Trevor Noah, the newly announced host of Comedy Central‘s The Daily Show, fired back Wednesday after a storm of criticism over tweets perceived as anti-Semitic.
“To reduce my views to a handful of jokes that didn’t land is not a true reflection of my character, nor my evolution as a comedian,” Noah tweeted.
Comedy Central also came to his defense, calling Noah a “provocative” comedian who “spares no one, himself included”.
“To judge him or his comedy based on a handful of jokes is unfair,” the network said in a statement, adding that he has “a bright future at Comedy Central.”
Soon after Noah was announced as Jon Stewart’s successor on Monday, tweets he made in the last six years were dug up and subjected to scrutiny.
In 2009 he wrote: “Almost bumped a Jewish kid crossing the road. He didn’t look b4 crossing but I still would hav felt so bad in my german car!”
Shortly after the Mavi Marmara incident, in which terrorists on a Turkish ship brutally assaulted IDF soldiers, he wrote: “South Africans know how to recycle like Israel knows how to be peaceful.”
After the sale of a music company founded by rapper Dr Dre and his associate Jimmmy Iovine, who Trevor apparently mistook for a Jew, he tweeted: “Behind every successful Rap Billionaire is a double as rich Jewish man. #BeatsByDreidel.”
Noah, the son of a black South African mother and white European father who speaks six languages, was being pitched by Comedy Central as reflecting a new age of global multiculturalism. In the words of Michele Ganeless, the network’s president, he is “a citizen of the world.”
In January, African-American comic Larry Wilmore replaced Comedy Central‘s The Colbert Report, hosting The Nightly Show.