Piers Morgan Dances on Comedy Grave of Stephen Colbert
Stephen Colbert is out of the late-night comedy game, and Piers Morgan couldn’t be more delighted.
Morgan shared a hyperbolic New York Post page on his social feed this weekend, doubling down on the paper’s opinion that the partisan Colbert got what he deserved. “This is so damning,” Morgan posted. “Most of America’s biggest late-night hosts have become nothing more than hyper-partisan activist hacks for the Democrats — a party that’s rarely been more unpopular. No wonder Colbert got canned. More will follow.”
Then Morgan gathered a different group of hyper-partisan activist hacks on his YouTube show, Uncensored, to pile on. “All sorts of distraught liberals (are) crying around about all this,” he said, hanging a Colbert piñata for his friends to whack with a stick. You can guess what followed — a steady diet of “that’s not some act of fascism or creeping censorship (as) described by panicked, breathless Democratic politicians and liberal media critics,” “They think it’s a winning proposition to be just screaming constantly about Donald Trump” and “(Colbert) perpetrated a lie upon the American people.”
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To prove his point that Colbert and his left-wing comedy counterparts have gotten out of control, Morgan played an old Uncensored interview he conducted with former Tonight Show host Jay Leno. “Now, you’ve got to take a side, and people are angry if you don’t,” Leno told Morgan. “I would start to tell a political joke. Well, they want to know the punchline before — is this pro or against, you know? So I just stopped doing it.”
Leno has long advocated avoiding opinions about not only politics but virtually anything. “I don’t think anybody wants to hear a lecture,” Leno told the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation late last week.
That stance stands in stark contrast to Leno’s long-time rival David Letterman, who last week called out Colbert’s firing as “gutless” and “pure cowardice.”
But Leno wants to stay out of it. It’s not that he’s for sober, well-reasoned public discourse — Leno’s argument has always been about ratings. After all, voters from both parties eat at Arby’s. “Why shoot for just half an audience? Why not try to get the whole?” Leno said. “I like to bring people into the big picture. I don’t understand why you would alienate one particular group. Or just don’t do it at all. I’m not saying you have to throw your support. But just do what’s funny.”
Leno’s advice to young comics: Forget Colbert and look to Rodney Dangerfield. “Rodney Dangerfield and I were friends. I knew Rodney for 40 years. I have no idea if he was Democrat or Republican. We never discussed politics, we just discussed jokes.”
Emulating Dangerfield is always a good idea. The irony is, unlike offend-no-one Leno and irritate-everyone Morgan, Dangerfield had the respect of the comedy world.
