-expert TV hosts? That's where the individual's responsibility for critical thinking comes into play.
The final paragraph is one fairly obvious, glaring example. Also just read the descriptions of Maron throughout the article, not exactly a sympathetic or even handed portrait.
I find Maron to be grating and likely agree with many of Skytimes issues with him but I’m not sure how you can read this and not see the pathologizing.
"I doubt he repeatedly agreed" is the only potential wording you could be referencing.
The final paragraph is "I think this based off this and here is some evidence" Lol I know nothing about English but isn't that a common way to finish a paper article essay what have you?
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.
Great article - Appreciate anyone expressing genuine Covid Authoritarianism thoughts and feelings, even after the fact. I worked in construction where belief and policy countered that of many business settings. Most remember fondly the harassment and name-calling for working outside without masks or seeing FJB/TRUMP somewhere on site.
The Dem-left claims to represent the working and middle class, but actions speaks louder than words and we remember everything shouted by the Covids while we worked: f-ing idiots, grandpa killers, ignorant bastards, brainwashed, some version of belonging to a cult.
This reminds me of that South Park episode where they end up changing the dictionary definition of “fag” to refer to someone driving an absurdly loud motorcycle. Language police seem weirdly hell-bent on preserving slurs, via a low-grade Streisand effect, when simply letting people blow off steam and letting words evolve away from their hurtful precedents seems like a far more reasonable and realistic tactic. In other words, let “retard” evolve to describe “moron in tank-sized pickup truck driving up my ass” rather than “person with cognitive disabilities,” and if someone randomly uses it to hate on someone with Down syndrome, then pile on HIS ass.
I find it curious that you are still so hung up being forced to have "right think" even though you decided to shut up and not stand on your principles, for what, fear of the stink eye of your "woke" colleagues? Today people are getting abducted off the streets for penning op/eds in their student newspapers, universities are losing funding over "anti-semitism" (which is absolutely hilarious in the case of UCLA), that there are being pushed bills all over the country prohibiting protest, that 1 million federal workers have been stripped of their collective bargaining rights for daring to oppose DOGE (don't forget Elon was very happy to say 'retarded' again). Maybe don't care what normie resistance dems think? Maybe think about the fact that the House censures Rashida Talib for using the phrase 'from the river to the sea' but not Randy Fine for saying that we should nuke Gaza and kill every Palestinian. Free speech has always meant first amendment rights, that the GOVERNMENT, not private corporations who we are happy to let control every other aspect of our lives, couldn't abridge your free expression. Whatever the cultural moment that you care so much about--BLM, trans athletes, #metoo--where you could be put in an outgroup pales in comparison to the current consequences for "wrong think." If you think it's bad that the poor Post had to sit on the bench for a fucking Hunter Biden story, what do you think about the New York Times running cover for a genocide for 2 years because they are terrified of laying anything at the feet of a foreign nation?
I mean it is possible to think multiple things are bad but that a lot less ink is being spilled in discussion of one so opt to fill that void rather than be one of many on another issue. One can read/listen to/watch a lot about the things you wish were highlighted in Ethan’s writing in a long list of publications, accounts, personalities— but Ethan is discussing something in a way that I certainly don’t see the perspective much by professional writers.
Indeed. The Biff Administration is running Orwell's "truth is lies" playbook. They are denying realities like climate change and vaccines not being linked with autism, literally re-writing government websites to propogate harmful disinformation, and legally bullying anyone who disagrees with anything they do... but let's ignore that in favour of decrying the cancel culture of 5 years ago. Talk about not being able to see the forest for the trees!
The last administration carried on the greatest political conspiracy of the last 50 years and not a peep from you. So sure, by all means pile on the current guy but unless you were in high dudgeon over that, you’ll probably have a hard time getting people to listen to you.
You have no idea about what I think. I think what the DEMs did is appalling, but you know what - the senile old guy was surrounded by actual professionals who guided your country through the pandemic then the inflation pretty well by just about every metric. That is the strength of a system with safeguards.
None of what the DEMs did makes what Biff is doing any less appalling. He's going senile before our eyes, issuing chaotic policy changes daily, damaging your country and the global order, but that's just fine with you because he's red not blue. Open your fucking eyes.
In my short lifetime global warming was near fact. Now climate change is near fact. Keeps changing a lot for near fact status! But let's have some fun and agree that climate change is occurring and the earth is getting warmer as a result of human behavior.
