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I don't think he's doubling down. Just officially taking back his comments with a bunch of meaningless apology waffle that makes it clear this is not a change of heart, only a change in his official position.
I'm glad that he felt he had to officially change his position, but I think it's incorrect to frame this as "he thought about it and came around".
Your quote is just as clear about that as mine. They both have the official position stated clearly: "I said that the ‘extreme left’ has suppressed the art of comedy... It’s not true.", "I don’t think, as I said, the ‘extreme left’ has done anything to inhibit the art of comedy.”
But the remaining apology waffle makes no sense:
"You can’t say certain words about groups. So what? The accuracy of your observation has to be 100 times finer than that just to be a comedian" What does it mean that comedians have to be 100 times more accurate than a racial slur? "things that I use to say that [I can’t because] people are always moving [the gate]? Yes, but that’s the biggest and easiest target" Target for what? By whom? This sentence still implies that he wants to make the jokes that he used to but can't anymore.
I mean, it's not rocket science. He says he has material he used to do that aged poorly and concedes that's part of the job. I think the point about how comedians need to make observations far finer than just racist jokes generalizing about groups of people is well taken, honestly. "If you're good at this moving on with the times shouldn't be a challenge" is not a particularly controversial statement for a comedian. It's not even a waffle. He's conceding the point in its entirety.
Again, why are progressives so reticent to take a win? If anything his old take is vindicated by him walking this aaaaall the way back and finding that people would rather be mad at him than have him agree with them.
I don't think leftists killed comedy, or even edgy comedy, but I do think that online interaction has a stronger reward structure for outrage than understanding and that is fundamentally dysfunctional.
I think you're meeting him well more than half way in your interpretation. He didn't condemn making racist jokes, he just acknowledged that people don't like them anymore. That's just not "he thought about it and came around".
"You don’t make the gate, you’re out of the game. The game is where is the gate and how do I make the gate to get down the hill."
He's explicitly looking at this as a necessity of his profession, not a change of heart.
OK, but you're holding his answer to a standard he never claimed.
I mean, he once said that left wing scrutiny had killed comedy. He now says that was wrong and while the goalposts have moved it's part of the job to meet them there and it's not that big of a deal anyway.
So he has changed his mind on the thing he's talking about. Which, sure, I can agree is not the thing you're talking about. But he's still walking back his old statement that he says was wrong, that is pretty straightforward.
It's one thing to argue that he still doesn't fully agree with your perspective on the issue, which is entirely possible because... well, he doesn't know who you are or what your perspective is (and presumably doesn't care). It's another to deny that he has changed his mind on the issue he actually talked about when he's telling you plainly that he has changed his mind and he's giving you a new, completely different position he now holds.