As previously stated, making good stand-up comedy is hard. To make quality comedy, one has to master timing, warm up cold crowds, deal with hecklers, write original jokes and do all of this while receiving no benefit of the doubt. Thus, except for notable exceptions such as Kevin Hart, Bill Burr, Chris Rock, Dave Chapelle, Theo Von, and others, many comics don’t stay on the stage for very long. Successful ones such as Kevin Hart tend to go on to make big budget comedic films, while never truly leaving the stage (RIP George Carlin). However, many more second-rate comedians go to another place entirely; the late-night political pundit desk (eww…pundits).
Contrast the life of a late-night satirical pundit to that of a stage comic. The pundit no longer needs to write his own jokes; a dedicated staff of underpaid and under-acknowledged peons do that for him now. Commanding a room is no longer necessary, as all he has to do is deliver lines from a teleprompter. The satirical pundit no longer has a cold crowd to deal with; now he performs in front of a pre-screened studio audience. This audience also follows light-up prompts off-camera to cheer or be silent, like cattle grazing on a pasture. This sterilized environment also eliminates the need for quick wit and de-escalation skills, as there are no more hecklers to deal with once the comic moves behind a “news” desk. The life of a studio-tethered political comic is definitely Not Natty.
Bill Maher is one such example of the comedian-to-pundit pipeline. Maher started his career in stand-up comedy in the late seventies, and by all accounts became quite good at the craft. Maher spent the better part of that decade creating a name for himself. Better yet, most of his material was apolitical. However, his career shifted drastically in the early 90’s, when he first got his start in punditry in 1993. He’s essentially been spewing left-leaning ideology on television ever since.
Still don’t believe me? Then take a look at Trevor Noah. Noah, the son of a bi-racial South African couple during apartheid (all disdain for his career choices aside, that could not have been an easy life) came onto the scene making comedy that again, was not heavily radicalized. However, Noah then went on to accept an offer from Comedy Central to anchor their satirical news show. During his lengthy tenure on the platform, Noah practically did nothing but spout one radicalized Leftist line after another. Noah seems to be one of the few comedians who has departed the desk in favor of returning to the stage. Time will only tell how he readjusts to, you know, actual comedy again. Anyone care to place a bet on how quickly he returns to the desk?
Now that I see you sharpening your pitchforks, allow me to give you more reason to press the edge into the grindstone. British comedian John Oliver started out as a little-known though not radicalized stand-up comedian. However, all of that changed when he was handed the opportunity to serve as the face of HBO’s Last Week Tonight, where he immediately began to spew Liberal lines. I stopped watching his show because my FutureSense kept tingling; I could predict when he was going to say his trademark phrase of Black and Brown communities are disproportionately impacted.
Jon Stewart, the oak tree in which Acorn Oliver fell from, is equally guilty of this trend as well. His early work in 1990 was similarly not politically charged. Yet again, he got a hold of a late-night anchor job where his masters deemed him worthy to spout news satire (read: propaganda). While this is opinion (you’re on my blog, so deal with it), his mid-career highlight reel is not that impressive. Stewart has adopted to New Media rather well; while the media may be new, the rhetoric certainly isn’t.
“Alright Dan, you’ve made your point and supported it with iron-clad evidence. What do you propose that we do about the problem within the pipeline?” a hemming-and-hawing reader will ask. First, we need to address the elephant in the room as to why so many promising young careers are de-railed by punditry; money. Young stand-up comics get paid shit money, there’s no debating that. Taking a late-night pundit job comes with a more predictable and noticeably fatter paycheck; no more Cup Noodles for the struggling comic, so long as you’re willing to conform to the Democrat’s ideology.
“Well thanks, Captain Obvious! What do we do about it?” is the next question that I’ll inevitably get. Admittedly, there isn’t an easy answer to this outside of go to comedy shows more often. As The Man Himself has talked about at length in his books and on his podcast, getting a comedy club to profit is hard, and so few actually manage to do so. Thus, this is why comedy clubs are forced to pay their talent so little; they can’t afford to do otherwise. The other half of this equation is from the studios that keep offering comics these pundit “jobs” (a term I use loosely); radicalization attracts eyeballs. While Silicon Valley knows that better than anybody, Hollywood has certainly caught on as well. Comedians-in-name-only spouting pre-packaged rhetoric is going to attract a ton of attention (and hence dollars). To quote Teddy Roosevelt-“It is not the critic who counts”…
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