Here are some facts
1) Warmer weather has resulted in record setting amount of arable land - food production
2) Cold weather causes more deaths than heat related
3) 9% of global deaths heat-cold related with cold killing 9-13x more depending on the source
The results of climate change are undoubtedly positive with more local land, and more land total around the world, available for food harvest on top of a decrease in hot-cold related deaths. Climate Change is incredible!
It's not a "near fact", it is a fact. The mechanisms are well understood as are the causes. I taught climate science at a tertiary level. I'm not going to engage with your completely incorrect, cherry-picked nonsense, I didn't come here to debate the scientifically obvious. We are talking about people being "silenced", right now scientists are being silenced.
Silenced he says! He taught climate science he says.
Do you even hear yourself? Good luck with your crusade - good news for you is that climate is literally always changing so you’ll be in clover for a very long time.
But it is a literal fact that 9x more people die from cold than heat so your refusal to even accept that one fact doesn’t speak well of you or your teaching skills.
The difference is that I expect this behavior from Trump, and Republicans only needed a permission structure to happily join along, but the devolution of the Democratic Party and progressives in general from being proudly “reality-based” 20 years ago to the basket case of shibboleths Ethan writes about here is what makes me despair. At some point Trump will be dead and gone, but if literally no party is left to defend and promulgate things that are true, then we are well and truly fucked.
A reasonable concern. The corruption of the DEMs by lobbies is a major problem, and the fact they aren't listening to their base is a huge concern.
The US electoral system is utterly broken by lobby money and systemic structural failure, and as a result it locks in the 2 parties rather than allowing for a plurality of voices. When you only have to pay off 2 parties to control the system it's far easier to corrupt, and when voters only have 2 choices, you get the current nightmare and increasing disengagement because people feel completely disempowered. First past the post is a terrible way to run elections. Allowing state electoral commissions to gerrymander has made Congressional districts laughable. And the Electoral College is a bad joke. Bad system, bad outcomes.
While Maron and those of that kind of ideological perspective are awful, they provided a pretty good lesson re the general cowardice of the American professional class. You could tell many were miserable, but, like articulated here, fear reigned. The people that imposed their strange views on professional spaces were a minority who most found repellent, they had no guns, etc…but institutions crumbled like they were the Afghan government.
The social media interns had stronger principles than most of their colleagues.
The most depressing thing about the whole era that made me pessimistic about the future was just how shamefully many acted, especially when compared to those that have resisted and acted out despite being in much weaker possessions, in other, more repressive societies. I hope a lesson, that certain things are more important than money and that living a lie can be incredibly miserable, was learned.
(My very anecdotal experience was observing people with some connection to ex-Soviet nations telling certain things to fuck off, and then watching their middle class native born colleagues fearfully bend the knee to the same things. I hope at least a generation of Americans got some inoculation going forward).
This is part of what I am talking about too, you don’t know what living under an oligarchy is (and might not even know what the word means, like communism or fascism and like terms, it seems to be one of the random words that Americans of various ideological persuasions sloppily fling to describe stuff they don’t like). You live in a geographically vast and diverse country, with power divided vertically (federal, state, county, city, neighborhood, etc…) and horizontally (executive, legislative, judicial, administrative, non-governmental, etc…) where nobody can even compel the average consumer to watch the same tv show anymore.
It’s absolutely “wild” that with all the knowledge in the world in their palm, people *still* cosplay as you do.
Interesting that you raise that point just as all the safeguards that share power vertically and horizontally are being torn to shreds by Biff and his Project 2025 mates.
How exactly would you describe an administration that is improperly using emergency statutes to destroy regulators, ignore the courts, hamstring academia and bully the legal profession into doing what they order? I think calling that oligarchic is kind, more like straight authoritarianism to me.
