Establishment comedy vs. Progressive comedy
In modern politics, there are two groups of people the majority of Establishment and the minority of Progressives. They’re in the candidates, the news reporters, and the media. My topic of choice today is late-night talk shows. The comedians and writers have a difficult job of watching and binging on news cycles, taking the information and converting them into punchlines, jokes, and skits.
The six comedians I’m referring to (mainly because they are the only ones I watch) are Stephen Colbert, Samantha Bee, Bill Maher, John Oliver, Trevor Noah and Seth Meyers.
The Establishment or Progressive status is hard to decipher on face value as I don’t know any of the comics personally and only have their content to go by. It’s also somewhat difficult to determine since they’re all owned in some way or another by an extensive network corporation. However, you can tell from the subjects that they cover, the topics that they talk about and the way they go about it.
Now before I get started, I just want to be clarified I like all these comics especially Samantha Bee and being considered establishment does not make them by any means wrong, but I think I’ve learned the difference between establishment and progressive presentations.
Establishment: the establishment comics focus on the more story of the day hot topic news cycle, the Russia stories, the Stormy Daniels stories and the racist tweets of the week. The subject of their stories while important are often done to death.
Stephen Colbert: I enjoy Stephen’s wit and music humor, but while he has praised progressives on his show his questions tend to be on the more establishment side. For example, with Cynthia Nixon, he basically was asking her “Why are you complaining and getting into Andrew Cuomo’s way?” Also, Colbert more than any other comics, seem to revel in the Stormy Daniels and Russia stories. He’s given Ms. Daniels (whose real name is Stephanie A. Gregory Clifford, has he even mentioned it?) their own fancy intro. While with Mrs. Daniels story it is worth mentioning that the affair took place years ago and was consensual, compared to the (I think) 24 women who didn’t have a consensual sexual encounter with the president Stephen has also done entire 10-minute monologues on the Russia investigation and even did a full week in Russia as a special. While Russia is a significant topic, his corruption stem to other nations such as Saudi Ariba and Jerusalem. Although in one of his more recent monologues (7/27/18) Stephen said how life on other planets was discovered and that wasn’t even remotely close to the top story of the day.
Samantha Bee: I enjoy her personality and really think that she’d make a kickass progressive as she’s not above “crude” humor and there’s something so satisfying about watching Samantha bee tear apart the Republican party. However, there’s definitely a heavy Hilary establishment bias in her shows context. One example is how as of this recording she still at least to my knowledge hasn’t even mentioned Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a woman of color who meets all of her political standards. Another issue is that Samantha strikes me as one of those people who truly believe Bernie Sanders is the reason Hillary lost. Her coverage of him has not been kind, there was a segment on how the Bernie bros were pissed about the DNC rigging and that they didn’t have a real case for rage. However, when the DNC rigging against Bernie was discovered to be true, there was 0 apology, not even a quick (Guess, we got it wrong). Sam has also compared Bernie to Ted Cruz in her segment “CNN had it in them the whole time” considering him “a mansplaining tit,” an insult many commenters on YouTube have corrected her on. Although, it’s worth mentioning that in that same segment Samantha pointed out CNN’s weakness and called Joe Manchin a wimp. Also, she referred to Hillary Clinton as a progressive which isn’t at all accurate (unfortunately).
Bill Maher: Much like Samantha Bee I like his personality (except for his opinions on millennials) Bill’s understandably very anti-trump, but that just means he’s a decent thinking human being. He’s called the Democrats pushovers before which is true. However, Bill Maher has genuinely embraced the DNC message of Donald Trump is the sole reason for everything that’s wrong with the country and getting rid of him would make the world make sense again. It’s not corporate Democrats such as Nancy Pelosi (whom Bill seems to like a lot) or the actual struggles that lead to middle Americans voting for Trump. Bill Maher has stated (I believe) that he’d actually would rather Mike pence to Trump which means Bill’s unaware of the fact that Mike and Donald have a lot of the same policies it’s just that Donald is a loud mouth moron and Pence actually knows how to be president. The negative policies don’t seem to bother him.
Progressive: They call out and jokes at the problems with Democrats and Republicans including news outlets, politicians, and policies.
Trevor Noah: He seems to be a Bernie supporter as he regularly mentions it when something Bernie said comes up and did a pretty positive video when Berne first started burning. He also mentioned Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez the day after she won, although his recent interview with her left could have been better.
Seth Meyers: In recent months his videos and dialogue have had a much more progressive of direction pointing out the establishment and angles of specific topics such as corruption and hypocrisy. Seth has also been known to call out stories created solely for distractions from issues. Just YouTube search “Seth Meyers moderate democrat” There will be a video about why democratic moderates are ineffective. There was a video supporting Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on the day she won as well.
Amber Wolf, Jim Jefferey, and Jordan Klepper have also who I either found Trevor or Seth are also pretty progressive in there shows.
John Oliver: While I don’t have much to go on and with his personal opinions on anything, one of the reasons I like John Oliver is because he does what a lot of mainstream news outlets should do. John Oliver might be the only comic to ever do lengthy (talking 15 to 20 minutes) segments on non-Hot Topics of the week. John Oliver’s segments not only go into further detail than most major news networks but cover topic such as 3rd party candidates, events, and elections outside the country, infrastructure, rehab, school systems, etc. Most mainstream news outlets discuss stories that are exciting to make their context watchable, John Oliver, on the other hand, does research and segments on stories that are not popular and makes them watchable. An I know not a lot shows both comedic and News can do that but maybe they should strive to.
In conclusion, while many of these guys are just comics, they’re not news personalities or reporters, so their job is to entertain. So, it’s somewhat understandable that some of them usually go with the more entertaining story. Plus, some of them live in a political bubble (upper/blue class), and people like that can lose perspective on the desires of the country. The only reason I even bring this up is that since I started watching all of them, I’ve often daydream and fantasize about having my own show like them. And in those daydreams, I tend to use my platform to be progressive, such as a segment of the so-called “far-left which isn’t that far and not so crazy. Plus, many voters and citizens watch comedians like them for their information. Unfortunately, the traditional media outlets of today have become somewhat stale, and when overwhelmed it’s easier to take bad news with a punchline.
The Wannabe Writer 