Late-night TV is all about leftism now, and leftists obviously do not support women or minorities.
To wit: Samantha Bee’s Full Frontal just got axed after seven seasons on TBS. Oh, and something called Desus & Mero on Showtime, a late-night show starring two black guys, is also a goner.
Though white men named Jimmy still dominate, the late night landscape that Bee leaves now isn’t the same as the one she arrived in; it’s more inclusive. And yet with Full Frontal and Showtime’s Desus & Mero both abruptly concluding, it’s hard not to feel that — for all the proliferation of fresh voices in what was becoming a calcified format — the risk of backsliding is very real.
Institutional gatekeeping played an indisputable role in the decades of late night sameness that forced Bee, over and over, to address why people like Joan Rivers or Arsenio Hall were such unicorns. That said, it’s crucial to recognize that this recent wave of series truncations doesn’t seem to suggest a return of that gatekeeping. We don’t know the exact reasons why Desus & Mero ended, but it had something to do with the relationship between the hosts, whose unique chemistry was wholly responsible for their years of podcasting and talk-show success. Simply put, if Desus Nice and The Kid Mero didn’t want to be partners anymore, it would have been foolish for Showtime to force them.
Gee, and who are the “gatekeepers” of late night?
Hint: no one conservative!
As a child of the 80s, when Oprah Winfrey, Arsenio Hall, Joan Rivers, and Bill Cosby ruled television, I find this hilarious.
Left-wing extremists take over TV, and it gets even whiter and more male than it was decades ago.
Okay, there is The Daily Show with Trevor Noah, but when no one watches Trevor Noah, does it really count as a TV show?
The problem, of course, is that 1) leftists remain the worst kind of racists and sexists, and 2) the rest of us are tired of the left politicizing absolutely everything, so we — colorblind Americans — don’t watch.
If Hollywood could find an apolitical, charismatic, genuinely talented woman like Joan Rivers or an apolitical, charismatic, genuinely talented black guy like Arsenio Hall or Bill Cosby, we would tune in.
Americans have welcomed women and racial minorities into their homes as role models and superstars for decades. That’s not the problem. The problem is that Samantha Bee is screechy, smug, and unappealing. Trevor Noah doesn’t entertain. He lectures. The rest — especially the white guys — are equally insufferable, which is why Kimmel, Colbert, Fallon, etc., keep putting up humiliating ratings.
Can anyone imagine a Johnny Carson or Arsenio Hall being humiliated by a late-night show on cable news? And yet, that’s exactly what the Fox News Channel’s Greg Gutfeld does to today’s intolerable and intolerant late-night crop pretty much night after night.
So here’s what happened to late-night diversity…
First, the left turned late night into Left-wing Late Night. When that happened, only leftists were interested in watching. And because leftists are racists and sexists, that was the end of late night’s racial and gender diversity.
Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC. Follow his Facebook Page here.
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