Stephen Colbert

Thursday

Grace Curley

‘Let them eat Teslas’

As gas prices soar, America’s elites have a message for the disgruntled masses: buy an electric vehicle, stupid. Transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg appeared at a press event with Vice President Kamala Harris on Monday where the dynamic duo lectured Americans on the importance of going green. Buttigieg proudly boasted from the podium, “Last month, we announced a $5 billion investment to build out a nationwide electric vehicle-charging network so that people from rural, to suburban, to urban communities can all benefit from the gas savings of driving an EV.” While some critics found the sermon tone-deaf, others applauded the secretary’s sentiment.

gas teslas

Wednesday

Cockburn

Apocalypse, please: Climate Night looms

Does humanity deserve a prolonged existence on Earth? Cockburn begs the question after learning that tonight is Climate Night on America’s late-night ‘light entertainment’ programs. ‘7 Shows. 1 Planet. Hot Enough For You?’, asks the poster, which depicts TBS’s Samantha Bee brandishing a whiteboard, Comedy Central’s Trevor Noah, CBS’s Stephen Colbert and James Corden posing with globes, NBC’s Seth Meyers holding a pot plant…and stock images of his network mate Jimmy Fallon and ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel, who presumably care about the climate a little, but not enough to actually strike a pose for it. https://twitter.

climate night

Friday

Cockburn

What fresh hell have we brought upon ourselves?

Lots of people dared to hope that 2021 would bring a return to normal. What is normal? Well, there’s a lot of opinions on that. For some, it’s just life before coronavirus. For others, it’s pre-Trump. For Cockburn, it would be life before the internet, or perhaps before the invention of the printing press. Anyway, the point is that all of those hopes are useless. We may be leaving coronavirus hell only to enter a fresher hell with even worse musical numbers. On the Wednesday night edition of The Late Late Show, James Corden teamed up with Ariana Grande and Marissa Jaret Winokur to sing ‘No Lockdowns Anymore.’ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v7TarriXFME For those who don’t recognize the tune, it’s based on ‘Good Morning Baltimore’ from Hairspray.

Tuesday

Cockburn

No, Jon Stewart’s Wuhan lab tirade is not ‘fringe’ opinion

Cockburn is old enough to remember when famous comedians sought to be transgressive. He recalls when they were funny, too. Now, at least on network television, satire has become the mechanism through which politically acceptable opinion is transmitted to the masses. Even when TV comics do ‘edgy’, they are more often than not simply indicating that they understand the direction in which elite consensus is traveling. Take Jon Stewart and his appearance on last night’s Late Show with Stephen Colbert as ‘the first in-studio guest’ in more than a year. Stewart went ‘all-in on the Wuhan lab leak theory’, according to the Daily Beast. He did, in a way. At least he made some quite good jokes about the possible origins of the COVID-19 crisis.

Friday

Matt Purple

How Jon Stewart killed comedy

This article was originally published in The Spectator’s June 2021 World edition. Click here to subscribe. Somewhere along the way, Jon Stewart discovered he could make stupid people laugh by smirking at Fox News clips — and the world has never been the same since. Stewart, who anchored The Daily Show until 2015, is often remembered as the progenitor of a long line of left-wing topical comedians, from Stephen Colbert to John Oliver to Samantha Bee. Yet before that he was something else: the most gloriously subversive personality on television. The Daily Show’s heyday came at the turn of the century, just after Stewart had taken it over from Craig Kilborn.

jon stewart

Thursday

Cockburn

Everyone is depressed!

Former first lady Michelle Obama told late night host Stephen Colbert this week that she suffers from 'low-grade depression' and anxiety. If you rolled your eyes at that self-diagnosis, you're not alone. Mrs Obama has joined the hordes of celebrities who have publicly spoken about dealing with anxiety disorder, including Kim Kardashian, Selena Gomez, Cardi B, Adele and Jennifer Lawrence. Apparently this is supposed to make these mega-rich, ultra privileged individuals more relatable to the average human. I mean, who doesn't get a bit nervous before embarking on a worldwide singing tour or giving a 'thank you' speech after receiving an Oscar?

depression michelle obama

Friday

Dominic Green

The last days of Donald Trump

What pleasure the networks must have taken when they cut off President Trump in mid-rant. For nearly five years, he has compelled them to broadcast his barrages of bluster. Now, as Biden staggers towards 270 — Electoral College votes, that is, not years of age ­— with the grace and speed of a laminated sloth, Trump’s enemies — and competitors, for that is what he reduced the media to — dare to approach the tottering colossus.Anderson Cooper spontaneously imagines Trump splayed on his back, legs in the air like an ‘obese turtle...flailing in the sun’. Somewhere above, an eagle prepares to dive down, pierce the soft flesh and draw out the orange innards.

trump

Wednesday

Christopher Buckley

Are we living in the golden age of political satire?

Stamford, Connecticut My first novel was published 34 years ago under the title The White House Mess, a wordplay on its Navy-run dining rooms. I’d spent two years as vice president George H.W. Bush’s speechwriter and had read a number of White House memoirs, all of which had two themes: 1) it wasn’t my fault, and 2) it would have been much worse if I hadn’t been there. The novel was a satirical — in today’s terminology, a ‘fake’ — White House memoir by a clueless but loyal chief of staff of a future administration that would be sworn in on January 20, 1989.

satire

Monday

Ben Sixsmith

Why we love to hate celebrities

There is a classic Simpsons episode in which young Bart falls down a well. Local celebrities, with the aid of guest star Sting, decide to band together to do something about it. Their magnificently useless contribution is to band together to perform a song in which they ‘send their love down the well’. ‘We can’t get him out, so we’ll do the next best thing, go on TV and sing, sing, sing.’I am surely not the only person who thought of this scene when Gal Gadot, Will Ferrell, Sarah Silverman and others performed a rendition of John Lennon’s ‘Imagine’.

jimmy fallon celebrities

Monday

Michael Tracey

Why has late night swapped laughs for lusting after Mueller?

For those desperately awaiting the Trump presidency’s spectacular collapse, Robert Mueller has acquired an almost mythic status – forever looming in the background with astonishing ‘bombshells’ that could drop at any moment. Mueller himself never speaks, except through terse court filings, which lends his aura a mystical quality. His newfound fans have been known to light votive candles in his honor, wear apparel sporting his heroic visage, and spend day after day speculating on the internet about the time, date, and profundity of his next miraculous intervention. https://twitter.

Colbert