You said this:
This is bullshit. Race is bullshit.
I’m not suggesting that they must be given one dish forever.
Don’t know what happened to the edit there - that should have said “… that it’s bullshit that …”.
Sure you don’t.
You don’t think that a person, with perfectly normal vision, would be able to discern the difference between an australian aborgine and a native laplander?
That’s not what you said. “Native laplander” is not a race in anything close to common usage.
What’s a “native laplander”? Do you mean a Sámi?
Could this normal-visioned person tell the difference between a Sámi and an Inuit?
Now, of course, Comedy Central could say, absolutely within its rights, hey, guys, replacing Noah is not going to be decided primarily on the basis of attacking or lessening racism, it will be considered but will not be the deciding factor. None of us AFAIK holds in our hands proof that is what the Daily Show audience as a collective would consider a deal-breaker. We only know what we want.
…And the bulk of discussion seems to have drifted completely away from The Daily Show.
I think the problem for TDS is that the market for left-wing satire/interview has been saturated. All the late night shows are trying to be The Daily Show to some extent. So the audience for them has fragmented.
In comparison, the most popular late night show, both in terms of total numbers and the 25-54 demographic, is ‘Gutfeld!’ on Fox. It regularly beats Stephen Colbert and The Tonight Show, and leaves The Daily Show in the dust.
In terms of numbers, The top two shows are Gutfeld and Colbert, at around 2.1-2.2 million each. The next tier is Kimmel and Jimmy Fallon, at around 1.5 million. The Daily Show’s 400,000 is pathetic. Jon Stewart used to pull in 2-3 million.
But all of late night has gone down. Five years ago all those shows were pulling in 2-4 million per episode. They’ve lost almost half their audience in just a few years, and TDS has lost 65-70% of its audience. I don’t know if they can come back from that.
Not having Trump around as a comedic foil has hurt them badly, I think. Comedy works best when attacking the powerful. But with the Biden administration, the white gloves are on and many of the talk show hosts are becoming court jesters and apologists for the government. That’s just not as funny. Watching Colbert dance around with human syringes in support of the government was cringe-worthy.
You just can’t resist, can you?
Nope, I certainly couldn’t. Without clothing cues could you?
But you would you think that they could tell the difference between an Inuit and an Australian Aborigine wouldn’t you?
This silly sidetrack started because someone used the phrase “people who claim they don’t see colour”.
In my answer to the wider point they were making I clarified that my interpretation of that phrase was not a literal one, that a person is not saying they literally could not tell different ethnicities apart, because…
If the word “races” bothers anyone, feel free to insert “ethnicities” but the main point should be clear.
And please do note the terms I’ve boldened, they are there for a reason.
I’m well aware that certain ethnic groups are not that easy to tell apart to the layperson, but I do not accept that the “don’t see colour” phrase can reasonably be taken to mean that the person in question is unable to see any difference between any two ethnicities. As should be clear from the context of my original answer.
That is it, that is the sum total of my view on this. It was a throat clearing before an answer to the main question, it was an aside and definitional clarification that I am almost sure you all agree with.
Sidetrack over now surely?
I think that would be a perfectly reasonable and sensible approach
How do you reconcile these two statements, considering that Jon Stewart retired before Trump was president?
I wasn’t trying to be political - just pointing out that it’s hard to do comedy when you are on the side of the powerful and don’t want to mock them. For an example on the other side, see Bob Hope and a few other old style Republican comedians during the Reagan era.
I think Saturday Night Live also stopped being as funny in the last few years for similar reasons. Comedy is best when punching up.
Well for one thing, The other late night shows at the time were still more apolitical. Leno and Letterman and Conan were different. And there was no Fox late night show to pull away 2 million viewers.
Another factor was that streaming wasn’t as big a thing then. And Stewart was just a big talent witg great writers and punched way above his weight. Those great writers went on to do their own shows (Larry Wilmore, Samantha B John Oliver, Rob Riggle, etc).
Maybe the Stewart era Daily Show just captured lightning in a bottle - one of those confluences in talent that only comes along once in a while. But also, he largely made his name and built an audience during the Bush Years.
Cool. I think, Sam, that you provided the germ of the ultimate and irrefutable negation of NB’s argument.
Does anybody in America really believe that Gutfield’s numbers are the consequence of his being the greatest possible talent and presenting the finest comedy rather than merely being the one on the FoxNews channel? Does anybody in America really believe that the Fox executives conducted a search of all the best hosts worldwide before settling on Gutfield? Does anybody in America really believe that Gutfield would garner the same ratings if Comedy Central hired him as the new host of TDS? Does anybody in America really believe that a non-straight white male host on Fox would get the same ratings? Does anybody in America really believe that if Jon Stewart were to want to return to television and do so by replacing Gutfield that he would receive Gutfield’s numbers?
