History of Comedy (2017–…): Season 1, Episode 5 - One Nation, Under Comedy - full transcript
Exploring the evolution of racial humor; how comedy can cross cultural barriers to unite people.
Now, I don't know if you get
all the news here in Nashville.
But I may say something that's
very upsetting to many of you.
The good thing about
doing topical comedy
is you look like
you're more intelligent
than you are.
Well, let's go to the news and
see what we can unfurl there.
You have to be smarter
than the first thought
that everyone had.
I'm sorry, I'm being told
that I don't have an earpiece.
If something happens
at 3:00 in the afternoon
and you're going on stage
at 8:00 at night
and you can have turned
that into a joke,
that's part of the high.
It would be weird
if I didn't make a joke
the day of a tragedy.
Sometimes when I'm at
home late at night on Twitter,
I think of something, and I say,
"I could end it all right now
with these two little thumbs."
North Korea conducted
what they claim
was a successful test
of the their biggest
nuclear warhead yet,
so congrats to them.
That's great.
I'm glad they're finally
figuring that out.
It's really...
Will someone please tell
Kim Jong-un
they like his new glasses
and he looks like he lost weight
so he doesn't kill everybody
on the West Coast?
When it comes to comedy,
you look for something
that people know about
or are talking about,
and then you want
to give your take on it.
When you do topical humor,
it goes right to the brain
and the heart and the stomach
all at the same time.
You know...
they re-introduce the McRib
every **** year.
It's not big news.
The power of topical humor
is everybody's on the same page.
It is already primed,
and they're laughing already.
So then your joke
has rocket fuel in it.
The best comedy feels novel,
like you've never
heard it before.
And, you know, the things that
are happening in the headlines
give rise to brand-new jokes.
We interrupt this broadcast
to bring you
this important bulletin
from the United Press.
Flash, the White House
announces Japanese attack
on Pearl Harbor.
World War II
was the most uniting war
in the history
of the United States.
So it was natural that
the biggest comedian in America
would participate
in the war effort.
Say, I'd like to stop the show
for just a few minutes here
and explain
exactly why we're here.
We want you to buy
extra war bonds.
When the war started,
Bob Hope really
became the voice of America.
People turned to him to make
jokes about what was going on.
He was not the first
topical comedian.
But what Bob did was
take that topical monologue
and add to it
the Vaudeville rhythm,
the joke-telling rhythms.
Thank you!
How do you do, fellas?
This is Bob.
This is Bob
"Command Performance" Hope
telling each Nazi
that's in Russia today
that Crimea doesn't pay.
It was
a very dark time generally,
but Bob could always shrug
his shoulders and say,
"Well, let's tackle this."
All right, let's talk about it.
And somewhere in talking
about it, he'd find a laugh.
And, boy, that helps.
Up here,
a Marilyn Monroe calendar
isn't a luxury,
it's a necessity.
That topical kind of monologue
was something brand new.
It seems like
a very simple thing,
but that's what Bob Hope
really innovated.
It takes a lot to mount
a big show,
long hours deep into the night
constantly revising the script.
Revisions made necessary
by last-minute changes
in a changing world.
Bob Hope was the first
guy to utilize an actual staff
of writers to give you
topical material of the day.
He really did invent the idea
of the comedian
being the head writer,
the managing editor,
and having a bunch of writers.
The traditions
of stand-up comedy in the '50s
were still really derived
from Vaudeville.
You know, those performers
like Bob Hope
had nothing more on their mind
than just getting laughs.
And that was plenty.
The guy who really came along
and changed all that
was Mort Sahl.
Richard Nixon is running
for governor of California,
and I realize sometimes
these shows are taped ahead.
I want this material
to be topical.
And...
He'll be running for something
no matter when the show is on,
so, sorry.
Mort Sahl was the first person
to talk like
a human being on stage.
It wasn't schmaltzy.
He did for comedy
what James Dean
and Marlon Brando
did for acting,
which is he humanized it.
I have to report to you
that the largest news last week
was the Soviet spaceman
was invited to lunch
by the queen, as you know.
Just to put your minds at rest,
I probably will not say
anything about the queen.
She hasn't mentioned me,
has she?
He just came out
with a newspaper,
and he reacted in live time
to the news
as he was reading it,
which is a real high-wire act.
Bob Hope rather famously said,
"You know,
you got to always
balance your humor,
or you're gonna
offend somebody."
Mort did not care.
I'm not the most
tolerant guy in the world.
I'm very intolerant. In fact,
that's the basis of the act.
The act is the statement
of a lone guy in rebellion.
That's why people
mistakenly call it negative.
It's mainly me.
I don't talk about the news.
I'm a victim of the news.
The country was ready
for something different.
It's almost like Mort Sahl
led a revolution
that people didn't even
know they needed.
Mort, are you really
a bad guy?
All I am
is a Western Union messenger,
and sometimes
there's bad news in the wire.
But that's not my fault.
I only work at the office.
Mort Sahl influenced
this whole generation
of coffee-house comedians
like Lenny Bruce,
Richard Pryor, George Carlin,
whereas Bob Hope with his large
writing staff influenced
the format
of the late-night comedy shows.
Here's Johnny!
Gonna be a good night.
I just saw Bob Hope backstage.
We were talking. You know,
it's really a wonderful thrill
standing next to one
of the greatest comedians
in the entire world.
And I'm sure Bob appreciates it.
