Posted on 11/06/2017 5:01:27 AM PST by Kaslin
Late night comedy shows are no longer funny. They’ve turned into crude, Trump-bashing political attacks. There is nothing funny about watching a solid hour of the left spewing out hate speech against everything the right believes in. It’s like watching Rachel Maddow — when you’re expecting to see Johnny Carson or Jay Leno. If you want to watch a left-wing political show, you’d watch Maddow, not comedy. There are no conservative major late night comedy hosts.
People tune in to comedy shows in order to escape the endless political infighting. They want humor, not biting partisanship. Conservatives especially don’t want to be subjected to nonstop attacks. Hate speech is defined by the Merriam-Webster dictionary as “speech expressing hatred of a particular group of people.” Late night comedy has evolved into hatred toward conservatives.
Stephen Colbert is the most partisan of today’s big three late night comedians. He took over “The Late Show,” which was originally hosted by David Letterman from 1993 until 2015. Under Letterman, there was a semblance of balance between political jokes aimed at the right and the left, and much of the show wasn’t political. The replacement of Letterman with Colbert changed all of that. CBS gave him nearly full control over the show. With an annoying, smug demeanor, Colbert turned the show into incessant, savage attacks on the right. As a result, only 17 percent of his viewers identify as Republicans.
Colbert’s show isn’t just partisan but downright disgusting. In May, Colbert made a crude sexual joke about Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin, too indecent to reprint here. The remark was accused of being homophobic. The FCC investigated the incident but took no action against Colbert. In September, Colbert made a Nazi salute when comparing the loyalty of former Trump advisor Steve Bannon to the president. This is offensive to Jews who suffered from the real Holocaust.
Colbert says things that are flat out false. During a September show, he claimed that Trump “didn’t meet a single storm victim, see an inch of rain or get near a flooded street” while surveying Hurricane Harvey damage. In reality, plenty of Americans watched footage on TV of Trump meeting with victims in shelters and elsewhere. In fact, ironically, the left wrongly condemned Melania Trump for wearing heels while touring the damage (she actually changed into tennis shoes prior to touring).
Colbert is a hypocritical liberal. He has a staff of 19 that write his material for him. Only two are women and 17 are white men. Yet he is one of the first comedians who will attack Trump for being sexist or racist.
What happened is “The Late Show” basically became the left-leaning, partisan “The Daily Show” reincarnated as late night comedy. Colbert got his start on the latter as a regular guest when it was hosted by Jon Stewart. Meanwhile, “The Daily Show” continues on with a new lefty host, Trevor Noah. “The Daily Show” is very clever; it is a left-wing political show masquerading as comedy. Under Noah, it has become even more vicious against the right than under Stewart.
“Jimmy Kimmel Live!” debuted on ABC in 2003, becoming a second major late night comedy show. After Trump took office, Kimmel’s attacks on conservatives increased. While talking about his son’s health condition during a show, Kimmel went on a rant against opponents of Obamacare, cruelly implying that if they had their way, his son wouldn’t have been eligible for health insurance to cover his urgent heart operation.
A day after the Las Vegas massacre, Kimmel exploded in a rant on his show promoting gun control. He called for gun confiscation and made a vulgar comment about the NRA that is too crude to reprint here. He said Republicans “should be praying for God to forgive them for letting the gun lobby run this country, because it’s so crazy.”
As a result, Vulture.com asked Kimmel if the days of apolitical late night comedians are over. Kimmel responded, "Maybe we'll never go back. Maybe the days of fun are over" — brazenly admitting the comedic aspect of late night comedy (duh!) has been taken out. He criticized Trump, "Everything Donald Trump is doing and undoing is bad, bad, bad, bad, and it seems so obvious, and it's happening anyway."
Kimmel doesn’t care that he’s losing Republican viewers. During an interview with CBS last month, he said, “if they're so turned off by my opinion on health care and gun violence then I don't know, I probably wouldn't want to have a conversation with them anyway. Not good riddance, but riddance."
Jimmy Fallon, who replaced Jay Leno on “The Tonight Show,” has kept that show a little classier. When asked by NBC’s “Sunday Today” why he features less Trump bashing than the other two late night shows, he responded, “It’s just not what I do, I think it would be weird for me to start doing it now. … A lot of [his] stuff is hard to make a joke about. It’s just too serious.”
There are other comedians with regular shows which run earlier in the day or on Netflix, and they are all about as partisan. Chelsea Handler has become so unapologetically aggressive in her attacks against Trump that some believe it contributed to the demise of her Netflix comedy show and decision to transfer into politics. With the exception of a handful of conservative comedians like Dennis Miller, the partisan bent has spread throughout the entire world of comedians. Turn on almost any stand-up comic today and you will be subject to a barrage of Trump bashing and attacks on conservative viewpoints.