My first two words answered your question. Sit down, concentrate, and think hard about what is implied by them, and their tone. That aside, I categorize you the same way I would somebody rambling about how their great great etc..grandpa was not a monkey…think about what you should draw from that. Now, why don’t you spend less time with me and maybe go devote some time to raising money to finance rescuing American refugees from the authoritarianism. Or cosplay like it’s the 30’s and see about organizing an international brigade to rescue democracy 🫡
I think it slapped more people across the face than you think. If I had a dollar for every "wokeness wokeup white dudes" joke i read in tik tok comments I could retire to becomes Ethan's research assistant.
what right to opinion knowledge or experience does a bachelors give one over another without?
resorting to #'s you don't know to imply points you can't explain makes me believe you're too dumb to come up with your own thoughts and words. inform us bumper sticker brain Joe, do you have a bachelor's? ;P
…huh? I’ll make this easier for you. The people who were in very large part “slapped” by this was a cohort of the 25% of Americans who have at least a bachelors.
Gary Larson, creator of The Far Side, often complained about having to censor the word “dork” in the 80s and 90s. Considering the vast number of English language insults that reference intelligence, I am often amused by how arbitrary these taboos are.
It's amusing when the bubble nudges up against pointy reality, like the response after his "never happened" line. I always thought he was a good comedian with ridiculous politics that I would just wince through when he went there.
Well said. I hate Trump and I hate what he's doing to the country. But I hate the wokescolds who alienated countless people and pushed us into this backlash even more.
They're a major part of why we're here. Period. End of story.
Is the first time Ethan stated his opinions about these topics so plainly? Very refreshing. As someone who agreed with probably 90% of the orthodoxy what really pissed me off was how sharply those who deviated were treated, especially those on the center left. Jesse Singal and Mike Pesca come to mind.
1) The proper nomenclature for “set of jokes practiced and preformed by a specific stand up comedian” is the word “act” and not the word “routine.” It’s like calling a quarterback “the thrower.” It’s technically accurate but not the given name in the industry’s parlance.
2) I would argue the “Social Media Era” in the context it’s explained here actually began with the Missouri football protest in 2015. At least it was the tipping point of culturally intersectional discourse with EVERYTHING being political. The 2012 year works because of the Zimmerman case (and the subsequent few years of discourse that included Ferguson). Social media didn’t fix its algorithms to foment division/outrage until after “The Dress” (Ben Smith, TRAFFIC, via House of Stauss pod) and the Mizzou boycott was the first huge controversy to really spiral with those frameworks in place.
I like the reference, but the Sacco example wasn’t a harbinger of cancel culture that it’s retroactively been made out to be because of Ronson’s book. Even in Ronson’s book he mentions examples (Lehrer) from before 2013. My read of what ESS is getting at with “social media era” is when all discourse became political and binary, not necessarily when internet cancel culture started.
Marc Maron is a comedy fan first, and comedian second. He had a great podcast and I probably listened to his first 200 episodes because it was an inside look at comics and great stories from his guests. Marc was a comic, but his issue was that he was never funny and all of his recent comedy "success" is due to his podcast. He's actually a decent actor. But similar to Joe Rogan, who also isn't funny, he was always threatened when his guest was an actual successful and funny comedian. He was always an unstable and fractured human that couldn't sustain a relationship, control his emotions, or lead a normal life. Like most people of that profile he is a dumb woke progressive that has no idea what he's talking about.
Maron’s standup is some of the best, but he’s sort of a comedian’s comedian. You need to be super into standup before you’re going to like him.
His approach to comedy was always edgy. It was often uncomfortable in the way comedy is supposed to be uncomfortable but he denied you an easy laugh at the end - that doesn’t sound great, but whatever, I really like his stuff. He’s raw and lays himself out there. He’s an open, quivering nerve.
But yeah - no way around it, he finally truly broke through with the audience he always both coveted and resented and kind of turned into a simpering lapdog.
Look: there’s always been something seriously wrong with him. He was open about it, it’s half his schtick, and now that his clinical narcissism (or whatever) has been fully rewarded it’s a little crazy to be dismayed that he’s eating it up. Of COURSE he turned on CK. He used to do endless (funny!) bits about his insane jealousy over CK’s success and his deep belief that it was a slight against him. He clearly wanted revenge for his friend daring to be more successful than him and now he has it. He must be thrilled.
Maron almost killed himself when he felt he wasn’t getting the accolades he deserved. He joked about how he built a hugely successful podcast in the same garage he was planning on hanging himself in.
If I have any point here it’s this: if we’re going to stop demanding politically and morally upstanding behavior from everyone all the time than we have to stop disapproving of every single fucking deeply flawed individual who wanders into our field of vision. Maron is probably genuinely not a decent person, but he never agreed to be anyone’s moral compass. Lena Dunham seems like a giant gaping crusty asshole and Girls is one of the greatest television shows in history. Those things aren’t mutually exclusive.