If you were looking for
not just a take on the news,
but the actual news, because
I wasn't reading anything
other than the sports
and the comics,
Johnny Carson
was where you would go.
I saw the headline in the
National Inquirer this week.
The headline article was
how eating the right foods
can increase your I. Q.
Now, isn't that risky
for the Inquirer?
I mean, they could lose
all their readership.
When Johnny Carson
would mock something
that was in the public eye,
everybody was in on it.
He was the most
powerful man in Hollywood,
because he could kill you
with one joke.
Somebody told Vice President
George Bush that Jesse Jackson
was coming to the White House,
and Bush says, "Good!
Maybe he'll autograph
my 'Thriller' album."
You wanted to hear
what Johnny will say
about anything in the news.
You don't so much care
what other comedians say,
but let's see
what Johnny will say.
In the paper today,
a woman in Michigan --
I don't know the city, so --
She was arrested
for soliciting sexual favors.
That's the way they put it
in the paper -- sexual favors
for spaghetti dinners.
You can't make
this kind of stuff up.
Apparently, she never
asked a man for money.
All she wanted was just...
...a spaghetti dinner.
My question, technically,
wouldn't that make her
a "pastatute"?
Ho!
On "Close Up" this morning,
the end of an era.
After ruling late-night
television for 30 years,
Johnny Carson
steps down tonight.
And so it has come to this.
I --
I am one of the lucky
people in the world.
I found something
I always wanted to do,
and I have enjoyed
every single minute of it.
I bid you a very heartfelt
good night.
It's certainly true
that with Johnny out,
a vacuum was created.
The big decision that's had the
entertainment industry buzzing
is due this week.
That, of course, is the fate
of NBC's late night stars
Jay Leno and David Letterman.
"The Tonight Show"
without Johnny Carson
as the regular host
made its debut last night.
Jay Leno emerged
from behind the curtain.
I don't care if you laugh.
I got the job.
Don't matter to me.
Look at this. They're getting
more press than the president.
So start up
your remote controls.
The late-night race
is about to begin.
Jay was a brilliant stand-up.
He continued
the tradition of Johnny.
He had a big group
of monologue writers.
That was the main
writing on that show.
He was writing the best topical
jokes that anybody could write.
Democratic candidate
Bill Clinton said
he is also troubled...
by the amount of sex
portrayed on television.
Clinton said where
he comes from,
sex is a deeply personal matter
between a candidate
and his campaign volunteers.
Yeah, it's just --
Jay is more Bob Hope
in the sense
of setup, punch line,
setup, punch line,
and he would tap
into exactly the best joke
of whatever happened that day.
And, of course,
the big story in Hollywood
is still "The Fugitive."
All right. But -- But enough
about Michael Jackson.
You know --
Jay made the jokes the joke.
Dave...
was doing the other
side of jokes.
He wanted the laugh he wanted.
These last two jokes
are the intellectual
property of NBC.
Who -- Who would have thought
you would ever hear the words
"intellectual property"
and "NBC" in the same sentence?
There was not much emphasis
on that monologue for Dave,
because when we started
on late night,
we weren't allowed
to do a monologue.
We were calling them
opening remarks,
because if you called them
a monologue
and there were too many of them,
you would have stepped
on Johnny's toes.
Now, with that in mind,
let's continue
with the opening remarks.
It was just a little off.
It looked like
a talk show, kind of.
Sometimes he wore sneakers,
which was weird.
And they talked about the events
of the day, to a certain extent.
But also was more
focused on weirdness
than on the newspaper.
- "Dave's passing out ham."
- Yeah.
Dave was a very
New-York-centered show.
So Jay could be Monica Lewinsky
and O. J. trial,
and Dave could be, like,
"There was a squirrel today
in the park" --
you know, just some
bizarre, offbeat thing.
So you're not just gonna
get monologue jokes
about the front page.
It's whatever
Dave wants to do.
And, sometimes, it still seemed
like a cable access show.
Like, why is he throwing
a watermelon off a building?
That's an important
consideration for all of us.
And, believe me, ma'am,
you've come to the right place.
You don't tune in
to "Letterman" to see
what's going on
in the country today.
You would have tuned in to Jay
to see that.
And that's the big difference --
comedy of character
and personality,
and then a great joke-teller.
I mean, let's face it. If you
don't like who Dave has on,
or you don't like who I have on,
now you can click around
and then say,
"Well, let me go back to Jay.
Gee, here's something
I might have missed."
I found that they both
evolved their style.
They came out
of the Carson thing,
and the first instinct
is to kind of sort of
do it like that.
And then their
personalities emerged,
and they did their
own versions of it.
The host plays
with the structure.
But you need the structure.
Without it,
you don't have comedy.
People like when they know
what the rules are.
And then it's what you do
with those rules.
How do you begin deciding
how you're gonna be different?
Well, make no mistake about it.
I will be fired from this job.
It's just a matter
of how long it's gonna take.
I don't know.
Really, I don't think
you can invent
anything altogether new.
I'm sure you've heard
Angelina Jolie
filed for divorce
from Brad Pitt.
And, of course, all the
celebrity gossip magazines
are claiming victory.
You know, they broke this story.
They broke the story every week
for the last 11 years...
over and over again.
There are just certain things
that I don't think
will ever go away.
People are always
gonna want to hear jokes
about the news of the day.
It's very --
This is very exciting for me.
I didn't really watch
late-night television
before I started doing it.
