Colbert: ‘Americans are seeing friends again, instead of bingeing Friends’
A semblance of social normal returned to the US this weekend, after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advised that vaccinated Americans can socialize without masks or distancing. “Finally, Americans are seeing friends again, instead of bingeing Friends again,” quipped Stephen Colbert on Monday’s Late Show.
Colbert also discussed the multibillion-dollar divorce between the Microsoft founder Bill Gates and his wife, Melinda, and the brewing scandal Colbert termed “Gates-Gaete”.
According to the New York Times, Bill Gates’s questionable behavior with female colleagues has long raised eyebrows. On multiple occasions, the paper reported, Gates romantically pursued women who worked with him at Microsoft and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. “That is bold to pursue an affair at an office literally named after your marriage,” Colbert said, imitating Gates: “Baby, don’t even think about Melinda. Or look at the exterior of the building. Or the stationery. Or our website. Or your W2, or Melinda, who’s also in this meeting.
“But like the majority of troubled marriages, the number one source of conflict was hanging out with Jeffrey Epstein,” Colbert continued, pointing to reports that Gates met Epstein dozens of times starting in 2011, and continuing through 2014. “That’s after Epstein’s sex crimes were known to the public – although, maybe Gates didn’t know anything about Epstein because he looked him up on Bing,” Colbert joked.
Trevor Noah
On the Daily Show, Trevor Noah discussed confusion over the CDC’s relaxation of mask guidelines. “On the one side, you have the CDC saying, ‘Take off your masks.’ And on the other side, you have experts saying that it is crazy,” Noah explained.
Which isn’t surprising, he added, since “experts have been disagreeing with each other throughout this pandemic – is it airborne? Is it safe to go back to school? Do you have to pay for a gift at a Zoom wedding?
“The CDC is taking fire from all sides,” he continued. “But guys, they’re just reflecting what the science says. And everyone agrees that if you are vaccinated, it is very unlikely that you will get sick or spread the virus, even without a mask. It’s like me clicking ‘install updates now’, rather than ‘remind me later’. It’s technically possible, but it’s not actually going to happen.”
The shifting guidance on masks has led to confusion, and many vaccinated people have continued to wear masks despite microscopic risk to safety. “It’s a little weird to me that some fully vaccinated people are treating their faces like limited edition Pokémon cards that can’t be let out of the box,” Noah said.
“But at the same time, I do get it. If you spent a fortune on masks this past year, you want to keep wearing them, so you get your money’s worth.”
But “let’s be honest, as people”, he concluded, “wearing a mask, even if you don’t need to, harms literally no one. People are out here wearing fancy Crocs and fanny packs. It’s fine. Do whatever make you comfortable, for whatever reason you want.”
Seth Meyers
On Late Night, Seth Meyers offered an update on the Matt Gaetz sex scandal: his “wingman” and longtime friend, Joel Greenberg, pleaded guilty to sex trafficking and agreed to cooperate with federal prosecutors. “Obviously, this is not good news for Gaetz,” Meyers said.
“I mean, we already knew about the drug-fueled sex parties and the trip to the Bahamas with his other buddy, a Florida hand surgeon and marijuana entrepreneur who is one of the characters in Florida Clue, along with a vaping gator in a Margaritaville tank top.”
Greenberg has been implicated in Gaetz’s sexual relationships with underage girls; a Daily Beast investigation found that the morning after Gaetz sent Greenberg $900 via Venmo, Greenberg sent three underage women with whom they had had sexual relations Venmo payments labeled “tuition”, “school” and “school”.
“Not a good cover, dude,” Meyers said. “Would have been less suspicious to just use a bunch of eggplant emojis.
“It would have been less suspicious if you had just written ‘FOR CRIME STUFF’ and then everyone would think it’s a joke,” he continued. “Like how you Venmo your friends to split the check after dinner but you put something funny in the subject line, like ‘to buy that diarrhea medicine you asked for’.”
Jimmy Kimmel
And in Los Angeles, Jimmy Kimmel reacted to a bombshell 60 Minutes investigation into UFOs. The latest episode of the news program interviewed several senior Pentagon officials who reported having observed “unidentified aerial phenomena” – now the subject of a federal taskforce – in which the unexplained objects appeared to drop
80,000ft in a second and move over 13,000 miles an hour.
“They’ve known about this for a couple years but they’ve waited until now to talk about it, because I guess a couple years ago, they would’ve been too embarrassed if the alien said, ‘Take us to your leader,’” Kimmel joked. “They would’ve been like, ‘Eh, not a great idea.’
“I feel like if this story had been on 60 Minutes in, like, 1988, it would’ve been the only thing we talked about for the next 30 years,” he added. “It would’ve been the biggest news story of the year. Now it’s like, ‘Yeah, oh yeah I heard that. I also heard that Bill Gates was trying to get freaky with one of his employees, right?”