Political comedy’s shifting red line
Traditional role of congenial late-night host has morphed into sharp-tongued satirist
Politics are a joke and, right now, more folks want to laugh than cry over the state of the union.
For proof, look no further than the unlikely ratings success of The Late
Show With Stephen Colbert, on a platform designed in a much tamer, apolitical era. Colbert has trounced the competition thanks largely to his eviscerating political humour, a talent that in any other era would have alienated more viewers than it attracted. And when ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel began spending more time on his own show lampooning D.C.’s drainless swamp, his show went from amusing background viewing to a water-cooler event. People even began to notice that Seth Meyers had a late-night show (it’s coincidentally called Late Night With
Seth Meyers) when the former Saturday Night Live cast member began drilling down nightly on the “wannabe dictator” and all-around “weird man” occupying the White House.
The more extreme the picture on Capitol Hill, the more extreme comedy about America’s seat of power has become. While the role of late-night host has largely morphed from witty entertainer to sharp-tongued political satirist, cagerattling comedians with series and specials on HBO, Netflix and Comedy Central have had to outmanoeuvre already absurd headlines to get laughs.
It’s a far cry from the days when getting political on terrestrial TV meant Jay Leno joking about Barack Obama’s oversize ears, Conan O’Brien making fun of George W. Bush’s inability to pronounce “nuclear” and David Letterman strategically pausing when using “Bill Clinton” and “blue dress” in the same sentence.
But that doesn’t mean comedians have a clear playing field. Just ask Kathy Griffin or Roseanne Barr. Or Kevin Hart.
How far is too far? The border between wickedly funny and downright offensive isn’t easy to find. It seems to move mys- teriously, like the tides, but influenced by the pull of the news cycle. It’s also a conditional boundary depending on the performer’s gender — women mysteriously step over the line way more than men — and how preoccupied an easily enraged social media happens to be when a comedian drops an offending witticism.
Yet we’re still willing to take down comedians who overshoot that illusive border and that list of martyrs is growing.
Queen of snark Griffin lost much of her empire after she posed for a photo in 2017 holding a mask that was made to look like a beheaded Donald Trump. Critics pounced and she apologized, but Griffin was still dropped from her CNN New Year’s Eve hosting gig with Anderson Cooper and lost several more high-profile gigs.
Griffin, who later took back her apology (“You can hate that picture … but it’s important to know it wasn’t against the law”), said she was questioned for two months by the FBI and placed on the no-fly list.
Then there’s Michelle Wolf, whose shot at the big time hit a brick wall when she hosted the 2018 White House Correspondents Dinner. The comedian riffed about Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Kellyanne Conway and Trump, among others, upsetting conservative critics who were uncomfortable with her “crass” routine. The White House Correspondents Association apologized almost immediately for Wolf’s routine (she did not), and her ensuing Netflix series The Break was cancelled.
Hart, who broke comedy records with more than a million tickets sold for his current Irresponsible Tour, was set to host the Oscars, but stepped down last week after homophobic tweets he posted between 2009 and 2011resurfaced on Thursday.
How Hart handled the criticism is still being debated. What’s clear is that his jokes from nearly 10 years ago, considered funny by many at the time, are not funny anymore. The landscape has changed, especially around jokes about women, Blacks and LGBTQ issues, though some groups — such as Mexicans and Muslims — still appear to be fair game for some comics.
Samantha Bee, John Oliver, Hasan Minhaj and Trevor Noah are among those who’ve thrived delivering punchlines that might have killed their television aspirations a couple of decades ago. Bill Maher, who lost his ABC show Politically Incorrect in 2001over a Sept.11 comment, was just celebrated by politicians and celebrities in October for 25 years in television.
This bounty of riches isn’t, of course, the catalyst for a bipartisan comedy revolution. The movement leans left and rarely if ever veers in the other direction.
Barr was the exception to that rule before she also went too far doing the thing people wanted to see her do: be obnoxious, unPC and full of contempt for those around her who drank the Kool-Aid of media outlets that weren’t Fox News.