And then I didn't watch it
when I was doing it.
I just put things in
to entertain myself.
It's a great day
for America, everybody!
One of the real problems
with broadcast television
is trying to make a show,
you know, which was
a "broad cast,"
which was okay for everybody.
That's seems like --
That seems almost
impossible job.
Hosting "The Tonight Show"
has been the fulfillment
of a lifelong dream for me.
And I just want to say
to the kids out there watching,
you can do anything
you want in life. Yeah.
Yeah, unless
Jay Leno wants to do it, too.
All of them do
some amount of a news segment
just because it's already
been established.
It's become a way
to consume current events.
This jerk left duffel bags
on the street,
and two of the bombs
were discovered
by thieves snatching bags.
Because as all New Yorkers know,
if you see something,
steal something.
There's seriously
too many late-night shows.
Everyone's kind of talking
about the same thing,
and you're really
just trying to put it
in your host's voice,
instead of, you know,
sounding like everyone else.
Of course,
I wouldn't be here tonight
if it weren't for the previous
"Tonight Show" hosts,
so I want to say thank you
to Steve Allen, Jack Paar,
Johnny Carson,
Jay Leno, Conan O'Brien,
and Jay Leno. Very, very nice.
We are delighted to be
back as a regular series.
But to those of you who wrote in
that you hated our pilot show...
...wait till you see this one.
"That Was the Week
That Was" was the innovator.
That was a show that set forward
you can make
the current news funny,
and you can do so in a hip way.
With the candidacy
of Senator Barry Goldwater,
the Republican party
is on the way back.
And who knows?
One day, it may
even go forwards.
The sensibility
was more tame in a sense,
more controlled, more dry.
It was witty,
but it wasn't really
challenging the power structure.
Our top story tonight...
Our top story, President Ford...
...President Ford is finally
over that stubborn
week-long cold.
...the stubborn
week-long cold!
Before "Saturday Night Live,"
everything was so schmaltzy.
"Saturday Night Live" was
the first show that came along
that had a sensibility
of people who'd grown up on TV.
It was making fun of TV.
And this idea of satirizing
the news, we needed it.
Vietnam was going on.
We'd just been
through Watergate.
The idea that we could
laugh at the people
who were making the news
is a pretty nice formula.
Let's take a look
at the top story, shall we?
Anwar Sadat buys himself
an inflatable child.
This story and more coming up
on "Weekend Update."
"Weekend Update" initially
was about irreverence.
It was about a middle finger
to the powers that be.
For an on-the-spot report,
let's go live to Laraine Newman
at the Blaine Hotel.
- Laraine?
- Chevy, I'm standing...
"Update" was cathartic
for people that saw,
you know, the hypocrisy
in the establishment.
I don't think people
took "Update" seriously.
It was a relief.
The first man to walk
on the moon, Neil Armstrong,
lost a finger when
he jumped from a truck
and caught his wedding ring
on a barn door
at his suburban Cincinnati home.
While jumping off the truck,
the former astronaut
was quoted as saying,
"One small step for man,
a giant -- Aah!"
- Jane?
- It was kind of
a parody of a newscast.
And it was a joke basket.
That's what it was, you know?
But it became sort of less
and less that way.
It became more
personalized as it went on
and much less about
a character doing the news.
And by the time
it got to Dennis Miller,
it was Dennis Miller.
And it wasn't about character.
It was about them
speaking their minds.
New York's St. Patrick's Day
parade was held yesterday,
and for the first time
in the parade's history,
a homosexual contingent marched.
So it is a Gaelic thing.
Now...
Every anchor has brought
their own personality to it,
so it's this thing
that is both constant
and constantly changing.
I'm Norm Macdonald,
and this is the fake news.
Times have changed since
I first sat behind this desk.
For example, I used to be
the only pretty blonde woman
reading the fake news.
Now there's a whole network
devoted to that.
News is such a joke
in and of itself now
that I can see why things
like "Weekend Update"
have survived.
The thought of funny news
was what made it so appealing
back when news was serious.
Now that news is entertainment,
you're watching
"Weekend Update" for news.
It's probably not great
that that transition happened.
It probably
should have stayed --
The news should have kept
getting better and better.
But "Weekend Update"
definitely made
a transition into the news.
There's a growing trend
among some parents
toward home-schooling children
because they believe
that mandated vaccinations
for public schools are unsafe.
This is expected to lead
to another new trend,
dying of polio.
They have that
opportunity to tap into things
that are happening
right this second
and cutting through
the bullshit of it
in a way
that the regular news can't do.
"The Daily Show" with
Jon Stewart arrives on the scene
when the traditional
evening news
is starting to deteriorate.
Let the healing begin.
It's headlines.
All of a sudden,
there was what was the beginning
of a 24/7 news cycle.
You can take the form now,
because everybody is beginning
to understand the form
and satirize it.
In 1993, Jordan retired
for the first time,
saying he'd had enough
of the NBA grind
and needed more time
with his family.
And after spending more time
with his family,
he quickly decided he hadn't
had enough of the NBA grind.
When Jon took over
"The Daily Show,"
it was a much different show.
It was much more driven
by pop culture
and parodying broadcasting.
But over time, Jon really
put his laser focus
on real issues.
Welcome to our coverage
of the Democratic National
Convention from Boston.
It's our first night
of coverage.
The convention
kicked off last night.
Any network can bring you news
as it happens.
