He was more conservative than he let on.

https://jacobin.com/2021/10/norm-macdonald-anti-politics-anti-comedy-snl-subversion-stand-up

Notable figures of the online right did the very same thing, some of them claiming Norm Macdonald as one of their own. While they may have overstated their case, it can nonetheless be difficult to square appreciation for Macdonald’s comedy with his ambiguously conservative politics.

In an era when right-wing comedians claim to be “truth tellers” smashing liberal taboos to get laughs, Norm Macdonald considered himself no such thing. “I guess there came a time, and I missed it, when revealing everything started to be considered art,” he said in 2018. “But I’d always learned that concealing everything was art.” Macdonald didn’t enjoy political comedy and on stage spared his audience his personal opinions on political matters: “Let’s not get into this shit, man,” he told Marc Maron in 2011 when the topic of politics was broached, “I can see people not laughing now.”

Macdonald’s concealment was a smart call by a canny performer, but it was also a deference to his audience and their enjoyment, and perhaps we should see that as a kind of generosity. And without understanding the extent of this self-concealment — something many of the obituaries missed — we don’t fully appreciate Macdonald’s life, art, and politics.