What Is Late Night Comedy’s Job After A Crisis?

In the most respectful and sincere ways last night, Trevor Noah, James Corden, and Larry Wilmore separately offered their condolences to all affected by the Umpqua Community College massacre, and then they all offered similar mission statements: It’s their job to do a comedy show and distract in times such as these. In essence, these comics were asking for permission to make us laugh — something Lorne Michaels did on Saturday Night Live after 9/11, something Craig Ferguson did after the Aurora theater shooting, and something other late night hosts have done and will continue to do when tragedy strikes. But is that all the job is on nights like last night?

Former Daily Show host Jon Stewart took it as his job to do more than make us giggle ourselves to sleep. When all-too-frequent moments similar to this punched us in the collective gut, he didn’t try to make sense of the senseless. Instead, Stewart, who, unlike a “real” journalist, felt no need to be detached or silent, called out a society that he viewed as numb and officials who he felt were derelict. Jon Stewart didn’t just sum up our sadness, he reflected our rage and frustration while shouting into a microphone the things that we were shouting in our heads.

No one did that last night. For Noah, the man who inherited Stewart’s microphone, that’s probably for the best at this early stage. The Daily Show desk does not imbue one with special oratorical powers or viewers’ faith — Stewart honed and earned those things over the years because he was always there for us, choosing the right words each time. Last night was Noah’s fourth show. For him to say more than he did would have been inappropriate. There’s an intimacy that needs to exist between a host and an audience for that host to be as honest as Stewart was. We’re just getting to know Trevor Noah.

We know Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel, Seth Meyers, Conan O’Brien, and Stephen Colbert. From some, a punch at the heart of another uniquely American tragedy seems unlikely. From others, however, we’ve seen flashes of conscientiousness, like Conan’s remarks about the effect on speech and comedy in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo massacre and Seth Meyers’ gloves off take on the war against Planned Parenthood on Wednesday night. Neither lived up to those standards last night. Unsurprisingly, after years of filtering his views through a conservative blowhard alter ego on cable, Colbert has shown that he is capable of serious discourse with a late night broadcast audience, bringing a bus full of substantial political and intellectual guests to a realm strays from the trinity of actors, pop stars, and comics. That Colbert said nothing about the Umpqua Community College shooting feels strange in light of that, but it’s also worth noting that he (and the others) may have been filming as the facts were still coming in, and they may have felt that it would be inappropriate to speak on something that had not fully developed. It’s also entirely possible that they simply felt like they had nothing to say — an unfortunate symptom of the commonality of these massacres. But, in general, we don’t need distractions, and we don’t need people to pretend that nothing bad is happening as our failings as a species are broadcast 24/7 on cable news. That’s what breeds apathy and ultimately acceptance of this violence as the new normal. We need people to shout and point and remind us to be shocked and impatient when demanding action. Even when those people are comedians because, as the phrase goes, any port in a storm.

I don’t expect Colbert or the others to save the world, I just want them to be a little bit more like Jon Stewart when something like this happens because it seems like there is a void right now. And if late night hosts are not using their platforms as the last word on the day to talk to us about the world around us with comedy and sometimes honesty, real emotion, and opinion, then they aren’t part of the solution or the problem so much as they’re just noise. And we’ve got more than enough of that.

Update:

Colbert spoke about the Umpqua shooting last night. His words were honest, heartfelt, and well selected. It was more than mere noise.

×