Larry Wilmore, the replacement for Stephen Colbert, begins on Monday night at 11:30. Comedy Central executive Kent Alterman bowed to the Almighty Jon Stewart on this one: “Considering Jon's track record when it comes to discovering talent, you'd have to be a real idiot to argue with him."
In an interview with Esquire magazine, Wilmore restated all his palaver about being a "passionate centrist," and then sort of proved it. He was centrist enough to praise Ann Coulter's research, but liberal enough to slam her for being racially clueless:
ESQUIRE: Why do you follow Ann Coulter on Twitter?
WILMORE: Her books High Crimes and Misdemeanors and Treason are very good, very well-written.
ESQUIRE: That's what drives people wild, because along with some of the bombs she throws, which are invariably funny to me, she's a smart human being.
WILMORE: She's very smart, and she researches a lot. But the problem is she was talking about race in one of her books and so much of it was so wrong. And one of my phraises is -- and I usually use it with sports but I had to use it with her books -- like a young person is trying to tell me why Magic Johnson isn't as good as whoever and I say "Here's the problem: You're a researcher, but I'm a witness."
ESQUIRE: You saw it.
WILMORE: Yeah, you're a researcher, but I'm a witness. People try to tell me that because there were certain laws that were passed that racism was gone, and they use research to try to prove that. They weren't with me when I saw someone write an N on my mom's check. Or cheated me and my brother a certain way. Or, you know, feeling y our self being treated like a second-class or third-class citizen all the time. You know, just because a law is changed doesn't mean the culture is changed. And so to use that as your evidence was just very wrongf. And that was a huge miss for me, you know?
