Norm Macdonald Compounds Problems With Down Syndrome Comment

NBC canceled Norm Macdonald’s appearance on “The Tonight Show” Tuesday after he made comments defending several entertainers accused of wrongdoing, including Louis C. K. and Roseanne Barr.

He later apologized, but on Wednesday, while discussing the controversy, he gave it new life by telling Howard Stern, “You’d have to have Down syndrome” not to feel sorry for the victims of sexual abuse.

The original remarks came in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter in which Mr. Macdonald, the former “Saturday Night Live” cast member who has a Netflix talk show debuting on Friday, said he was “happy the #MeToo movement has slowed down a little bit.” He criticized a lack of “forgiveness” for the performers who had “all their work in their entire life being wiped out in a single day, a moment.”

Louis C. K., a comedian who wrote the foreword for Mr. Macdonald’s 2016 book, “Based on a True Story,” was accused of sexual misconduct by five women. Ms. Barr, who gave Mr. Macdonald one of his earliest writing jobs, on “Roseanne,” lost her rebooted show on ABC after a racist tweet in May.

“Roseanne was so broken up that I got Louis to call her, even though Roseanne was very hard on Louis before that,” he said in the Hollywood Reporter interview. “But she was just so broken and just crying constantly. There are very few people that have gone through what they have, losing everything in a day. Of course, people will go, ‘What about the victims?’ But you know what? The victims didn’t have to go through that.”

Mr. Macdonald apologized on Twitter, saying the two performers were “very good friends of mine” but that he “would never defend their actions.”

NBC canceled Mr. Macdonald’s appearance on Jimmy Fallon’s “Tonight Show” hours before it was set to air.

“Out of sensitivity to our audience and in light of Norm Macdonald’s comments in the press today, ‘The Tonight Show’ has decided to cancel his appearance on Tuesday’s telecast,” the network said in a statement.

“The Tonight Show” experienced a steep ratings drop after President Trump’s victory in the 2016 election, losing its top position to the more politically minded Stephen Colbert and “The Late Show” on CBS. In a moment that has long haunted Mr. Fallon, he tousled Mr. Trump’s hair during a much-maligned interview in September 2016.

In the Hollywood Reporter interview, which was published Tuesday, Mr. Macdonald said Mr. Fallon had been unfairly criticized. He said talk show hosts, including Mr. Fallon, had been “forced to become political pundits.”

“He is just all about fun and silliness,” he said of Mr. Fallon. “That’s what his audience wants. And then to be maligned for quote-unquote humanizing Trump. Funny, I thought he was a human.”

In an interview on “The Howard Stern Show” on Wednesday, Mr. Macdonald said that his comments to The Hollywood Reporter regarding the #MeToo movement had been misconstrued and that he was not defending the actions of Louis C. K. and Ms. Barr.

When discussing the trauma that sexual abuse victims face, Mr. Macdonald said that “of course” he understood the consequences.

He went on to say, “You’d have to have Down syndrome — my new word.”

Mr. Stern interrupted: “Down syndrome, good word.”

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(Mr. MacDonald may have been alluding to finding a word to replace “retarded,” which he has used as an insult in the past.)

Mr. Macdonald continued, praising how women now feel more emboldened to speak out: “You’d have to have Down syndrome to not feel sorry for — of course, #MeToo is what you want for your daughters.”

“I meet all kinds of women that have terrible stories about what happened to them,” Mr. Macdonald said. “I wasn’t talking about the victims. They asked me about Roseanne. They asked me about Chris Hardwick. They asked me about Louis and I told them. You know, if someone murders someone, you know, and goes to jail, right? And then he gets out of jail after 10 years and you go, ‘I’m going to give this guy a job washing dishes because he’s done his penance,’ nobody goes, ‘Well, what about the people he murdered?’ Well, of course, they had it off worse.”

Mr. Macdonald’s representatives did not respond to a request for comment on Wednesday regarding his Howard Stern interview. Netflix did not respond to an inquiry about whether it would move forward with “Norm Macdonald Has a Show,” set to debut on Friday, though the streaming service has not indicated it was altering its plans.

The Arc, an organization for people with developmental disabilities, called Mr. Macdonald’s comments “disturbing.”