Colbert. The most painful, hilarious, and most memorable skewering I’ve ever seen. To say everything right in front of the president. I don’t have the strength he did.
Maybe “DC elites” is a better description. Journalists concerned about maintaining access to a politician who’s being ribbed by the host may be equally careful about how they respond.
Biden: “I’m a grown man! I’m running against a 6-year old!”
Jost wasn’t very good. Just a few decent jokes, not delivered well. Biden was actually better. The days of controversials like Colbert might be done.
I’m going to disagree with most everybody here, having just watched it.
Jost did really well by the standards of others I’ve watched. Which is all of them that were recorded, since I’ve gone back and hunted them out. But even by recent standards. Roy Woods Jr. last year was the one who really bombed. Trevor Noah was only somewhat better the year before.
I also thought that the first part of his set went better than the second half. All the early jokes received long laughter. Maybe that’s what threw people here off. He had to wait for everybody to stop laughing to start the next joke. The laughter trickled off slowly, making him pause for it to end. That didn’t look well on camera but in person it would have seemed only polite. (Colbert got nothing from the audience in 2006. He was praised only later.)
Biden’s joke writers did him proud. We’ll have to wait for somebody’s book to reveal who they are, but he was up to Obama’s level, which is the peak. I was surprised at how vicious they were about Trump. Dark Brandon needs to make many more appearances. Talk about controversial.
So I will. The Wiki page on the Dinner says that in 2016 Larry “Wilmore delivered a controversial, searing routine targeting the president, elite media, lobbyists, politicians, and celebrities.” and in 2018 Michelle “Wolf received both praise and criticism for her monologue.” causing some people to walk out. She was so extreme that in 2019 the WHCA opted for historian Ron Chernow. Then Covid cancelled the next two years. Memories are short.
My wife thought Jost was so unfunny that she turned off her set. I watched the whole thing and thought he got better as he went along. His timing was terribly off at the beginning - whether it was his fault or the audiences, I don’t know. The part where he was needling the media could have been considered inside jokes, but probably weren’t for anyone who bothered to watch the dinner, and that was the sharpest part of his routine.
Tell me more about this interesting family dynamic… 
Personally I thought Wolf absolutely killed it in 2018. It was certainly a lot funnier than the actual comedy special of hers I watched.
I thought Roy Wood Jr was pretty good last year as well. Him explaining Clarence Thomas as an NFT was terrific.
" We can all see Clarence Thomas , but he belongs to billionaire Harlan Crowe. And that’s what an NFT is.".
Spot on.
I turned it off after several painful minutes waiting for him to be funny. He was bombing and he knew it. Maybe it was the crowd but I just found myself asking “is that the best he’s got?” Bring back Wanda Sykes.
I also thought it was funny.
We’ve been married 41 years. Our secret to happiness, we sleep in the same bed but watch different screens.
I thought Wolf was very funny. Wood Jr. had many clever jokes but is always political. Colbert will never be matched. If Trump is re-elected, the comedy will probably go back to the days of Clown, Pantaloon, Harlequin and Columbine.
No, that’s the bloodbath he promised if he wasn’t elected.
She was there, and he thanked her. He also teased her, saying that she had personally agreed to meet with everybody there (paraphrasing: “She hates her privacy. Just come right up.”)
He also referenced her when saying hi to Vice President Harris’ husband (“Doug” he called him), saying “I, too, know what it’s like being the Second Gentleman.”
I thought he did fine. I especially like the joke “Rupert Murdoch is stepping down from Fox News. I didn’t think there was a step down from Fox News.”
Michelle Wolf and Stephen Colbert were my favorites. But this was a friendly crowd. So no aggressive skewering. Just jovial banter.
Isn’t that Seth Myers thing? he has worse delivery, can’t get laughs even when using same lines as Fallon, and he too just sits there waiting for laughs that don’t come
I watched about half of Colin Jost and thought it was going quite well.
Doug Emhoff visited the Middle School I teach at last Friday, so it was fun seeing him sit there after seeing him in person.
I only watched a little of it so far. I agree the crowd might be a problem due to the reasons you state. It’s also impossible to properly gauge the crowd response by the video. It was recorded like you record a speech. You hear the crowd reaction through his mic. Comedy specials are filmed with mics in the audience to pick up all of the reactions and then mixed properly.
I thought Jost did very well. As others noted, the issue was how the event was broadcast; almost all of Jost’s lines got a lot of laughs, but they weren’t very audible to the viewing audience. His “stilted” delivery was due to him working the crowd and waiting for the laughter to die down.
Jost really pissed me off by validating Trump’s comment about Jost being awful.