Slate - "Donals Trump Just Radicalized Late Night TV"

[NRaleighLiberal]

http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2017/08/15/watch_late_night_hosts_respond_to_charlottesville.html

by Matthew Dessem

There really wasn’t anything else to talk about besides Charlottesville on Monday night, if you were lucky enough to have a television show, and late night hosts rose to the challenge. That includes unlikely suspects like the normally apolitical Jimmy Fallon, who opened with a moving, joke-free reminder that “it’s important for everyone, especially white people in this country, to speak out against” the poisonous ideologies on display in Charlottesville. Jimmy Kimmel, who has had less and less tolerance for bullshit since the health care debacle, found room for some jokes, but primarily railed against Trump, wondering aloud if the president “cut eyeholes in his bedsheets.” Stephen Colbert went with a traditional monologue, which he ended by addressing white supremacists and Trump supporters directly: “If you get to ruin khakis and polo shirts, I say red baseball caps mean you’re an asshole.” Seth Meyers had it both ways, opening with a joke-free statement like Fallon, then circling back to pick up the jokes in his Closer Look segment on Charlottesville. He gets extra credit for painstakingly tracing the ways ignoring Trump’s white supremacist views, statements, and actions have led us to this pass. (Trevor Noah and The Daily Show picked a hell of a week to go on vacation.)

Beyond the interest in seeing how different writers rooms treated the same material—which clips they used, how they managed the humor/disgust/hope balance, and so on—what’s fascinating about Monday’s late night lineup is how unified it was. Trump supporters who prefer The Tonight Show or Jimmy Kimmel Live! because they aren’t usually as schoolmarmish about the whole “voting for white supremacy” thing as, say, The Daily Show had nothing to watch on Monday night. Even Conan O’Brien, who seems to have passed on the chance to deliver a monologue about American racism, invited Senator Al Franken on to tell TBS viewers about, among other things, the Cornerstone Speech. This seems like the kind of unity we’re going to need in the wake of Charlottesville, as opposed to the reassuring but false idea that Americans want the same things and we should all come together as a nation and stop talking about white supremacy. Some Americans don’t want the same things, and the rest of us have a moral responsibility to speak out. Especially those of us who host television shows. Here’s what everyone had to say on Monday

snip - read on to see clips and transcripts from all of the shows

[Adrahil]

1. It's a damned shame when opposing Nazis is framed as radical. NT

[barbtries]

5. yeah.

i found that to be a regrettable overstatement as well.

[lunasun]

2. I agree with Fallon it's esp important for white people to speak out against all the hate and make

it unacceptable in this country

[cilla4progress]

3. I hope we've turned a corner on legitimizing

These fools. The whole "place at the table" meme.

Hate speech is not free speech, and gawd help us if we can't tell the difference.

[barbtries]

4. that explains why i couldn't find Daily Show this morning

every morning i fire up the youtube to watch these guys. they rarely disappoint. they are heads and shoulders above the president in terms of statesmanship, patriotism, and traditional American values even while making us laugh. i know for me it's either laugh or cry on a pretty much daily basis anymore. i have tears in my eyes right now.

[7wo7rees]

6. I commented on YouTube for Seth

He had the best analysis and takedown of Trump anywhere on TV or the Web.
I watch his Closer Look on YT almost every day. It's outstanding at clarifying the issues and skewering, like Jon used to be.

He does a pretty good DJT impression too.