Nearly every legend of late night weighed in on the firing of Stephen Colbert, from John Oliver (“Very, very, very sad news”), to Jimmy Kimmel (“Fuck you and all your Sheldons, CBS”), to David Letterman (“This is pure cowardice”).
Longtime Tonight Show legend Jay Leno hasn’t commented directly, but in an interview taped just days before the Colbert decision, he repeated his tired mantra about leaving politics out of comedy. “I don’t think anybody wants to hear a lecture,” he lectured. “Why shoot for just half an audience? Why not try to get the whole? I like to bring people into the big picture. I don’t understand why you would alienate one particular group — or just don’t do it at all. I’m not saying you have to throw your support. But just do what’s funny.”
Despite a career in which Leno took plenty of political shots, he continues to tell comics to give their opinions a rest. And Jon Stewart, for one, is tired of Leno’s soapbox finger-wagging.
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On his The Weekly Show With Jon Stewart podcast, Stewart affected a high-pitched whine as he imitated Leno’s don’t-take-sides blather: “I don’t understand — why do you want to offend your audience, you know? Why not just do a show? Why do you have to talk about things you believe? Why do you have to make jokes about things you actually think? I’m just gonna go throw myself down a hill and see if I can get a concussion.”
Stewart had no patience with Leno’s attempts not to offend. “I mean, the whole thing is fucking ridiculous.”
Ironically, Stewart has been criticized for both-sidesism in his career as well, using his comedy platforms to blast both the left and the right for personal and political misdeeds. But don’t confuse that with Leno’s no-sides, “Hey, I’m staying out of it” stance. Whether or not you agree with Stewart’s politics, it’s clear he “makes jokes about things he actually thinks.”
That includes Colbert’s dismissal, a subject Stewart addressed with righteous fury on The Daily Show. “Late-night TV is a struggling financial model,” he acknowledged. But “the fact that CBS didn’t try to save their number-one-rated, network late-night franchise that’s been on the air for over three decades is part of what’s making everybody wonder: Was this purely financial, or maybe the path of least resistance for your $8-billion merger?”
Stewart reminded Paramount (the company, by the way, that employs Stewart) that a great deal of its $8 billion valuation came from the very shows it was now trying to silence. “We fucking try every night. And if you believe, as corporations or as networks, you can make yourselves so innocuous that you can serve a gruel so flavorless that you will never again be on the boy king’s radar, why will anyone watch you?”
“And you are fucking wrong.”