So should comedy still exist right now? That’s what I’m thinking after watching this segment from The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. Colbert and Last Week Tonight host (and fellow Daily Show vet) John Oliver talk about how Trump and his government has responded to the coronavirus pandemic, and they wisely skip the jokes. This is an entirely serious segment between two men who usually coat their commentary in several layers of comedy, and even though we should probably be listening to actual experts have these kinds of conversations and not TV comics, it’s still effective at hammering home once again how serious the current crisis is. When two men whose livelihoods are built on joking about serious, depressing stuff stop joking, it makes an impact.
Check out the clip below, and below that you can find another, slightly less somber segment between the two.