Previous late night comedy hosts were never this partisan. Johnny Carson wisely told Barbara Walters in 1984, "I think one of the dangers if you are a comedian, which basically I am, is that if you start to take yourself too seriously and start to comment on social issues, your sense of humor suffers somewhere."
Today’s comedians are turning comedy into partisan talk shows. We don’t need anymore — especially on the left, where there is a glut of them due to the left-leaning slant of almost all news networks except Fox News. These new late night comedians aren't funny, they’re downright rude. Considering a large proportion of the population that watches late night comedy is on the right, they are making a big mistake.
The truth is the left has pulled off a clever stunt and sleight of hand when it comes to late night talk shows. Shame on NBC for being so greedy for viewers that they would even hire Colbert and pretend to carry on the traditions of the late night talk shows.
The title alone says what I’ve been thinking for a long time. I haven’t watched any “Late Night” shows in years and years. To hell with them.
I like watching the vintage Johnny Carson shows on TCM, featuring interviews with classic movie stars. In any event, one that was on was a 1980 show with Angie Dickinson and she was absolutely gorgeous even in a jeans and casual sweater outfit. And it was fun just to watch her and Johnny banter about one thing after another. Seems like a different world ago, even that time, compared to the Lake Erie that ones like Colbert and others have turned late night shows into now.
I bet if there were just ONE late night host who skewered BOTH sides of politics evenly and FUNNILY, they would be the leader. Fallon isn’t as bad as the others, but he isn’t good either. I remember Leno being asked why he didn’t makes jokes about Obama and he just said Obama isn’t funny. Never mind the ‘57 states’ etc, out of Obama’s mouth. I am sure he got the message ‘LAY OFF OBAMA’. We never watch late night anymore. No point, they are all the same.....rude, crude and socially unacceptable, unfunny ‘comedians’.
What’s this thing called a “television?”
Never watch those self important stooges. Waste of good sleeping time. Their late night shows are NOT COMEDY, better to watch an old Carol Burnett/Tim Conway re-runs. Now those were real comedy.
No sleight of hand whatsoever. I’m happy the author got published, bit this is all painfully obvious to all but those on the left seeking to affirm their ridiculous positions. And let’s not forget about progressives on the right as well...
There are none, they would also be leftists.
It’s the last remaining vestige that is left to comedians. They can’t talk about sex. They can’t talk about body shapes. They can’t talk about women or minorities. Most won’t even appear on college campuses any longer. The left has sucked the humor out of life so much, that there’s nothing left for a comedian to talk about — except come up with hateful speech about the right.
To them, that’s still okay.
And it’s still not funny.
Rather Orwellian of you...
“What’s this thing called a “television?”
Glad you asked, it is the creation of Satan himself, an infernal machine that causes users of it to waste their time and income watching mostly less than worthless garbage featuring untalented frauds who are paid huge sums to disparage all that is good and promote evil. It did not begin this way, it once was a new communications tool used to bring the finest talents in show business to people who would otherwise never have had an opportunity to see or hear such talented musicians, singers, actors, dancers, comedians, acrobats, educators, evangelists and the list goes on. It introduced me as a child to a world I had no knowledge of but instead of Perry Como we now have “rap” singers spewing hate, instead of Jackie Gleason we now have hateful political “comedy” which is about as funny as a train wreck. I could go on but what is the purpose. Surely this is not the same planet on which I was born five days before D-Day.
Excellent description, RipSawyer. “It ain’t what it used to be.” Thanks.
It must suck to be a white male leftist, impotent rage, scorn and derision from your own side, festering inadequacy as a man (since they alone take feminist dogma seriously). I would not be surprised if one of these talkers took up a gun and tried for a mass killing.
I’m guess 90% of conservatives don’t watch these a-holes so they’re left with liberals and eventually even they get tire of the same garbage all the time!!!
Seems that they are going the way of the NFL and don’t get it yet, as well...in fact we should point out that NFL can be rearranged into LNF...anagram for Late Night Fail....as they continue to alienate 50% of their customer base
TV has been a vast wasteland for years.
I sure don’t and haven’t for ages
Not necessarily. It depends on what you watch
Late night isn’t comedy any more. Johnny Carson died and late night dies with him.
Late night is nothing but angry liberal political lectures.
It’s not comedy. The word “comedy” is to fool the viewer into thinking that it is humor, while it is actually leftists saying things leftists want to hear, so they don’t have to find out the truth and think for themselves.
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