UNITED STATES

Late night tickle

NUP_178649_0026.JPG Laughing matters: Alec Baldwin as President Trump in Saturday Night Live, flanked by Beck Bennett as Vice President Mike Pence and Kate McKinnon as counsellor to the president Kellyanne Conway | Getty Images

As Donald Trump completes one year in office, it's an era of comedy journalism

  • As mainstream journalists get exhausted by theatrical tweets from the White House and the alleged subversion of truth, late night show hosts are increasingly taking their place in the national dialogue.

If Donald Trump does not blow up the world in the next 25 minutes, we will have been under the presidency of Donald Trump for exactly one year. It feels so much longer…,” said Stephen Colbert, firing the opening salvo on The Late Show on January 19. The year gone by has been good for Colbert’s show business, but bad for his nerves. Along with other late night talk show hosts like Bill Maher, Trevor Noah, Samantha Bee, Jimmy Kimmel and Seth Meyers, Colbert has been part of a new resistance movement in the United States, defending free speech. Demonstrating ruthless journalistic transparency, punctuated with political satire bordering on irreverence, they are “fact checking” Trump at every turn, ushering in an era of “comedy journalism”.

After the Trump White House offered the media “alternative facts” and raised the spectre of harsh libel laws, Colbert and others figured that if the game was going to change, so would the rules they played by. Nothing was off limits, and only “facts” would remain sacred. And, they had the ammunition that mainstream news media lacked—humour.

Late night talk shows, which were present in the American entertainment sphere from the late 1940s, grew popular in the 1980s. But they remained politically correct affairs. Structured around humorous monologues about the day’s news, guest interviews and performances, shows by Johnny Carson, David Letterman and Jay Leno were immensely popular. Things began to spice up by the time Jon Stewart bagged The Daily Show.

Today’s late night shows work much like mainstream news. Every show has its team of comedy “correspondents” and they bring their own unique perspectives to the table. One such is Hasan Minhaj, son of Indian immigrants. Minhaj, who hosted the White House Correspondents’ Dinner last year, addressed the predicament of journalists. “We are living in the golden age of lying,” said Minhaj. “Now is the time to be a liar, and Donald Trump is liar in chief.”

As mainstream journalists get exhausted by theatrical tweets from the White House and the alleged subversion of truth, late night show hosts are increasingly taking their place in the national dialogue. The New York Times, The Washington Post and CNN have all been subject to Trump’s ire. He has reportedly banned many of his officials from appearing on CNN. Meanwhile, Americans are wondering whether they are being subjected to gaslighting on subjects ranging from the size of the crowd on Trump’s inauguration to who won the popular vote in the presidential elections to the infamous “shithole countries” comment.

Republican Senator Jeff Flake addressed exactly this sentiment a few weeks ago in a speech in the senate. “2017 was the year which saw the truth—objective, empirical, evidence-based truth—more battered and abused than any time in the history of our country at the hands of the most powerful figure in our government. It was a year in which an unrelenting daily assault on a constitutionally protected free speech was launched by the same White House. And so, 2018 must be the year truth takes a stand against the power that would weaken it,” said Flake.

It was such concerns that probably compelled Samantha Bee to discard a balanced format and shift unabashedly to a left-leaning script for her show Full Frontal. Samantha, who worked for 12 years as a correspondent for Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show, has called Trump a “two-bit wall salesman”, “sociopathic 70-year-old toddler,” and “big hairy orange villain” on her show. In response, Trump supporters targeted Samantha, forcing her to alter the way she used Twitter. Such backlash, however, has not deterred actor Alec Baldwin from playing Trump on Saturday Night Live, a role that earned him rave reviews and an Emmy award.

If Saturday Night Live does not marry humour with political savvy, Trevor Noah’s The Daily Show does it with aplomb. Last August, a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville turned violent, but still got Trump’s support. Noah, who grew up biracial and lived through apartheid in South Africa, reminded the audience that in South Africa, even during apartheid, the racist government drew the line at the Nazis. “But today, in America, we’re not even at that point? Seven months into his term—41 months to go, by the way—and the president of the United States has officially legitimised white supremacists. Basically saying, we need to see things from the Nazis’ point of view. You know, march a mile in their boots,” said Noah, delivering straight-faced sarcastic jibes.

Some shows go beyond the daily news cycle. John Oliver, who hosts Last Week Tonight, decided to scrutinise Trump’s campaign promise to build a wall along the Mexican border. Oliver and his team estimated that the wall would cost over $25 billion—twice that of Trump’s estimate—and reminded viewers that Mexico was not going to pay for it.

If these men and women are concerned about the legal ramifications of their comments, which are often replete with expletives and sexual innuendos, they sure do not show it. Trump once sued Bill Maher for joking that he was the “spawn of his mother having sex with orangutan”. But Maher did not back off. Maher was there long before Jon Stewart overhauled The Daily Show and then passed on the baton to Trevor Noah. His straight-shooting quips and wily sarcasm have made sure that his show, Real Time with Bill Maher, has been a hit from the time it was launched in 2003.

