And here, perhaps, is why Norm Macdonald died less famous than he should have been. He cared about jokes too much, when the business of comedy is not actually about jokes so much as audience shares and sponsors and streams and tickets. The comedy-consuming public claims to care nothing for these matters, of course; we only want funnier and funnier jokes. That is the theory, anyway, but in practice, the public is depressingly susceptible to hype. Fake funny sells. It often sells better than real funny, and it is significantly easier to produce. Norm despised fake funny, both in the industry and in daily life. It troubled him, the way you imagine that song coming out of the ice cream truck would trouble Mozart.