Men of my age grew up with stuff like South Park and Eminem - not that I group Norm MacDonald with either of those but I guess maybe there's an appetite in the corpse demographic for dark/offensive humour - an appetite now somewhat threatened by the self righteous woke brigade e.g. Luka.
Norm was just hilarious to me, but I'm not surprised if people younger than me hadn't really heard of him or see him as an old weirdo. I guess I found out about him (like most people my age?) through the Aristocrats documentary. Ditto Gilbert Gottfried... Was that it? I dunno, it was his famous roast of Bob Saget where he tells old fashioned cheesy jokes.
I always gravitated towards that "sick" humour because it's my sense of humour, really. Not sure why - could be that it gave me (a shy skinny guy) a feeling of power? Or maybe because I'm a miserable sensitive fucker and if I don't laugh I'll cry.
I was watching a clip from his podcast earlier about Albert Fish, the serial killer who I once wounded my mind by reading about. He turns this most horrific of things into a joke, which is just about the only way I can think of dealing with something like that without slitting your wrists.