Why are late night show hosts like Kimmel, Fallon, and Colbert so bad? Even saying that they are not funny understates the magnitude of the problem. It has gotten to the point that what they do in front of an audience every night can’t even be defined as humor. It’s something else.
It’s a chimera of sorts, a mirror image of what humor is in the real world but lacking in essence. It’s as if an alien from outer space put on a human disguise and then tried to mimic humor without the ability to feel human emotion.
I am not talking about robotic delivery. I am talking about a show host force-feeding his audience a diet of what they expect to hear and an audience that feels obliged to go along with the gag — kabuki theater of sorts, done for show, not substance.
It all feels staged. A comedian must catch the audience off guard and as such cannot deliver jokes passed through the HR department for approval.
As young men, it’s fashionable to rail against the “Man”. Kimmel, Fallon, and Colbert were no different, but what happens when they become the “Man”? Then, they are in a situation where they are no longer the rebel but a defender of the status quo. It manifests itself in going four long years without uttering a word about the state of Joe Biden’s mental health.
I am old enough to remember that Johnny Carson, never the one with a political axe to grind, would make a joke about Reagan’s failing memory during his monologue.
Political correctness and then wokeness robbed the Left of a tool. They can no longer wield humor in any effective way. It is now beyond the reach of their late-night comedic spokesmen. They have ceded this weapon to their opponents on the Right which was once accused of an inability to be funny.
The popularity of someone like Gutfeld is the result. He saw a thousand-dollar bill on the ground and asked if anyone was going to pick it up. When no one on the Left would pick it up, he stepped in, took it and rocketed to the top. He’s irreverent and funny, but that’s not the only reason for his success.
We know that if we were out with our buddies having a beer with Kimmel/Fallon/Colbert (KFC for shorthand) and Gutfeld, KFC would not hold court and Gutfeld would. And why? Not because of their politics alone, but because they have become lazy and feminine and expect us to laugh at their jokes when they are not funny.
[Note by JW: The great Austrian economist-philosopher Ludwig von Mises thought the Left has never had a real sense of humor as far as the 19th century. In The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality (1956), he uses 19th century Victorian England as an example:
“The socialists and the interventionists have no sense of humor. They are incapable of laughing at themselves. The English are different. The English are able to laugh at themselves. The most popular and successful satires of the Victorian age were the comic operas of Gilbert and Sullivan. They ridiculed mercilessly the most eminent men and the most sacred institutions of England. The whole nation enjoyed them. The English have not lost this virtue. But the socialists are incapable of this. They are impervious to derision.”]
Bill Ponton is chairman of Princeton Venture Advisory, specializing in venture management consulting in the digital media industry.
