MacDonald as 'not subversive' is a crackup. A famous schtick of his on his podcast later on was to get other comedians to accidentally joke about the 9/11 even

MacDonald as 'not subversive' is a crackup. A famous schtick of his on his podcast later on was to get other comedians to accidentally joke about the 9/11 events, and then he'd frame them as monsters for making light of the situation. He got fired from SNL for railing on OJ Simpson and his executive buddies at NBC, he got 'removed' from Silverman's JASH 'collective' for making jokes about 'Arabs', and he subverted the Friar's Club roast by refusing to be rude and only saying 1940s formal-appropriate Vaudeville-act stuff. The SNL stuff was big news in entertainment at the time. He got interviewed by all the big late-night shows about it and the unfair process, was on Stern, etc etc. The whole nation sort of rallied behind him and agreed that SNL/Lorne Michaels acted unfairly at a time when the entire nation was also seemingly against Simpson. His outward clean-cut demeanor and presence is exactly what made him so subversive.