Politics
Despite referring to himself as apolitical, Macdonald has made controversial references to politically charged issues. At the end of the last Weekend Update segment before the 1996 presidential election, Norm urged viewers to vote for Bob Dole (of whom Macdonald frequently performed a comic impersonation), though hinting that he had solely said it so that he could continue impersonating him.
On the November 16, 2000 episode of The View Macdonald said that he thought George W. Bush was "a decent man" and he called Bill Clinton a "murderer" (regarding the Vince Foster case). Macdonald later stated in Maxim magazine that he is completely apolitical, and that he was joking when he said Clinton "killed a guy" (he further explained on The Adam Carolla Show that the comments were simply designed to anger Barbara Walters). In a phone interview, he later clarified his views on George W. Bush and the Iraq war thusly: "I wish there was another president, a different president engaging the war, since we're in the war because I don't think Bush did a very good job with it. The war itself, you know, if it works it was worth it. But I don't know if it's going to work, so I don't know."
In 2003, Macdonald appeared on Barbara Walters's program The View, publicly renouncing his Canadian citizenship as a joke over his home country's decision not to participate in the Iraq War, stated his belief that Ronald Reagan was the greatest president ever and said that he would be becoming a naturalized citizen of the United States. Later he affirmed that he was joking about renouncing his Canadian citizenship, stating in a telephone interview that "I'm not an American citizen. I'm a Canadian citizen. I just keep renewing my green card... I don't want to be American." He further burnished his apolitical stance in regards to both America and Canada saying that he was not eligible to vote in American elections and never voted in Canadian elections either: "I figured since I never did when I was in Canada... I never voted because I don't want to make a mistake. I'm so uninformed that I don't want that on my hands, you know?"
On the January 2, 2008 episode of The O'Reilly Factor, Macdonald stated that he is "very pro-life, but against the death penalty." His friend Artie Lange would soon afterwards confirm these opinions as sincere on The Howard Stern Show.
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Famous quotes containing the word politics:
“The differences between revolution in art and revolution in politics are enormous.... Revolution in art lies not in the will to destroy but in the revelation of what has already been destroyed. Art kills only the dead.”
—Harold Rosenberg (1906–1978)
“Politics is war without bloodshed while war is politics with bloodshed.”
—Mao Zedong (1893–1976)
“I have come to the conclusion that the closer people are to what may be called the front lines of government ... the easier it is to see the immediate underbrush, the individual tree trunks of the moment, and to forget the nobility the usefulness and the wide extent of the forest itself.... They forget that politics after all is only an instrument through which to achieve Government.”
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945)