I haven’t watched Maron’s new special yet, but if it’s funny, that’s swell. If we’re going to stop being all “the problem with X” about everything then “everything” has to include Maron.
Oh dear lord - “Girls” is quite the disqualifying statement here.
And Maron deserves all the opprobrium as that’s just holding him to the same standard he held his former friend to. That’s the moral compass he pretended to.
The link for "there are four lights" doesn't appear to be working, but I'd know that Picard quote anywhere. An absolute classic for a show that has become underrated. Great pull.
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.
You write “When you analyze Marc Maron, you don't engage with his ideas; you pathologize his motives.”
That’s… not what he is doing? I think Ethan engages perfectly well with the ideas and points out where Maron is wrong about the very real censorship that went on among the left from 2019-2022-ish, but regardless, Can you point to where Ethan is pathologizing his motives?
Maron absolutely believes what he says. He believes his comedy was better than those with more fans and larger laughs, often calling them sell outs or pandering to idiots. Similarly he believes Americans are too dumb to understand how Democratic policies help everyone and often calls into question the intelligence of the American people.
Throughout all of Marc Maron's life the problem was others. If only people knew of the genius between his ears could Mark begin to the enjoy life of a millionaire podcaster who interviews well known and famous people. Until then, resentment and struggle.
None of us will know the struggle of Maron's genius.
I liked this essay a lot more than you, but I do think you're raising a good point. I think Maron does believe what he's saying, and the question is why. Ethan points toward career resentment, which I'd argue isn't bad faith or pathology, since it was the very basis of Maron's podcast, his raison d'etre for a long time.
But I've also wondered how losing his partner a few years ago changed him, the effect that woman had on his life. I can't remember her name now, but the death was shocking, and I've seen that kind of loss mutate into Very Righteous Anger on topics that may or may not have anything to do with anything. This feels like one. It's just a suspicion, possibly incorrect, but I would bet these are things she said to him at one point, and he's not ready to let that go.
Haha was recently listening to you and Ethan talk about boobs being back. Too funny. Agree with your support of Ethan's reasoning and your second point further adds weight and context to Marc's circumstance. Losing someone sucks, losing someone at the beginning of a lockdown is just begging for a return to old, familiar ways or attitudes.
You accuse Ethan of describing Maron as a “simple syncophant”, which he didn’t do, at all, explicitly or implicitly. And you want to be taken seriously with a 100,000 word breakdown of small article?!?
That sounds exactly like a person who would support “From the River to the Sea” rhetoric and blockades of collegiate libraries from student use while censoring “COVID probably came from a lab”, “men aren’t women”, and “‘drag queen happy hours’ are taking sexual kinks public in front of kids”.
Brillantly parsed.
To me it's much simpler though: Ethan is rightly decrying cancel culture at a cellular level while ignoring the broader cultural phenomenon that right wing media wasn't - has never been - silenced in the slightest. And I'm not saying they should be. But they should be called out for the bad faith bullshit. They have always continued to say whatever the hell they want - facts notwithstanding - while shouting from their megaphones: "but but but MY FREEDOM OF SPEECH!" whenever anyone disagrees with them (usually factually).
This is classic Nietzschian lamb and eagle stuff: the alt right commentators pretending they are lambs deserving of succour and protection when actually they are eagles doing and saying whatever they please, whenever they please, and damn the consequences.
The New York Post was banned from social media for what turned out to be a true story. There were “disinformation” bodies set with prodding from the government tasked with minimizing disfavored speech that also turned out to be true, like Covid resulting from a lab accident or the Covid vaccines not being completely effective at stopping transmission. If you don’t think that counts as being silenced, I don’t know what to tell you.
Well, firstly there is no conclusion regarding the lab leak theory. You might believe it, I might believe it, but no-one actually knows for certain. IIRC 11 different US government agencies investigated it and none found it to be conclusively true or untrue, they split down the middle on whether it was lab leak or zoonotic. I read plenty about that at the time and it was heavily debated in media, so not sure what was stopping you from doing so. Hell, the Australian PM got himself in hot water with China calling for the Chinese to allow a proper international investigation! But somehow we weren't talking about it freely?
