Night fans of a certain age probably relaxed with a nostalgic swoon as they saw “The Daily Show” host emeritus Jon Stewart making the rounds for the past few weeks. It’s been back in circulation to promote his new movie “Irresistible”, but its release is almost irrelevant even if Stewart obviously would like us to see it.
Instead, what his latest tour offers is a glimpse of an old family light house, confirming that the presence that many relied on during the darkest hours of the previous decade still walks among us like Gandalf the Gray.
Still, I can’t rightly say that Stewart has been so missed or that we were so desperate to hear from him. From a functional point of view, Jon Stewart’s worldview has never left us: the brand of probing skepticism he perfected in “The Daily Show” is being carried forward by his student Stephen Colbert, Samantha Bee, John Oliver, the successor to Hasan Minhaj and Stewart Trevor Noah.
This is not news. But it does confirm that, as Stewart put it in his recent interview in the New York Times, the role of “The Daily Show” as a critic of news and systems, overall, is better serving viewers right now than others. varieties of current affairs. comedy. And no scenario has made it more evident than the acceleration of support for Black Lives Matter that occurred in the midst of this pandemic.
In the weeks after George Floyd’s murder in Minneapolis, Noah has become the de facto source for breaking the black experience in the United States. This began with his convincing explanation of the “social contract” that the United States was unable to maintain with its black citizens, has evolved gracefully since then to not only discuss police brutality and explain “dismantling or abolition” movements, but also specific segments that explain aspects of Racism that non-white Americans face so often that they make them invisible to white Americans.
Oliver’s weekly deep dives in HBO’s “Last Week Tonight” accomplish what he’s always done, only they’re now more passionate, more furious and frustrated, and crystal clear in exhibits on topics like surveillance stories and voting by mail, and The Dangers of Facial Recognition: All Issues that Disproportionately Target Minorities and That Also Endanger the Privacy and Security of White Americans.
In recent episodes of “Full Frontal,” Bee also takes on police brutality and expands his already impressive library of episodes related to voter suppression. She passed last week’s episode with trans rights and specifically the dangers black trans women face earlier this week.
Colbert, somewhat of the aging statesman of this group, quickly struck a balance on CBS’s “Late Show” between conversing with experts, politicians, and artists about the total ineptitude and heartlessness of our government in the face of the pandemic and the integration of support for racial discrimination. equality and against police brutality. On Monday of last week he laughed with fellow CBS host James Corden; on Tuesday he slapped John Bolton for kicking.
Meanwhile, on Netflix, Hasan Minhaj, the host of the “Patriot Act,” made a passionate plea for Asian Americans to step forward and support blacks, specifically asking Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, a fellow Muslim, to file criminal charges against Derek Chauvin and the other three former Minneapolis police officers for their roles in the Floyd murder. Turns out Ellison was watching and sat down for an interview with Minhaj that came out live on YouTube on Friday.
If the United States only contained the rampant spread of the new coronavirus causing COVID-19, all things would be more or less the same late at night. All nightly hosts on each major network seamlessly transitioned from live studio broadcasts to “social distancing” issues. Beginning March 16, Noah deftly renamed his broadcasts from his New York apartment to reflect this new reality, around the same time that Colbert began calling his episodes at home. “A Late show “(vs.”the Late Show “). Bee comes to us from the safety of his vacation home in the woods causing the cheeky subtitle” Little Show in the Big Woods “and Oliver from a small studio he jokingly refers to as a white void.
Even “Saturday Night Live” comedy school presenters, including “Late Night” presenter Seth Meyers, who has made a joke of recording his show in his attic, and “Tonight Show” presenter Jimmy Fallon, whose elegant and colorful surroundings. At his rehabbed country house in New York, his dedicated approach to fun and escapism is making it work.
ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel recently left on his summer break, but he’s been more or less confused.
Each host, in their own way, has kept the public in tune. Fallon’s pushy light bulb actually played in his favor in the first few weeks of orders to stay home by keeping much of the population indoors, and regardless of how the person might have felt for him before, it’s Hard not to be delighted to see the boy disappear on a slide with his daughters at the end of each episode of “Tonight Show”.
But only presenters and series with roots in breaking the news have managed to make their roles in the night specific and popular culture of the moment necessarily felt. When Fallon touches on issues relevant to the Black Lives Matter or related to race, he does so within the familiar framework of dating celebrities, one of the most recent being Shaquille O’Neal. Much of “The Tonight Show” works the same as ever, with Fallon laughing together with his famous friends or showcasing his children or his dog.
It is valuable to have a place to escape and feel, in some way, that you are part of a friendly and personal conversation between two very famous people who are friends or simply very skilled to seem to know and love each other. However, such escape hatches are plentiful these days. In a recent episode, Fallon announced that he joined TikTok, and the word that came to my mind was redundant; If “The Tonight Show” works like a time-killer before sleep, the bite-sized versions don’t seem to offer anything more nutritional than the full serving.
“Late Night with Seth Meyers”, meanwhile, once again demonstrates the host’s keenness with news processing. If Fallon is a kind of “dad joke” comedian who doesn’t apologize, Meyers is the father with an ironic sense of humor who is still interested in having one-on-one conversations with other grown-ups tired of being surrounded by young children.
Like Noah, Meyers throws themes at his staff knowing they can customize frustrations about, for example, microaggressions or gas lights in ways he is not equipped for. At the end of a troubled day, few segments made the aggravating developments more enjoyable than those broken down by “Late Night” writer Amber Ruffin or, on “The Daily Show,” Dulcé Sloan or Roy Wood Jr.
And they serve the purpose that the average person of color is not obligated, which is to explain how systems work to oppress minorities and the poor or, in the case of Minhaj with his 11-minute wake-up call to other Asians, to make Connections to One The group’s history of being oppressed with the African American fight for civil rights.
This job shouldn’t have to fall into the nightly comedy. In a better world we would have a means of communication equipped and capable of breaking the barrage of lies and explaining in a concise and coherent way the source of various manipulations and how they affect us all negatively.
On the other hand, in a better world we would have an educational system dedicated to raising a politically engaged audience and teaching children critical thinking skills. We would have an audience that would watch the news for accurate information, regardless of how bad the news of the day is or whether it matches your feelings.
Since it falls to these top-rated variety talk shows and presenters, the audience who want to understand the systems, how they work, and how they align with segments of us can be encouraged to be skilfully accommodated by “The Daily Show” and the men and women who continue their legacy.
This is not to completely devalue the old school “Tonight Show” model of changing the channel and disconnecting the negative. Everyone needs a break, and turning off the brain’s worry centers before bed is completely healthy.
But he’s also taking the night host’s explanations of the sources of our discontent, the how and why of them, giving us comforting clarity in all this fog or, in the case of Colbert’s combat engagements with officials, putting the madness of the powerful on display for all to see. It is absurd to think that a group of comedians is tasked with lighting the way for many of us, helping us laugh through our anger, and keeping us engaged. But these are absurd times, and who better to help us understand and deal with them?