But here at "The Daily Show,"
we have taken
yesterday's proceedings
and digested it, processed it,
broken it down
to give you highly concentrated
what we call turds of wisdom.
The news can be so heavy.
It can be so intense.
It's actually very nice
to have someone analyze things
from a different point of view.
He became people's go-to
guy to explain the world.
You'd watch the news, and then
you'd watch Jon Stewart.
Or you wouldn't watch the news
and watch Jon Stewart,
and he'd have to remind you,
"I'm not the news!"
There are a lot
of people out there
who do turn to you for --
Not for news.
Well, they turn --
For an interpretation,
- for a comedic interpretation.
- To be informed.
They actually think
that they're coming closer
to the truth with your...
Now, that's a different thing.
That's credibility.
He was able to show you
and make you hear what you wish
you would have thought of.
"Man!
Why didn't I think of that?"
Or, "That's hilarious. I never
thought of it like that."
He grew a stronger
and stronger conscience,
then felt a responsibility,
I think, to carry it out.
But he always slammed
a huge joke in there.
Nothing will change
with the same people,
the same policies that got us
into this status quo.
Another Latin word, status quo.
And it stands for,
"Man, the middle class,
everyday Americans are really
getting taken for a ride."
You know, that's the kind
of talk you normally hear
right before
the pharmacist says,
"Ma'am, you've got to
leave the Walgreens."
- It wasn't really about politics.
- It was about moral outrage.
That's what made the show
so riveting and fun.
Bullshitters have gotten
pretty lazy.
And their work
is easily detected.
And looking for it is...
kind of a pleasant way
to pass the time,
like an "I-Spy" of bullshit.
So I say to you tonight,
friends,
the best defense
against bullshit is vigilance.
Police and fire units
are being dispatched
to the scene as we speak.
Comedy seems pretty
inconsequential
in the face of a grave tragedy.
The whole tone, of course,
of the country had changed,
and, naturally, comedy
became difficult.
There was a time
in the days after that
where people
didn't know what to do.
The late-night talk shows
didn't know how to behave.
There was almost
a moratorium on comedy.
It's terribly sad
here in New York City.
Naturally, the whole
tone of these shows had changed,
so there was very little comedy
for the next several weeks.
Most of those late-night
shows booked news people
like Brian Williams
or Tom Brokaw.
They did not book comedians.
9/11 was, obviously,
a dark, dark moment
for our country.
But it was an important
moment for "SNL."
The words spoken at 11:31
every Saturday night
are "Live from New York."
So this was backyard.
So it was almost incumbent
upon "Saturday Night Live"
to play some sort of role
in the nation's healing.
The question is
when is it okay to laugh again?
On behalf
of everyone here,
I just want to thank you all
for being her tonight,
and especially you,
Mr. Mayor.
Thank you, Lorne.
Thank you very much.
Having our city's institutions
up and running
sends a message that New York
City is open for business.
"Saturday Night Live"
is one of our great
New York City
institutions.
And that's why it's important
for you to do your show tonight.
Can we be funny?
Why start now?
It was
that Saturday night we decided,
"Okay, you know, we're gonna
be able to do this again."
And they slowly
brought us through it.
I think it's one of the finest
moments in "SNL" history.
Live...
from New York...
it's Saturday night!
Right after 9/11,
I had to fly to New York
to roast Hugh Hefner
for Comedy Central.
And we didn't know
what was gonna happen.
The question becomes how do you
go about joking again, right?
You're living in
"too soon" territory.
The one and only
Gilbert Gottfried.
Tragedy and comedy
are roommates.
If you joke about a tragedy,
you're kind of beating
the tragedy away.
So I did a joke.
I said, "Today,
I'll be using my Muslim name."
"Hasn't bin Laid."
There's no black or white answer
to when it's time to laugh
and when it's time to laugh at.
I wanted to do a joke
that totally is over the line.
And I said, "I have
to leave early tonight.
I have to catch a flight to L. A.
I couldn't get a direct flight.
We have to make stop
at the Empire State Building."
I lost an audience
as big as anyone
in the history of performing.
Somebody said, "Too soon!"
And that didn't
slow Gilbert down.
That pushed him
to a whole new place.
The father starts
fucking his wife.
This sister starts fingering
the dog's asshole.
He started to tell
the Aristocrats joke,
which is like comedic jazz.
It's a license to offend
just for the fuck of it.
And I remember laughing so hard
that I was sort of crying.
It was just such a release.
And it was just what we needed.
It couldn't have been
a better time,
a better place,
or a better person telling it.
If you missed any portion,
I'll repeat it.
It absolutely
had to be done.
Somebody had to stand up
in front
of the comedy community
and say, "It's okay,"
when it's not okay.
But those words
must be spoken.
God bless you!
God bless America!
I thought what Gilbert
did that night was heroic,
and I think it --
Ultimately, you could say
whatever you want to say
about whether it was appropriate
or not.
It made a lot of people
in that room feel very good,
and that's that.
I don't believe in too soon.
You want to know a little secret
amongst comedians?
The minute someone says
something is off limits,
all we focus on is,
"How do I do jokes about that?"
One of the most striking choices
in those post-9/11 days
and weeks
was The Onion.
They released an issue
dedicated to the 9/11 attacks.
So, at first, this seems like
a terrible, terrible idea.
But when you look at what
the writers of The Onion did,
you realize their brilliance.
They were able to find
some sort of common ground,
"What are we all feeling?"
and were able
to find humor in that
as opposed to making light
of something really terrible.
