Stephen Colbert hosted all the other hosts of late night programs — or at least shows he considers his peers, because he included John Oliver, who does political monologues on his HBO show. Colbert asked them to make the case for late-night television.
Colbert tasked the group with making a case for late night, as he said he’d been asked since cancellation. Kimmel led the group in expressing his outrage that Colbert was “being thrown off the air.”
“I will tell you when I got knocked off the air for a few days, people canceled Disney+. Why isn’t — why aren’t you people canceling Paramount+? Because you didn’t have it in the first place?” — JIMMY KIMMEL
“As someone from a different area of television, I can say it was some fresh bull-[expletive].” — JOHN OLIVER
“Well, if I would make my case for late night, it’s that leaders of the free world are watching it.” — SETH MEYERS
Nobody said comedy.
The “leaders of the free world are watching”? Well, because it’s just another version of Morning Joe, served late at night.
There are old clips of Carson’s Tonight Show that frequently circulate online. They aren’t bitter reactions to the daily headlines about Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan. They are these beautiful moments when Don Rickles tells a funny story that lightly humanizes Frank Sinatra. These shows existed to market mass American culture out of New York and Hollywood to the whole nation, and to do so with just a hint of vaudeville and variety shows — comics, music, stunts, weird interludes with exotic animals, and occasionally a precociously funny child.