For the sake of our funny bones and “collective sanity,” transgender writer Samantha Allen wants late-night comics to dial back the Trump-bashing and return to absurdist skits.
In a 1,400-word essay on Paste Magazine, the transgender writer with a doctorate in sexuality studies said: “In 2017, we definitely need late-night shows to skewer Trump and to remind us that his presidency is perilous. But sometimes — perhaps especially at the end of a long day — we need to give ourselves permission to forget, if only for an hour. Things will still be bad in the morning.”
She repeats the theme again and again, saying there’s no other way to describe the political bits but as “saturation.”
“Jon Stewart perfected a winning formula and now everyone else is iterating on it endlessly,” she said, “flooding late-night comedy with wry takes on the evening news.”
She says it’s time to try something different, “particularly because all of the ‘eviscerating’ that late-night comedians have been doing hasn’t been all that effective. … At worst, the current glut of political comedy isn’t just ineffective but actively harmful.
“Turning legislative attacks on our civil and human rights into comedy might be effective if the satire were more finely-tuned but, otherwise, we’re just laughing mirthlessly all the way to hell.”
At the conclusion, she hailed “my old standby Conan O’Brien.”
“While other late-night hosts were busy reminding us of how terrifying everything is all the time, Conan went to Berlin and … visited a dominatrix who made him kneel on the floor, put on a rubber dog mask and woof for her.”
Allen called the skit “perfect.”
“I didn’t change the channel,” she wrote. “And for just a few minutes more, I got to forget.”