Re covid vaccines and transmission, were you even listening closely to what the public health officials said? I was because my partner is immunocompromised. We were told at the time that the most important effect of the vaccines was to lower the incidence of severe Covid effects and keep people out of hospital. No scientist I ever saw said "this will 100% prevent you getting the virus or transmitting it". No vaccine does that, none. So that's another false premise.
And btw, the disinformation units were set up within social media companies to monitor and flag disinformation as disinformation. Remember the posts were still allowed, they were simply flagged as based on spurious or non-existent evidence. That should absolutely still be a thing, especially when a large section of the populace lacks critical thinking and research skills and is fed misinformation-driven AI slop daily in their social media. Misinformation on topics of fact is poisoning global society.
So actually, I don't know what to tell you.
I ain’t reading all that. Happy for you though. Or sorry that happened.
There is the mainstream media and there is the right wing media, and the right wing media has never been silenced but this ignores how the right wing media even came into existence and it was because of the shunning of right leaning ideas in the mainstream media.
Also there are examples of right leaning media being frequently suppressed on YouTube, Spotify, Twitter and other "neutral" tech platforms. Not just Hunter Biden but Joe Rogan had episodes removed and others put behind an advisory warning. This almost never happens with bad medical advice from the left. Oprah Winfrey could promote all manner of quackery on her show and win Emmy Awards for it.
That's not how "right wing media" came to be at all, its history is far deeper. Every developed country has had right leaning media (specifically newspapers) since at least the end of WW II, and in some countries like the UK it goes back to the early 1800s. Most of this media has been a mouthpiece for the rich to further their agenda, as it remains today.
For example, Rupert Murdoch, who was actually pretty progressive as a young man, realised there was a big buck to be made in it and got heavily into media all over the developed world in the 70s and early 80s. He then pushed his newspapers and cable channels further and further right, at times toppling governments and further entrenching his power and wealth. He was the most influential media mogul on the planet from the mid 80s through the late 2010s when the social media giants truly took over.
As for Oprah, I agree. But why are people taking medical advice from unqualified non-expert TV hosts? That's where the individual's responsibility for critical thinking comes into play.
You should read a book called We Have Never Been Woke
Yep.
I’m paraphrasing someone else, but “If ‘Woke’ is the pursuit of justice, why were the woke pursuing injustice through other means?”
The final paragraph is one fairly obvious, glaring example. Also just read the descriptions of Maron throughout the article, not exactly a sympathetic or even handed portrait.
I find Maron to be grating and likely agree with many of Skytimes issues with him but I’m not sure how you can read this and not see the pathologizing.
"I doubt he repeatedly agreed" is the only potential wording you could be referencing.
The final paragraph is "I think this based off this and here is some evidence" Lol I know nothing about English but isn't that a common way to finish a paper article essay what have you?
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.
Great article - Appreciate anyone expressing genuine Covid Authoritarianism thoughts and feelings, even after the fact. I worked in construction where belief and policy countered that of many business settings. Most remember fondly the harassment and name-calling for working outside without masks or seeing FJB/TRUMP somewhere on site.
The Dem-left claims to represent the working and middle class, but actions speaks louder than words and we remember everything shouted by the Covids while we worked: f-ing idiots, grandpa killers, ignorant bastards, brainwashed, some version of belonging to a cult.
This reminds me of that South Park episode where they end up changing the dictionary definition of “fag” to refer to someone driving an absurdly loud motorcycle. Language police seem weirdly hell-bent on preserving slurs, via a low-grade Streisand effect, when simply letting people blow off steam and letting words evolve away from their hurtful precedents seems like a far more reasonable and realistic tactic. In other words, let “retard” evolve to describe “moron in tank-sized pickup truck driving up my ass” rather than “person with cognitive disabilities,” and if someone randomly uses it to hate on someone with Down syndrome, then pile on HIS ass.