And it was this amazingly
cathartic moment.
It's a beautiful statement about
the human species
that eventually, we will
make a joke about everything,
because it means
that we are defying depression
and loss and death and entropy
to live.
And time will give you
the breath to do that.
I like to test myself
by joking about horrible things
and nothing but.
One of my favorite ways
to test myself,
I like to make jokes
about tragedies
the day that they happen.
I don't believe in "too soon."
I'm on a tight schedule.
Too soon's tricky.
Sometimes it's too soon,
but not if
the joke's good enough.
If the joke's good enough,
it's never too soon.
Everyone has their
own version of that,
but the comedian
does not decide.
The audience decides
whether it was
acceptable or not.
Another Malaysian
Airlines plane was --
Too soon, Che!
Too soon, baby!
My problem is it's not too soon,
it's I just wish
I could think of shit faster.
There is a graph
that goes on in my head
that the more offensive
the subject,
the funnier it has to be.
Like,
I was thinking the other day
that you can figure out
how bad a person you are
by how soon after
September 11th you masturbated,
like, how long you waited.
And for me, it was between
the two buildings going down.
So I have a feeling that --
I had to do it. I had to.
Otherwise, they win.
That's the way I was looking
at it at the time.
It was a strange time
for all of us.
If you giggle, if a guffaw
takes place, you're busted,
because something made you
have that involuntary reaction.
And in a way,
life is really hard.
You have to get back
to silly at some point,
or life is even harder.
Boy, that Boston Marathon
was scary, man.
That was scary, man.
Just think about it.
You've been training
for a year.
You finally get
to the finish line,
and somebody screams, "Run!"
That is horrible, man.
For the benefit of all of you
who went to sleep last night,
watch this -- Chris Rock,
arguably one of America's
funniest comedians,
and a former
"Saturday Night Live" alumnus
was on
last night hosting,
and he did this monologue.
Very uncomfortable.
You finally get
to the finish line,
and somebody screams, "Run!"
I got to say,
I can't stand it when the Left
is always telling people
that their jokes aren't funny.
"You shouldn't be allowed
to say that."
I don't like political
correctness in any of its forms.
I'm not saying you shouldn't
be allowed to say it.
Not funny at all.
Because the news cycle
in the Internet age
demands something fresh
and new at all times,
frequently a comedian
who's commenting on the news
becomes the news.
He said what?
"30 Rock" star Tracy Morgan
must have rocks in his head.
Sarah Silverman was on "Conan
O'Brien," and she told a joke.
It offended certain members
of the Asian community.
Trevor Noah went
from relative obscurity
to landing one of the most
prestigious posts
in late-night TV.
It didn't take long
for his tweets to be condemned.
Everybody thinks you
have to be burned at the stake
if you've said something
that is deemed to be offensive
by however many thousand people
on Twitter have decided
it's offensive.
I really think that we're
at a point in this country
where people really need
to take the thumb
out of their mouth
and grow up a little bit
and realize
there's a lot bigger problems
out there
than what a comedian
did a joke about.
I mean, you have to feel
the same way about comedy.
Yeah, I do this joke about
the way people need to justify
their cellphone.
"I need to have it with me
because people
are so important."
- Right.
- You know, I said,
"Well, they don't seem
very important
the way you scroll through them
like a gay French king,"
you know, just...
There's a creepy
P. C. thing out there
that really bothers me.
The rise of this new
politically correct trend
is the cover story
in the new issue
of The Atlantic magazine.
The protective atmosphere
on many campuses
has become so charged
that comedian Jerry Seinfeld
won't perform for some students.
They're so P. C. They
just want to use these words.
"That's racist. That's sexist.
That's prejudiced."
They don't even know
what they're talking about.
An opinion echoed by Chris Rock.
You know, when Chris Rock,
Jerry Seinfeld,
and Larry the Cable Guy
say you have
a stick up your ass...
you don't have to wait
for the X-rays to come back.
People are constantly looking
for ways to get offended.
Yeah, I say things
that are offensive sometimes.
I'm working. I'm trying it out.
Too soon for
the Celine Dion jokes?
There goes
my Michael J. Fox routine.
I'm not making fun
of Michael J. Fox.
That's shaky
ground right there.
A comedy club
is like a gym for comedians.
It's where people experiment.
So it's very dangerous to say
that you're not allowed
to make a mistake.
The only apology that
should ever be made for a joke
is, I'm sorry people
didn't find it funny,
because maybe you took
a swing and a miss.
But you should never apologize
for having a go.
They wrote a very nasty article
about me
with the headline,
"You cannot joke about rape."
Nah.
Turns out you can.
The whole
politically correct thing
that's going on right now,
I'm happy that it's going on,
but it's nothing new.
Every couple of decades,
there has to be this big, ugly,
let's-take-it-all-apart,
and we see what comes out
the other side.
I caught myself a few years ago
fighting "gay."
I say "gay." Like,
"That's so gay!" I just say gay.
I have gay friends.
I don't mean it like gay.
I mean it like it's gay,
like it's lame.
And then I stop myself and said,
"What am I fighting?"
I am -- I have become the guy
from 50 years ago who said,
"I say colored!
I have colored friends!"
You have to listen
to the college-aged,
because they lead
the revolution.
They're pretty much always
on the right side of history.
And I think it's important...
People are so afraid of change.
They fight it so hard.
