Late Night Last Week: John Oliver on the Cruelty of Deportations, Gutfeld Makes Tonight Show Debut, and More
(Photos: HBO/CBS/NBC/ABC)
As the business of late night has come to dominate national headlines, one man has remained steady, proving that while the old modes may be dying, the genre itself will endure. The grim reaper may come for network television, but John Oliver is forever.
On August 10, Oliver cut right to the chase, forgoing his usual pre-monologue joke roll to dive into the night’s topic: immigration. Specifically, Oliver covered the Trump Administration’s ruthless deportation efforts, which even those once sympathetic to his cause believe have gone too far. The campaign promise was to target violent criminals, not the ice cream man. Yes, as Oliver discussed, in Los Angeles, the beloved neighborhood ice cream man was seized by masked men in an unmarked car and detained. And it’s happening all over the country.
In his monologue, Oliver goes on to point out the problem the administration faces. They ran a campaign fueled by fear-mongering about immigrants, promising to deport one million people. But the fact of the matter is, the “threat” is not nearly as great as they made voters believe. Thus, they are targeting the ice cream man.
“They’ve backed thmselves into this corner, because promising to deport a million criminal immigrants is one thing, but once you’re in charge, you then have to find that many of them,” Oliver said, “which is going to be hard if they don’t exist in the numbers that you’re claiming, which they don’t.”
“It’s like promising to apprehend 10,000 Fred Dursts a day,” Oliver added. “There just aren’t that many out there.”
Oliver’s monologue is yet another example of his preternatural ability to tackle the absurdity of our current moment without erasing the depravity. For example, he describes the administration’s focus on “expedited removals.” Basically, because those with pending immigration cases cannot be deported, ICE agents are detaining migrants, bringing them to court to have the cases quickly dismissed, and then taking them into custody again to deport them. If the person has been in the United States fewer than two years, they can be subjected to “expedited removal.”
“That is all awful, very much including the term ‘expedited removal,’” Oliver said, “which sounds less like a legal process and more like a phrase you see with an exclamation point on the packaging of a particularly powerful laxative.”
Perhaps the biggest late night story of the week was the appearance of the self-described “King of Late Night” on the genre’s most venerated program. On August 7, Fox News’ Greg Gutfeld, host of an eponymous 10 pm show, joined Jimmy Fallon for a discussion on The Tonight Show. It was underwhelming.
If you’re unfamiliar with Gutfeld, here is one example of his comedic genius. On Gutfeld! last month, the host said that conservatives “need to learn from the Blacks.” His point: “The way they were able to remove the power from the n-word by using it. So, from now on, it’s ‘What up, my Nazi? Hey, what up, my Nazi? Hey, what’s hanging, my Nazi?’”
This man will probably win the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor. I wish I was joking.
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