Topic: Norm Macdonald, comedy
Have you ever made a promise that for some reason or another, you couldn't keep? Maybe you said you were going to do something at a certain time and then something unforeseen came up, and you just couldn't do what you had promised? It happens to everyone from time to time. I know it has happened to me. So why on earth do we get angry with a celebrity when it happens to them? Tonight was a perfect example of what I am talking about.
If you have been reading my blog, you know that Norm Macdonald has been on Twitter practically every day in addition to doing his very first televised stand-up show and working on his new show, "Sports Show With Norm Macdonald" for Comedy Central. Today was supposed to be a very big deal for us Norm fans. He had the very first NormCast, an audio-stream of him doing a commentary of The Masters from his living room. Might I add that this audio-stream lasted the ENTIRE FOUR HOURS. He had also announced that he was going to tweet live during the Comedy Awards at 9 p.m. eastern. Nobody asked him to do these things. He was not getting payed for either of these things. They were meant to be something special for his fans. Just like when he tweeted the entire Oscar broadcast, for which he got criticized by some people for tweeting too much. The man was trying to do something nice for his fans, for crying out loud!
The audio-stream went very well. He even stopped the broadcast for about 30 seconds to change microphones when fans sent him tweets saying that the audio was bad. Again, nice guy, right? The rest of the audio-stream went smoothly after that. I missed maybe an hour, but it couldn't be helped. Even I enjoyed the broadcast despite the fact that I know absolutely nothing about golf.
After the broadcast ended at 6 p.m. eastern, I waited patiently for the Comedy Awards to start just so I could read Norm's tweets. Unfortunately, he never showed up. Not a single tweet. I was disappointed (and a little bored out of my mind from the awards), but I wasn't in any way upset with him. I just calmly got on Twitter to do a search on his name to see if I could find out any information. I found a lot of tweets to him from fans asking where he was. That wasn't what surprised me. What surprised me...no...shocked me...was the tone of some of the tweets. I don't recall any tweets sounding concerned. Instead, they sounded a bit upset and disappointed even though they didn't know the facts. I was stunned! It was then that I sent Norm my own tweet saying that I hoped everything was ok and that I was worried when he didn't tweet like he said he was going to. After all, he has given so much of his time to his fans lately. The man does have a life. The least we can do is give the man a break. It's entirely possible that something more important than an awards show came up at the last minute, either with work or something in his personal life that is none of our business. I thought maybe it might have something to do with his new show that debuts on Tuesday. We don't know for sure, and that's ok.
My point is this. Why do we get angry when a celebrity disappoints us by not doing something they said they would before we even know the facts? They're human. Just like with us, sometimes things come up. They don't owe us anything extra. Anything they give the fans beyond a good performance is a gift and should be considered as such. So the next time one of your favorite celebrities doesn't follow through with something, keep in mind, there might very well be a perfectly good reason for it, even if we don't know what it is.
