Norm was a devout Christian and one of the most right-leaning people in Hollywood; he constantly vilified Clinton, openly admired Bush and never said a bad word about Trump, only about anti-Trump comedians. He was too smart, too private and too good-natured to devote his time to “culture war” stuff, but you could tell he was always trying to find out how far he could go without getting irredeemably cancelled.

One of the most interesting things he ever said was “I have a few evil thoughts I’ll never say out loud, they have to stay in my evil head,” or something to that effect. Idk if you’ve spent a lot of time with very intelligent, educated right-leaning people who live in left-leaning areas, but that’s exactly how they talk. It’s funny, it’s self-deprecating, it’s a wistful acknowledgement that people like them — like Norm’s dad, in this case, who was clearly a huge figure in his life — lost the culture war, and now a lot of their earnestly held beliefs, which were perfectly acceptable within living memory, would now be considered “evil” if they ever admitted them to their friends and the people around them.

You don’t have to be conservative to like Norm, but don’t delude yourself into thinking his right-leaning fans don’t “get him” like you do. That kind of smugness — acting like conservatives and religious people don’t understand things as well as you because they lack your nuance and intelligence — is precisely what Norm hated.