Samantha Bee takes her own fair share of blame for the results of Election 2016, but there’s also someone else she thinks can carry some of that blame. She discovers it by the end of her final show of the season on Monday, right after she dug into the somewhat shocked response to Donald Trump becoming president.
It has definitely been a tale full of contrasting reactions to the victory. Plenty of people, including Robert DeNiro for some reason, are comparing their feelings to the way they felt after 9/11. If that’s the case, I expect to see a major run on competing ribbons and safety pin magnets very soon. Next is the reaction from the pro-Trump side, where the loudest and most hateful of the bunch are tweeting up a storm or worse in public or complaining about protesters on television. Then you have the folks who are likely to truly feel the brunt of any decisions over the next four years.
It’s all funny because the snowflake line has been tossed around in reference to pretty much everybody at this point and I really feel like nobody gets it. I don’t even think I get what happened with the end of the election except for who won and who lost. It’s been a big finger pointing game with a lot of responses that you don’t really know how to handle and for some of us, we have to watch it play out in late night. That’s likely why Bee takes some of the blame in her closing segment to the show, in a joking manner at least. Probably the only non-partisan late night hosts out there are Jimmy Fallon and Jimmy Kimmel, though both seemed to fall into their own controversies for some reason. The rest have taken a stand and made it clear, which is fine to do to a point and tiring by the time election day rolls around — if you’ve paid attention to it. Most people didn’t and shouldn’t, which I think a lot of the late night shows have realized since Tuesday after getting that initial address out of the way.
If anything, the post-election response shows that there’s no end in sight for the split we saw during the campaign season. Folks like John Oliver and Samantha Bee taking off for the holidays, but we’re left with the things they’ll still be talking about when they return, with folks either praising them or damning them in the process. So when they return and as the others continue, maybe we can look at what can actually change. Late night will not.
(Via Full Frontal)