Late Night Last Week: John Oliver Becomes a Cake Bear and More
Late Night Last Week is a column highlighting some of the more notable segments from the previous week of late night television. Today’s installment features clips from the week of June 10-16.
Jon Stewart Reminds Us Corporations Don’t Actually Care
Just because there is hardly anything new to say about big, soulless media conglomerates, does not mean such things should go unsaid. Last week, the Monday host of The Daily Show delved more into the conservative thinking of the corporation known as Apple. On The Town with Matthew Belloni, Jon Stewart revealed that his Apple TV+ series, The Problem with Jon Stewart, was canceled over disagreements in coverage topics and style.
As he has in the past, Stewart used a “weather v. climate” analogy to describe his philosophy on The Problem. On The Daily Show, he dealt more with the news of the day, whereas with The Problem he could take a broader look at the institutions that shape society. Apple did not like the approach. While Stewart was quick to add that Apple did not censor him—“That’s part of the deal” he said of working with large corporations—the cancellation feels like censorship by a different name, the kind that comes with, well, just existing as a big, indestructible, global corporation aiming to consolidate power.
Anyway, the look behind the Apple curtain tied in nicely to Stewart’s weekly monologue on The Daily Show. With each year, it seems that the corporate groveling over Pride Month gets worse and worse. In fact, it is so ridiculous that Stewart needed only to show rather than tell when opening his monologue, which included marketing ploys from Burger King, Skittles, and, the most outlandish of all, an ad from Oreos that will for sure be the funniest thing you watch this week.
Stewart uses Pride Month to take down corporate posturing more generally, from purported support for Black Lives Matter to anti-fascist messaging following the 2020 US election. He also exposes Target, who, after previously pushing Pride merchandise, is now caving to right-wing pressure to drop the messaging. Stewart reminds us of the only kind of value corporations care about: the number shareholders see at the end of each quarter. Just think of all the apologetic phone calls the executives at Apple TV+ would have had to make after this one. Crisis averted.
Seth Meyers and Stephen Colbert Gush Over the Strike Force Five
Now to an area of late night that could use some controversy, or at least a tad more friction. Near the end of the Writers Guild of America strikes last year, five late night talk show hosts—Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel, Seth Meyers, and John Oliver—teamed up for the short lived podcast, Strike Force Five, to raise funds for their striking writers. Good, yes, solidarity with writers, etc. But it seems the lasting legacy of the podcast is that the once strictly collegial relationships between the hosts turned into genuine friendships. Is this not yet another disturbing consolidation of corporate power?
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