But if you can't change
with the times,
it makes you old,
and it makes your comedy stale.
Like, comedy isn't evergreen,
unless it's poop jokes.
Poop jokes are evergreen, yes.
It's like none for you.
- It's not the topic that stinks.
- It was your joke that stinks.
If you made them cringe
rather than laugh,
then you're doing a bad job.
I'm all about Asian men.
They're the best.
Asian men, no body odor.
They just smell
like responsibility.
This language-police
thing that's going on
has a lot of validity,
but also a lot of issues.
There's a kind of
a stirring of the pot,
but we don't know
what's gonna settle.
We don't know how the soup's
gonna taste yet.
Can there be a case
where if you don't use
the right word
for a right ethnic group
for a right gender
where people get a little too
hyped up about it? Yes.
But those are exactly the waters
that comedy should be traveling.
I will always change.
I will always try to learn
the new terms,
but you've got to give me
some wiggle room.
And, by the way,
I don't know if you know,
if you get hung up on words,
then you're gonna let a lot of
evil motherfuckers slip through,
because evil people
learn the correct terms
very quickly.
And a lot of times
the good guys,
they fuck up a couple of words,
but listen to their heart.
Having constraints
makes comedy better in some ways
because it spurs innovation.
Sometimes when you
have to work around something,
even for a silly reason,
it can make things funnier.
I love that they're setting
this high bar,
because comedy will always
find a way over it.
Funny wins.
That's the worst thing
I ever said.
I think I just finally said
the worst thing
I have ever said.
And it feels good.
It feels good
to have found the bottom.
You guys were great.
Thank you very, very much.
I'm gonna talk
about something now
that sort of splits
a crowd a little bit.
Gun control.
Now -- Wait, wait.
Before you get --
Don't -- Don't get excited,
because the other
people have guns.
When you bring out
a topical subject,
it's about timing. It's whether
it's in the Zeitgeist
and people are gonna
latch onto it.
There's nothing wrong
with saying, "I like something.
Don't take it away from me."
But don't give me
this other bullshit.
The main one is,
"I need it for protection.
I need to protect me.
I need to protect my family."
Really? Is that why they're
called assault rifles?
What we do is we like to do
funny stuff that creates a stir.
And any time
you can see that lead
to some sort of change,
you know,
you just kind of keep
your mouth shut and walk away.
Bam!
- You're at a gun show!
- You're at a gun show.
Social change is
a really nice side effect
of being really present
and really brilliantly funny.
The best comedy
is driven by a point of view.
And a point of view isn't just
about their own experience,
but where someone
has something to say.
Now, I'm not sure
what you heard about me,
but I do things
a little different
than y'all are used to
here at Stuford Heights.
I just need you to go
with me on this one.
No raping?!
- But, Coach, we play football!
- My team, my rules.
You don't like it,
don't let the door
rape you on the way out.
Good comedians talk about stuff
that bothers them
or interests them.
Then you can be
passionate about it.
Excuse me a sec. Joe?
Thank you so much.
Thank you.
Partial birth abortions
aren't a thing!
Thank you so much.
We cover, you know,
really challenging material,
but it's important
to bring it back to comedy.
If you for one moment
think of yourself
as important, you are dead.
You are out of comedy.
Forget it.
The "Ethical
and Religious Directives
for Catholic Health Care
Services" is a slim volume
of 72 medical commandments
that fit neatly between
a patient and her doctor.
More and more,
what you're seeing
are people
who care about the world
being unafraid to bring that
into their comedy and saying,
"Do I care about the stuff
that really matters?
And if I do, then that's
fair game for comedy, too."
John Oliver's come out
of the Jon Stewart mold
of just, you know, having
a great specific sense of humor.
He does cover a lot
of the week's topics
from his point of view,
and then he turns the show
into one topic,
which is kind of great,
because no one's doing
long form like that.
Our main topic tonight
concerns debt.
I would like to talk
to you about drugs.
Our main story tonight
is income inequality.
A good way to figure out
which side of it you're on
is whether you're currently
paying for HBO or stealing it.
More than ever, comedy is a way
to hold people's attention
while you tell them
important truths.
I'm not saying the IRS
is a likeable organization.
But not everything
that's important is likeable.
Think of our government
as a body.
The IRS is the anus.
It's -- It's nobody's
favorite part,
but you need that thing
working properly,
or everything
goes to shit real quick!
The comic has become the person
who pulls back the curtain
to show the world that,
"Do you see that
this is happening?
I -- We didn't make this up.
This wasn't a funny idea we had.
This is what's happening."
The Constitution isn't the Star
in "Super Mario Bros."
It doesn't make you invincible
so you can just do whatever
the fuck you want.
You teach us about things
we should know about.
It's embarrassing, in a way,
to have someone come over here
and explain how things
like healthcare work.
- It's less than ideal, so...
- Yeah.
- Comedy brings awareness.
- It's a practice of noticing.
And there's an effect
with John Oliver,
because he's actually
creating change.
Vanity Fair New
Establishment says,
"Oliver has established himself
as perhaps the most disruptive
journalist on television."
So are you aware
of this thing called
the John Oliver Effect?
The John Oliver Effect
is like activism,
which is funny in nature
but, at the same time,
illuminating issues
that everybody else is missing.
And once they're illuminated,
they're very difficult
to ignore.
You say you want to make people
laugh more than anything else.
But it's got
to be gratifying
that you've also
made people think.
I guess so.