I find it curious that you are still so hung up being forced to have "right think" even though you decided to shut up and not stand on your principles, for what, fear of the stink eye of your "woke" colleagues? Today people are getting abducted off the streets for penning op/eds in their student newspapers, universities are losing funding over "anti-semitism" (which is absolutely hilarious in the case of UCLA), that there are being pushed bills all over the country prohibiting protest, that 1 million federal workers have been stripped of their collective bargaining rights for daring to oppose DOGE (don't forget Elon was very happy to say 'retarded' again). Maybe don't care what normie resistance dems think? Maybe think about the fact that the House censures Rashida Talib for using the phrase 'from the river to the sea' but not Randy Fine for saying that we should nuke Gaza and kill every Palestinian. Free speech has always meant first amendment rights, that the GOVERNMENT, not private corporations who we are happy to let control every other aspect of our lives, couldn't abridge your free expression. Whatever the cultural moment that you care so much about--BLM, trans athletes, #metoo--where you could be put in an outgroup pales in comparison to the current consequences for "wrong think." If you think it's bad that the poor Post had to sit on the bench for a fucking Hunter Biden story, what do you think about the New York Times running cover for a genocide for 2 years because they are terrified of laying anything at the feet of a foreign nation?
This is all so silly.
Nobody was abducted. UCLA (my alma mater) was a textbook case of antisemitism. And so much more nonsense you spewed.
I truly believe you believe what you wrote - you clearly pine for the good old days of a few years ago.
I’m very very glad your side is losing and I pray you and your ilk are never in power again.
I mean it is possible to think multiple things are bad but that a lot less ink is being spilled in discussion of one so opt to fill that void rather than be one of many on another issue. One can read/listen to/watch a lot about the things you wish were highlighted in Ethan’s writing in a long list of publications, accounts, personalities— but Ethan is discussing something in a way that I certainly don’t see the perspective much by professional writers.
Indeed. The Biff Administration is running Orwell's "truth is lies" playbook. They are denying realities like climate change and vaccines not being linked with autism, literally re-writing government websites to propogate harmful disinformation, and legally bullying anyone who disagrees with anything they do... but let's ignore that in favour of decrying the cancel culture of 5 years ago. Talk about not being able to see the forest for the trees!
The last administration carried on the greatest political conspiracy of the last 50 years and not a peep from you. So sure, by all means pile on the current guy but unless you were in high dudgeon over that, you’ll probably have a hard time getting people to listen to you.
You have no idea about what I think. I think what the DEMs did is appalling, but you know what - the senile old guy was surrounded by actual professionals who guided your country through the pandemic then the inflation pretty well by just about every metric. That is the strength of a system with safeguards.
None of what the DEMs did makes what Biff is doing any less appalling. He's going senile before our eyes, issuing chaotic policy changes daily, damaging your country and the global order, but that's just fine with you because he's red not blue. Open your fucking eyes.
In my short lifetime global warming was near fact. Now climate change is near fact. Keeps changing a lot for near fact status! But let's have some fun and agree that climate change is occurring and the earth is getting warmer as a result of human behavior.
Here are some facts
1) Warmer weather has resulted in record setting amount of arable land - food production
2) Cold weather causes more deaths than heat related
3) 9% of global deaths heat-cold related with cold killing 9-13x more depending on the source
The results of climate change are undoubtedly positive with more local land, and more land total around the world, available for food harvest on top of a decrease in hot-cold related deaths. Climate Change is incredible!
It's not a "near fact", it is a fact. The mechanisms are well understood as are the causes. I taught climate science at a tertiary level. I'm not going to engage with your completely incorrect, cherry-picked nonsense, I didn't come here to debate the scientifically obvious. We are talking about people being "silenced", right now scientists are being silenced.
Hahahahhahaha!
Silenced he says! He taught climate science he says.
Do you even hear yourself? Good luck with your crusade - good news for you is that climate is literally always changing so you’ll be in clover for a very long time.
But it is a literal fact that 9x more people die from cold than heat so your refusal to even accept that one fact doesn’t speak well of you or your teaching skills.
Fuck off troll, you've got no idea what you're talking about.
Well said. Very articulate. Not sure this is the right sub for you. Best of luck.
The difference is that I expect this behavior from Trump, and Republicans only needed a permission structure to happily join along, but the devolution of the Democratic Party and progressives in general from being proudly “reality-based” 20 years ago to the basket case of shibboleths Ethan writes about here is what makes me despair. At some point Trump will be dead and gone, but if literally no party is left to defend and promulgate things that are true, then we are well and truly fucked.
A reasonable concern. The corruption of the DEMs by lobbies is a major problem, and the fact they aren't listening to their base is a huge concern.
