The writers from liberal late night TV pine for the days of Barack Obama when they could go a whole week without making fun of the president. According to an article in Variety, “the general consensus” among writers who appeared at a panel in Beverly Hills is “I don’t want this job.” Writer for The Daily Show, Hallie Haglund complained, “To try to find a new way to go after that can be really boring.”
Variety journalist Debra Birnbaum summarized, “[Haglund] pointed out that during the Obama administration, the show could go a week without using a clip of the President.” Perhaps the Los Angeles Times explained the liberal thinking best in 2009 by saying that the comedy shows just weren’t interested in making fun of Obama:
As late-night talk show hosts and other television comics who trade in political humor know, cracking wise about the new president, who marked his 100th day in office last week, is apparently not very funny for most of the people, most of the time. Not surprisingly, to guard against a frosty or uncertain reception, TV's leading political humorists have largely backed away from their ritual comic hazing of the president, a colorful tradition in the medium, especially in its late-night time slots, since at least the Nixon administration.
Yet, in the first 100 days of Donald Trump, late night comedy savaged the Republican:
The Center for Media and Public Affairs at George Mason University counted an incredible 1,060 jokes directed against Trump during the President’s first 100 days in office.
That’s more than ten times as many barbs as aimed at all Democrats — combined — during the same period (95), and considerably more than both Barack Obama and Bill Clinton received during the entire first year of their presidencies (936 and 440 jokes, respectively).
In the Variety piece, Christine Nangle, the head writer for Comedy Central’s The President Show seethed, “There’s so much more hate and resentment than we possibly could have imagined … This man [Trump] didn’t come out of nowhere.”
Hard to imagine that these comedy writers are having trouble relating to Trump supporters.
