New York Times media columnist Jim Rutenberg likes how Comedy Central host Larry Wilmore “keeps it 100" (percent honest). So he declared in Monday’s newspaper that Wilmore and his fellow Comedy Central host Trevor Noah aren’t up the task of satirizing the 2016 campaign. In a story on Stephen Colbert revamping his Late Show on CBS, Rutenberg lamented there is a “Where Is Superman?” feeling about Jon Stewart and Colbert sitting this one out – not just in “Left America,” but yes, in “Media America.”
CBS and Mr. Moonves have hundreds of millions of dollars riding on the result, not to mention corporate pride. Mr. Colbert has something more personal on the line: his reputation as a comedic actor who used his longtime perch at Comedy Central to show how integrity, grace and wicked intelligence could inject something politically powerful — and powerfully funny — into the late-night lineup of stupid pet tricks and vapid celebrity interviews.
He shared that reputation with his friend Jon Stewart, who left Comedy Central’s 11 p.m. Daily Show several months after Mr. Colbert left his 11:30 p.m. program, The Colbert Report. In their absence there has been a “Where is Superman?” aspect to this year’s presidential campaign, especially in Left America, Centrist-Left America and, yes, Media America.
If ever there was an election cycle that called for the sharp satirical analysis that Mr. Stewart and Mr. Colbert once provided on a nightly basis, it is this one.
Rutenberg can make excuses for all the liberals who are not “Superman” in this exercise. Wilmore and Noah are “relatively new and just starting to build their followings”. HBO’s John Oliver and Bill Maher “have made their marks on HBO, but their shows are not nightly, and have not alleviated the sense that Mr. Colbert and Mr. Stewart are badly missed in the face of all the Trumpmania.”
He reported on how the “liberal website Daily Kos” and former Variety editor Peter Bart fussed at Stewart and Colbert as they “hid in their foxholes.” He acknowledged that’s a bit weird when Colbert is on CBS every weeknight:
It’s pretty odd when you think about it. It’s like saying, “No one has replaced Stephen Colbert, not even Stephen Colbert,” when, in fact, he’s on television every weeknight, just not as the jingoistic Conservative talk show host alter ego he employed on Comedy Central.
But I found myself feeling the same way a few months ago when Donald J. Trump announced his plan for “a total and complete” ban on Muslims’ entering the United States after the San Bernardino terrorist attack. I was curious to see what Mr. Colbert would make of it.
I was agog when he opened the show with three lingerie models from a CBS Victoria’s Secret special that was to air the next night, wearing angel’s wings and eating hot wings. Even Mr. Colbert appeared to blanch at what came off as an example of corporate synergy gone awry. Toward the end of the bit Mr. Colbert looked at the camera, noted that “there’s more stuff on the prompter,” said something along the lines of “The heck with it” — but in a way that required bleeping — and cut it short.
Mr. Colbert did go on to do a fairly serious soliloquy about the attack. But it was hard to square with the hot wings.
It seems amazing that the Left -- including the liberal media -- invest so much significance in "wickedly intelligent" satire, perhaps more than they invest in politicians.
Also on Monday, Rutenberg wrote an article on Colbert’s successor Larry Wilmore and how he bombed at the White House Correspondents Dinner. Well, he couldn’t possibly admit that. Instead, they both bowed to Colbert for satirically disemboweling George W. Bush over Iraq at that media dinner in 2006:
“Stephen’s was the bravest,” Mr. Wilmore told me as he looked out from the stage at the ballroom. He was referring to the seminal performance that Stephen Colbert gave in 2006. Playing his now-retired Comedy Central character, an egotistic conservative talk show host, Mr. Colbert mockingly defended the Iraq war and the Washington press corps’ coverage of it.
The act, typical of his show, wilted inside the hall. But it was a hit out in the world because it tapped the growing perception that a too-cozy relationship between journalists and government officials produced credulous reporting that helped start a war under false pretenses. It was the perfect pairing of a comedian and the moment.
Rutenberg concluded by thanking the (liberal) journalists who invited (liberal) Wilmore, because somehow liberal snark really keeps Washington honest: “The Correspondents’ Association deserves credit for having a comic like Mr. Wilmore at its dinner. And regardless of whether you liked Mr. Wilmore’s act, you can’t say he didn’t keep it 100. Bad things happen in Washington when people don’t.”