The US electoral system is utterly broken by lobby money and systemic structural failure, and as a result it locks in the 2 parties rather than allowing for a plurality of voices. When you only have to pay off 2 parties to control the system it's far easier to corrupt, and when voters only have 2 choices, you get the current nightmare and increasing disengagement because people feel completely disempowered. First past the post is a terrible way to run elections. Allowing state electoral commissions to gerrymander has made Congressional districts laughable. And the Electoral College is a bad joke. Bad system, bad outcomes.
While Maron and those of that kind of ideological perspective are awful, they provided a pretty good lesson re the general cowardice of the American professional class. You could tell many were miserable, but, like articulated here, fear reigned. The people that imposed their strange views on professional spaces were a minority who most found repellent, they had no guns, etc…but institutions crumbled like they were the Afghan government.
The social media interns had stronger principles than most of their colleagues.
The most depressing thing about the whole era that made me pessimistic about the future was just how shamefully many acted, especially when compared to those that have resisted and acted out despite being in much weaker possessions, in other, more repressive societies. I hope a lesson, that certain things are more important than money and that living a lie can be incredibly miserable, was learned.
(My very anecdotal experience was observing people with some connection to ex-Soviet nations telling certain things to fuck off, and then watching their middle class native born colleagues fearfully bend the knee to the same things. I hope at least a generation of Americans got some inoculation going forward).
Saying “certain things are more important than money”, while living under an oligarchy, is absolutely wild.
This is part of what I am talking about too, you don’t know what living under an oligarchy is (and might not even know what the word means, like communism or fascism and like terms, it seems to be one of the random words that Americans of various ideological persuasions sloppily fling to describe stuff they don’t like). You live in a geographically vast and diverse country, with power divided vertically (federal, state, county, city, neighborhood, etc…) and horizontally (executive, legislative, judicial, administrative, non-governmental, etc…) where nobody can even compel the average consumer to watch the same tv show anymore.
It’s absolutely “wild” that with all the knowledge in the world in their palm, people *still* cosplay as you do.
Interesting that you raise that point just as all the safeguards that share power vertically and horizontally are being torn to shreds by Biff and his Project 2025 mates.
How exactly would you describe an administration that is improperly using emergency statutes to destroy regulators, ignore the courts, hamstring academia and bully the legal profession into doing what they order? I think calling that oligarchic is kind, more like straight authoritarianism to me.
Truly, unprecedented. We are on the precipice. Will you be taking up arms? Or escaping while you can?
Sorry, I misread your reply. "Truly, unprecedented" was your answer.
You didn't answer the question. How would you describe an administration that is actively destroying the safeguards designed into the system?
If I was American I'd have left in January or before. Thankfully I don't have to because I'm not.
My first two words answered your question. Sit down, concentrate, and think hard about what is implied by them, and their tone. That aside, I categorize you the same way I would somebody rambling about how their great great etc..grandpa was not a monkey…think about what you should draw from that. Now, why don’t you spend less time with me and maybe go devote some time to raising money to finance rescuing American refugees from the authoritarianism. Or cosplay like it’s the 30’s and see about organizing an international brigade to rescue democracy 🫡
That was a very long response.
I think it slapped more people across the face than you think. If I had a dollar for every "wokeness wokeup white dudes" joke i read in tik tok comments I could retire to becomes Ethan's research assistant.
How many of those white dudes that were “woken” up were within the 25% or so of Americans that have a bachelors?
what right to opinion knowledge or experience does a bachelors give one over another without?
resorting to #'s you don't know to imply points you can't explain makes me believe you're too dumb to come up with your own thoughts and words. inform us bumper sticker brain Joe, do you have a bachelor's? ;P
…huh? I’ll make this easier for you. The people who were in very large part “slapped” by this was a cohort of the 25% of Americans who have at least a bachelors.
I misread your previous comment. Second time on HOS! Damnit. Lol
Gary Larson, creator of The Far Side, often complained about having to censor the word “dork” in the 80s and 90s. Considering the vast number of English language insults that reference intelligence, I am often amused by how arbitrary these taboos are.
It's amusing when the bubble nudges up against pointy reality, like the response after his "never happened" line. I always thought he was a good comedian with ridiculous politics that I would just wince through when he went there.
Well said. I hate Trump and I hate what he's doing to the country. But I hate the wokescolds who alienated countless people and pushed us into this backlash even more.