Last month, after reports about Trump’s alleged affair and payout of $130,000 to porn star Stormy Daniels came out, Maher launched yet another verbal assault on Trump. On the 2018 season premiere of Real Time, he challenged Trump to sue him for making crass jokes on the subject. “I’m not even gonna say ‘allegedly’. I’ve been sued. I’m one and zero in lawsuits with Donald Trump. So, even if I lose this one, I’d be one and one. But they paid her $130,000. You don’t pay someone that kind of money if there isn’t something there.” With Maher who is now in his 15th season of Real Time, the audience gets a host who cusses like a sailor, but spars with a sharp intellect.

The fear of law suits is not stopping talk show hosts from participating in vital debates, like Jimmy Kimmel did when the Trump administration tried to end the Affordable Health Care Act, also known as Obamacare. Kimmel’s son was born with a heart defect that required surgery and he used his show Jimmy Kimmel Live to call out senators who scripted an ill-conceived replacement that would deprive millions of Americans of health care. “No parent should ever have to decide if they can afford to save their child’s life. It shouldn’t happen,” said Kimmel. After he reached out to Chuck Schumer, the Democratic Senator from New York, to discuss health care, Trump loyalists called him a “a puppet for the Democrats”. But it did not deter Kimmel from going hard against the administration.

“We need comedy now more than ever,” said Tanya Selvaratnam, Emmy-nominated and Webby-winning producer. “Comedy is an effective way to convey complex messages.” In 2015, a study by the Washington-based Public Religion Research Institute found that one in 10 millennials (in the 18-29 age group) trusted Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert to be their news source. Another research study conducted by Silvia Knobloch-Westerwick, who is graduate studies director at the School of Communication, Ohio State University, established that satirical news shows “can engage people who otherwise would avoid political news”. And Colbert’s swift rise to the top of the rankings is a case in point.

Last May, when Trump fired FBI director James Comey, Colbert went after the president. “Did Trump forget about the Hillary emails,” he asked, implying that Comey’s decision to reopen investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails just 14 days before the elections had swayed public opinion in Trump’s favour.

Scriptwriters agree that the Trump presidency is a goldmine, keeping ratings at an all-time high. Filmmaker Michael Moore told Colbert on his show that the best way to bring Trump down was through satire because he had “thin skin” and could not “take being laughed at”.

Seth Meyers, who hosts Late Night with Seth Meyers, had issued Trump a warning when he took office, “We here at Late Night will be watching you.” A promise he has kept night after night, like the time he called out Trump for berating London Mayor Sadiq Khan in the wake of terrorist attacks in the city. “Responding to Trump’s ill-informed tweets can be a full-time job,” said Meyers. “And I know because it’s my full-time job.”

The line between comedy and journalism seems to have blurred considerably thanks to the Trump presidency, but this may not be a bad thing. Viewers are welcoming late night shows as they use their creative licence to explore the grey areas deemed inaccessible to hard reporting. To many in America and around the world, the Trump presidency is the world’s greatest reality show, and late night talk shows offer the best seats to watch it.

WHITE HOUSE WISECRACKS

BILL MAHER, 62

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Real Time with Bill Maher (since 2003)

Weekly late-night show

“It happened. It really happened. We Americans have a new leader: Vladimir Putin.”

Maher has, since the 1980s, been at the forefront of late-night political satire. His acerbic tongue spares none. Unlike many others of his ilk, who mostly take shots at hardwired Republicans, Maher punches Left and Right, at times almost beating an answer out of his guests. Trump, of course, has been an easy target, and not one Maher would miss.

Known to be outspoken, one of his previous shows, Politically Incorrect, was cancelled allegedly because of, ironically, a politically incorrect statement he made about the 9/11 attack.

STEPHEN COLBERT, 53

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Late Show with Stephen Colbert (since 2015)

Late-night show, weeknights

“He’s like a toddler calling his mom to the potty. ‘Come look at the load I dropped in the national discourse!’”

Another veteran of the satire scene, Colbert has been “grateful for Trump”. The reason? With Trump in the White House, people like Colbert never run out of fresh material. He did, however, clarify that “I love my country more than I love a good joke.”

Pre-Trump, there were reports suggesting that, in replacing legendary host David Letterman, Colbert had perhaps bitten off more than he could chew. However, since Trump, his ratings have been, as the president would say, “huge”.

SAMANTHA BEE, 48

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Full Frontal with Samantha Bee (since 2016)

Weekly late-night show

“[Trump] is a crotch-fondling slab of rancid meatloaf.”

After more than a decade as a correspondent for The Daily Show, Bee went solo with her new show. And, boy, did she sting!

Though she joined the boys’ club of late night talk shows with Full Frontal, the setting was unique—the Canadian-American had no desk, no celeb interviews and no band; it was all her. And, she was pissed off. As Trump began vying for presidency, Bee took on what she deemed a “sexist” campaign and seemingly struck gold. Compared with the first year, her show’s ratings have almost doubled.

TREVOR NOAH, 33

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The Daily Show with Trevor Noah (since 2015)

Late-night talk show, weeknights

“[Trump has] no heart problems, no dementia, no dentures… but did you test for racism?”

In 2014, the South African landed in America with a charming smile and a bagful of wit. He became a correspondent on The Daily Show, and, within a year, replaced veteran Jon Stewart as host. As the elevation was sudden, most people didn’t know what to make of him. But, over the past two years, Noah’s ratings have steadily increased, much like the frequency of his monologues on Trump.

The stand-up comic brings a foreign perspective to daily affairs and is especially charged while taking on racism.

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