I guess so.
That is like a --
That's a pleasant byproduct.
But, you know, the main thing
we're doing is comedy.
So if you get
to the end of a joke
and someone
is just thinking,
you have failed.
He probably would hate
that there's something called
the John Oliver Effect.
He's really all about
doing a really tight,
well-researched comedy show.
And beyond that,
it's out of your control.
39 states hold elections
for judges,
and America is virtually
alone in doing this.
In fact, there's only one
other country on earth
that does it on this scale.
You can guess which.
You're wrong. It's Bolivia,
a country you think about
so little,
you haven't even realized
that's not Bolivia.
This is Bolivia. Actually --
Actually,
that's still not Bolivia.
This is Bolivia.
Or is it? Or is it?
The truth goes down a lot easier
when a joke is attached to it.
It just does.
It was worth the trip in,
wasn't it, just to --
So many things that
are going on just seem so crazy.
You feel so powerless,
so the comedian that deals
with topical issues,
they're giving people
who are voiceless a voice.
I'll be honest with you,
it's beginning to look like
I'm not gonna get
"The Tonight Show."
What's a comedian's take
on that election?
What's that comedian's take
on that hurricane?
We are speaking...
on behalf of the consumer,
the voter, the victim.
The joke, you'll
forget. You'll forget the joke.
But if it's the right moment
and the right condition
and you acknowledge
what just happened,
it's a beautiful thing.
The fact
that you can take something dark
and make light of it
is one of the few
superpowers people have.
You remember when a laugh
steered you back
to sanity and comfort.
All of the awful things
in the world,
if they can be mocked,
then you can handle it.
So what about the adage
that tragedy plus time
equals comedy?
I don't think there's a formula
for any of these things.
And so when people contemplate
whether something is --
has it been enough time
or is it too soon or not,
again, you cannot generalize.
There's some topics
that you can never talk about
forever.
You're not allowed to talk
about the Holocaust, never!
What do you get when you cross
the Atlantic with the Titanic?
Halfway.
Now, if I had said that in 1912,
people would have gone, "Hey!"
Funny is funny, man.
It just doesn't matter.
I think I got
an AIDS laugh today.
Then there's things
like Prince dying.
Three days.
The bar has always been,
like, are you funny
or are you not funny?
John Denver dying -- You could
joke about it that afternoon.
People can do the cliches about,
you know, timing and tragedy
and all that.
But I think you have to have
a level of discomfort.
I don't know if you've seen me
with Anderson Cooper,
but I count on his discomfort.
If you're doing a JonBenét
routine in Boulder, Colorado...
you better be nailing it.
all the news here in Nashville.
But I may say something that's
very upsetting to many of you.
The good thing about
doing topical comedy
is you look like
you're more intelligent
than you are.
Well, let's go to the news and
see what we can unfurl there.
You have to be smarter
than the first thought
that everyone had.
I'm sorry, I'm being told
that I don't have an earpiece.
If something happens
at 3:00 in the afternoon
and you're going on stage
at 8:00 at night
and you can have turned
that into a joke,
that's part of the high.
It would be weird
if I didn't make a joke
the day of a tragedy.
Sometimes when I'm at
home late at night on Twitter,
I think of something, and I say,
"I could end it all right now
with these two little thumbs."
North Korea conducted
what they claim
was a successful test
of the their biggest
nuclear warhead yet,
so congrats to them.
That's great.
I'm glad they're finally
figuring that out.
It's really...
Will someone please tell
Kim Jong-un
they like his new glasses
and he looks like he lost weight
so he doesn't kill everybody
on the West Coast?
When it comes to comedy,
you look for something
that people know about
or are talking about,
and then you want
to give your take on it.
When you do topical humor,
it goes right to the brain
and the heart and the stomach
all at the same time.
You know...
they re-introduce the McRib
every **** year.
It's not big news.
The power of topical humor
is everybody's on the same page.
It is already primed,
and they're laughing already.
So then your joke
has rocket fuel in it.
The best comedy feels novel,
like you've never
heard it before.
And, you know, the things that
are happening in the headlines
give rise to brand-new jokes.
We interrupt this broadcast
to bring you
this important bulletin
from the United Press.
Flash, the White House
announces Japanese attack
on Pearl Harbor.
World War II
was the most uniting war
in the history
of the United States.
So it was natural that
the biggest comedian in America
would participate
in the war effort.
Say, I'd like to stop the show
for just a few minutes here
and explain
exactly why we're here.
We want you to buy
extra war bonds.
When the war started,
Bob Hope really
became the voice of America.
People turned to him to make
jokes about what was going on.
He was not the first
topical comedian.
But what Bob did was
take that topical monologue
and add to it
the Vaudeville rhythm,
the joke-telling rhythms.
Thank you!
How do you do, fellas?
This is Bob.
This is Bob
"Command Performance" Hope
telling each Nazi
that's in Russia today
that Crimea doesn't pay.
It was
a very dark time generally,
but Bob could always shrug
his shoulders and say,
"Well, let's tackle this."
All right, let's talk about it.
And somewhere in talking
about it, he'd find a laugh.
And, boy, that helps.
Up here,
a Marilyn Monroe calendar
isn't a luxury,
it's a necessity.
That topical kind of monologue
was something brand new.
It seems like
a very simple thing,
but that's what Bob Hope
really innovated.
It takes a lot to mount
a big show,
long hours deep into the night
constantly revising the script.