They're a major part of why we're here. Period. End of story.
Is the first time Ethan stated his opinions about these topics so plainly? Very refreshing. As someone who agreed with probably 90% of the orthodoxy what really pissed me off was how sharply those who deviated were treated, especially those on the center left. Jesse Singal and Mike Pesca come to mind.
Two quick quibbles on a very good piece:
1) The proper nomenclature for “set of jokes practiced and preformed by a specific stand up comedian” is the word “act” and not the word “routine.” It’s like calling a quarterback “the thrower.” It’s technically accurate but not the given name in the industry’s parlance.
2) I would argue the “Social Media Era” in the context it’s explained here actually began with the Missouri football protest in 2015. At least it was the tipping point of culturally intersectional discourse with EVERYTHING being political. The 2012 year works because of the Zimmerman case (and the subsequent few years of discourse that included Ferguson). Social media didn’t fix its algorithms to foment division/outrage until after “The Dress” (Ben Smith, TRAFFIC, via House of Stauss pod) and the Mizzou boycott was the first huge controversy to really spiral with those frameworks in place.
I'd personally say it started in 2013 with the Justine Sacco "Africa/AIDS" tweet that got her fired.
https://abcnews.go.com/International/woman-fired-tweet-aids-africa-sparks-internet-outrage/story?id=21298519
I like the reference, but the Sacco example wasn’t a harbinger of cancel culture that it’s retroactively been made out to be because of Ronson’s book. Even in Ronson’s book he mentions examples (Lehrer) from before 2013. My read of what ESS is getting at with “social media era” is when all discourse became political and binary, not necessarily when internet cancel culture started.
Marc Maron is a comedy fan first, and comedian second. He had a great podcast and I probably listened to his first 200 episodes because it was an inside look at comics and great stories from his guests. Marc was a comic, but his issue was that he was never funny and all of his recent comedy "success" is due to his podcast. He's actually a decent actor. But similar to Joe Rogan, who also isn't funny, he was always threatened when his guest was an actual successful and funny comedian. He was always an unstable and fractured human that couldn't sustain a relationship, control his emotions, or lead a normal life. Like most people of that profile he is a dumb woke progressive that has no idea what he's talking about.
Maron’s standup is some of the best, but he’s sort of a comedian’s comedian. You need to be super into standup before you’re going to like him.
His approach to comedy was always edgy. It was often uncomfortable in the way comedy is supposed to be uncomfortable but he denied you an easy laugh at the end - that doesn’t sound great, but whatever, I really like his stuff. He’s raw and lays himself out there. He’s an open, quivering nerve.
But yeah - no way around it, he finally truly broke through with the audience he always both coveted and resented and kind of turned into a simpering lapdog.
Look: there’s always been something seriously wrong with him. He was open about it, it’s half his schtick, and now that his clinical narcissism (or whatever) has been fully rewarded it’s a little crazy to be dismayed that he’s eating it up. Of COURSE he turned on CK. He used to do endless (funny!) bits about his insane jealousy over CK’s success and his deep belief that it was a slight against him. He clearly wanted revenge for his friend daring to be more successful than him and now he has it. He must be thrilled.
Maron almost killed himself when he felt he wasn’t getting the accolades he deserved. He joked about how he built a hugely successful podcast in the same garage he was planning on hanging himself in.
If I have any point here it’s this: if we’re going to stop demanding politically and morally upstanding behavior from everyone all the time than we have to stop disapproving of every single fucking deeply flawed individual who wanders into our field of vision. Maron is probably genuinely not a decent person, but he never agreed to be anyone’s moral compass. Lena Dunham seems like a giant gaping crusty asshole and Girls is one of the greatest television shows in history. Those things aren’t mutually exclusive.
I haven’t watched Maron’s new special yet, but if it’s funny, that’s swell. If we’re going to stop being all “the problem with X” about everything then “everything” has to include Maron.
Oh dear lord - “Girls” is quite the disqualifying statement here.
And Maron deserves all the opprobrium as that’s just holding him to the same standard he held his former friend to. That’s the moral compass he pretended to.
The link for "there are four lights" doesn't appear to be working, but I'd know that Picard quote anywhere. An absolute classic for a show that has become underrated. Great pull.
Nice work, Ethan.
If this was just about ones right to say the word "retard" I'd agree with you. But we are wayyyy past that point.