Bill Maher, Stephen Colbert and the Death of Late-night Comedy

With liberals targeting for destruction one cultural institution after another, it was inevitable that late-night comedy was going to have its turn.

Ironically, late-night comic hosts, many of whom were trailblazers in the laugh industry, have slowly but surely morphed into lemmings, substituting smug political claptrap for comedy.

Rather than entertain, the ones who are lucky enough to have actually made it into comedy’s top echelon are now catering to a flimsy fan base of enraged resisters and hate-driven hypocrites.

Bill Maher, host of HBO’s “Real Time,” is the latest example. He recently let it be known how bitter leftists view President Donald Trump’s economic track record.

Recognizing the phenomenal economy under President Trump’s leadership, Maher stated that he believes it is critical for the U.S. economy to collapse in order to rid the country of a president with whom he disagrees.

“I feel like the bottom has to fall out at some point, and by the way, I’m hoping for it because I think one way you get rid of Trump is a crashing economy,” Maher said. “So please, bring on the recession. Sorry if that hurts people but it’s either root for a recession, or you lose your democracy.”

The left is so steeped in hatred it is willing to let the best interests of the nation take a back seat to spite. And like far too many others in his industry, Maher is more than willing to see his neighbor harmed than to see President Trump succeed.

It is hard to fathom how late-night comedy allowed itself to descend to such a pitiful depth. Late-night television was created and branded by the pioneers of the medium – Jack Paar, Steve Allen, and of course the man who defined the forum, “The King of Late-Night” Johnny Carson.

Carson was the guy who dropped in unannounced but you never wanted him to leave. No matter what had transpired in the course of the day, he could make you forget in a single quip. He was simply a friend that taught you how to smile yourself to sleep.

The current crop of late-night hosts could benefit from the master in more ways than one. A single show of Carson’s could bring in as many as 9 million viewers. By comparison, CBS’s “Late Show,” hosted by Stephen Colbert, is currently the highest-rated late-night program, but a good night for Colbert is typically a third of the viewers that Carson had, in part because Colbert’s program generally consists of Trump trashing and partisan punches.

Viewers today admittedly have a lot more options when it comes to the late-night timeslot. In addition to broadcast networks’ offerings of Colbert, Jimmy Kimmel, and Jimmy Fallon, there are numerous cable offerings, which include TBS’s Conan O’Brien, Comedy Central’s Trevor Noah, HBO’s John Oliver, and BET’s Robin Thede, along with broadcast networks’ very late-nighters James Corden and Seth Meyers.

Late-night writers generally cater to viewers who use social media to watch highlight video footage from previous programs. Shows with late-night content that stream to viewers include Hulu’s Sarah Silverman and Netlix’s Joel McHale and Michelle Wolf, who is best known for her embarrassingly unfunny performance at the most recent White House Correspondents Dinner. Weekly late-nighters such as Comedy Central’s Jim Jeffries and TBS’s Samantha Bee are also part of the mix.

Virtually all of the shows specialize in targeting the president, and Bee is one of the hosts who clearly illustrates the lowlights of today’s pathetic programming. Referring to the daughter of the president in the crudest of ways, Bee incurred a deserved backlash, which prompted defections by a number of sponsors. Both Bee and TBS later apologized, but the comic was not fired or suspended. In another humorless incident, there was a young man who had attended the Conservative Political Action Conference and was bashed with a comment about “Nazi hair.” It turned out that the young man was actually suffering from Stage 4 brain cancer, and Bee was again forced to apologize.

It is painful to have to say that in this sorry state of late-night comedy, television’s most visible hosts have turned into boring political preachers and in the process have themselves become the joke.