THE SHOW MUST GO DON
Colbert, Spicer turn Emmys into Trump TV
Someone forgot to tell the Emmys that they’re about entertainment, not politics.
Host Stephen Colbert and other celebs took one pot s hot after a not her at President Trump last night, with the honored TV shows and stars practically a sidebar to politics. Even former Trump Press Secretary Sean Spicer made an appearance.
A WARDS shows, by definition, are insufferable: the rich and famous gatheringg yearly to reward each other for being rich and fa-famous. Yet this year’s Emmys had an almostmost un-unbearable smugness to it.
Factor One was host Stephen Colbert,rt, who — no matter your politics — has spentnt the past 10 months radiating self-satisfac-tion, too often mistaking speechifying for comedic monologuing. How interesting to see Colbert leading this year’s’s Emmys as a self-congratulatory exercise in rewarding television’s diversity — as opposed to the film industry, where progress has been slower.
Still, didn’t it strike Colbert, or any producer, perhaps stereotypical at best, racist at worst, to have his unnamed black sidekick be the DJ? Who, by the way, was stationed way off to the side and probably backstage, separate and apart from the proceedings?
Dave Chappelle, who blew Colbert away in the few minutes he presented, clapped back at a room full of white people who think the problem solved. “I’m truly amazed how many black people are here,” he said. “I counted 11 on the monitor.”
Also curious was RuPaul, as an Emmy statuette, interviewed by Colbert in a skit that went down as a lame, dated parody of two gay men trading bitchy gossip.
“Honey, get out your china because I am ready to spill the tea,” RuPaul said, before he and Colbert devolved into this tradeoff: “Ooooohhhhhh!” “Uh-huh, honey.” “Uh-huhhhhh.” It’s impossible to imagine such pandering attempted with any other minority group, but RuPaul has such goodwill — “RuPaul’s Drag Race” won multiple Emmys and has attracted guests from Wynonna Judd to Chelsea Clinton — that he was clearly meant to bring Colbert up. Instead, Colbert brought RuPaul down.
We hit the smugness apex toward the end of the night, when Charlie Brooker won an Emmy for an episode of his dystopian anthology series, “Black Mirror.” After lamenting that his dark vision of the near future was too “on-the nose,” he offered up an idea to the room:
“Maybe if all the beautiful people in this auditorium could start to physically make love with each other, or yourselves, on the count of three, this world would be a far better place.”
Doubtless.