In obvious reality, Fox looked to its audience and chose the person that their audience would best respond to. Even if we pretend that Gutfield’s skills as a host, comedian, and political commentator were superior to every other person on the planet, does anybody in America really believe that Comedy Central would be doing anything other than committing suicide by naming him the new host? Does anybody in America other than NB really believe that the audience can possibly be ignored when defining the word “best”?
However, it appears that Fox News does indeed believe that colorblindness is the best policy.
Tucker Carlson On The Dangers Of Race Obsession In The Pursuit Of A Color Blind Meritocracy
Even when there are Black and Brown bodies bleeding in the streets, Carson unleashes this ahistorical, strange deflection that the answer to racism is a “color-blind meritocracy.”
Ahistorical? Not to Fox.
It should not need to be said that this was not King’s vision. Nicole Hannah-Jones strongly refuted that nonsense. To be fair and balanced, I’ll link to Fox News’ story quoting her.
Colorblindness as spouted by Fox is right-wing propaganda designed to allow their viewers to continue their false belief that they are not racists supporting racism in a racist country. My belief is that Fox’s definition and championing of the term must be fought whenever it raises its head.
I have no idea what you’re going on about with the racist or white male angle. Everyone except Trevor Noah on late night is a white male. I’m also not sure why you think I would suggest that Gutfeld replace Noah or Stewart replace Gutfeld. That would be crazy.
If you are saying that Gutfeld is talentless, I disagree. I watched him back in the Red Eye days, and found him witty and funny. He’s got good delivery, and he’s pretty good as a host. His show is sometimes cringey, but that has more to do with his writers than him. But I noticed they seem to have picked up some new writers in the last couple of months, and the material is getting better.
But do I think he’s good enough to be #1 in late night? Not if he had to share audience like the others do. If Colbert was the only left wing show on TV and Gutfeld had to face four other conservative talk shows, he wouldn’t be pulling down anywhere near the numbers he’s getting and Colbert would be king of late night. That would seem to be obvious.
The same is true for most of Fox’s shows. For whatever reason, they are the only game in town for conservative viewers, while the liberals have to split between CNN, MSNBC, Comedy Central, etc. So they split half the audience amongst themselves, and Fox gets the other half to itself. I’m surprised no one else has decided to take half of that audience from Fox with another conservative network. I guess a couple are trying (OANN? Some other one), but they look pretty awful. So far, Fox owns the audience on the right. Gutfeld benefits from that.
But you know, back in the day Red Eye used to air at 3 AM, and Gutfeld actually managed to put up ratings that were close to what the Daily Show is getting now - 300,000 to 500,000 viewers. Those are pretty awesome numbers for a 3 AM show on a news network. And back then, Gutfeld was more libertarian and his co-host Bill Shultz was a lefty liberal. So clearly, Gutfeld has talent and attracts a fair number of people.
Also, Gutfeld is pretty much the star of “The Five”, which is the highest rated show on cable news. So yes, I think Gutfeld has plenty of talent. He’s certainly the most talented comedic personality on Fox.
But of course he would bomb on the Daily Show, and Stewart would bomb on Fox unless they magically reversed their political positions. I would not expect a liberal audience to watch a conservative host, and vice versa. Why does that matter?
The Daily show should beg Jon Stewart to come back. Pipe dream, but he’s the one who could right the ship if anyone can. I don’t know who else is in the pipeline who could do that show. What’s Joel McHale doing these days?
This is a long thread, but most of it is about that exact issue, especially all the posts by or confronting Novelty_Babble.
I didn’t say that, or suggest that or anything like that, if you read my actual post. I said you gave me the germ of an approach. You did that by mentioning Gutfeld when nobody else in a 250+ post thread did. That was the perfect launch point for getting to the core of NB’s flawed argument. I gave you credit.
My apoloies. I tuned out of that conversation after a while, and didn’t know which thesis you were talking about. Personally, I don’t care about the skin color or gender of a host. I will point out that the co-host of Gutfeld! is a black man named Tyrus, and he’s extremely popular with the audience and has hosted the show before. Gutfeld’s other regular and sometimes replacement host is Kat Timpf, a woman. The audience loves her too. One of Gutfeld’s common guests is Harold Ford Jr, an African American Democratic politician. He is also well liked by the audience.
If someone with the talent of Chris Rock hosted TDS, I do 't think anyone would care about his skin color. But I could be wrong.
Again, sorry, But I’m not sure how another white male host makes or refutes NB’s point?
I’m sure the people who have read the thread will get the point. I see little value in recapitulating it for someone who hasn’t.
Yes, he had his own show for a brief moment. He should have been chosen in the first place
a) I’m not in America
b) I don’t think the wishes of “the audience” should be ignored
However, speaking as an audience member myself and consumer of such media I don’t think I should be veto-ing potential hosts on the basis of ethnicity, sex or sexuality either. Cast the net as wide as possible please.
Based on past experience I cannot reliably tell who is going to appeal to me by appealing to such identify traits, I suggest that’s true for “the audience” in general (assuming you even truly know who that is, are you talking past, present or potential?)