Revisions made necessary
by last-minute changes
in a changing world.
Bob Hope was the first
guy to utilize an actual staff
of writers to give you
topical material of the day.
He really did invent the idea
of the comedian
being the head writer,
the managing editor,
and having a bunch of writers.
The traditions
of stand-up comedy in the '50s
were still really derived
from Vaudeville.
You know, those performers
like Bob Hope
had nothing more on their mind
than just getting laughs.
And that was plenty.
The guy who really came along
and changed all that
was Mort Sahl.
Richard Nixon is running
for governor of California,
and I realize sometimes
these shows are taped ahead.
I want this material
to be topical.
And...
He'll be running for something
no matter when the show is on,
so, sorry.
Mort Sahl was the first person
to talk like
a human being on stage.
It wasn't schmaltzy.
He did for comedy
what James Dean
and Marlon Brando
did for acting,
which is he humanized it.
I have to report to you
that the largest news last week
was the Soviet spaceman
was invited to lunch
by the queen, as you know.
Just to put your minds at rest,
I probably will not say
anything about the queen.
She hasn't mentioned me,
has she?
He just came out
with a newspaper,
and he reacted in live time
to the news
as he was reading it,
which is a real high-wire act.
Bob Hope rather famously said,
"You know,
you got to always
balance your humor,
or you're gonna
offend somebody."
Mort did not care.
I'm not the most
tolerant guy in the world.
I'm very intolerant. In fact,
that's the basis of the act.
The act is the statement
of a lone guy in rebellion.
That's why people
mistakenly call it negative.
It's mainly me.
I don't talk about the news.
I'm a victim of the news.
The country was ready
for something different.
It's almost like Mort Sahl
led a revolution
that people didn't even
know they needed.
Mort, are you really
a bad guy?
All I am
is a Western Union messenger,
and sometimes
there's bad news in the wire.
But that's not my fault.
I only work at the office.
Mort Sahl influenced
this whole generation
of coffee-house comedians
like Lenny Bruce,
Richard Pryor, George Carlin,
whereas Bob Hope with his large
writing staff influenced
the format
of the late-night comedy shows.
Here's Johnny!
Gonna be a good night.
I just saw Bob Hope backstage.
We were talking. You know,
it's really a wonderful thrill
standing next to one
of the greatest comedians
in the entire world.
And I'm sure Bob appreciates it.
If you were looking for
not just a take on the news,
but the actual news, because
I wasn't reading anything
other than the sports
and the comics,
Johnny Carson
was where you would go.
I saw the headline in the
National Inquirer this week.
The headline article was
how eating the right foods
can increase your I. Q.
Now, isn't that risky
for the Inquirer?
I mean, they could lose
all their readership.
When Johnny Carson
would mock something
that was in the public eye,
everybody was in on it.
He was the most
powerful man in Hollywood,
because he could kill you
with one joke.
Somebody told Vice President
George Bush that Jesse Jackson
was coming to the White House,
and Bush says, "Good!
Maybe he'll autograph
my 'Thriller' album."
You wanted to hear
what Johnny will say
about anything in the news.
You don't so much care
what other comedians say,
but let's see
what Johnny will say.
In the paper today,
a woman in Michigan --
I don't know the city, so --
She was arrested
for soliciting sexual favors.
That's the way they put it
in the paper -- sexual favors
for spaghetti dinners.
You can't make
this kind of stuff up.
Apparently, she never
asked a man for money.
All she wanted was just...
...a spaghetti dinner.
My question, technically,
wouldn't that make her
a "pastatute"?
Ho!
On "Close Up" this morning,
the end of an era.
After ruling late-night
television for 30 years,
Johnny Carson
steps down tonight.
And so it has come to this.
I --
I am one of the lucky
people in the world.
I found something
I always wanted to do,
and I have enjoyed
every single minute of it.
I bid you a very heartfelt
good night.
It's certainly true
that with Johnny out,
a vacuum was created.
The big decision that's had the
entertainment industry buzzing
is due this week.
That, of course, is the fate
of NBC's late night stars
Jay Leno and David Letterman.
"The Tonight Show"
without Johnny Carson
as the regular host
made its debut last night.
Jay Leno emerged
from behind the curtain.
I don't care if you laugh.
I got the job.
Don't matter to me.
Look at this. They're getting
more press than the president.
So start up
your remote controls.
The late-night race
is about to begin.
Jay was a brilliant stand-up.
He continued
the tradition of Johnny.
He had a big group
of monologue writers.
That was the main
writing on that show.
He was writing the best topical
jokes that anybody could write.
Democratic candidate
Bill Clinton said
he is also troubled...
by the amount of sex
portrayed on television.
Clinton said where
he comes from,
sex is a deeply personal matter
between a candidate
and his campaign volunteers.
Yeah, it's just --
Jay is more Bob Hope
in the sense
of setup, punch line,
setup, punch line,
and he would tap
into exactly the best joke
of whatever happened that day.
And, of course,
the big story in Hollywood
is still "The Fugitive."
All right. But -- But enough
about Michael Jackson.
You know --
Jay made the jokes the joke.
Dave...
was doing the other
side of jokes.
He wanted the laugh he wanted.
These last two jokes
are the intellectual
property of NBC.
Who -- Who would have thought
you would ever hear the words
"intellectual property"
and "NBC" in the same sentence?
There was not much emphasis
on that monologue for Dave,
because when we started
on late night,
we weren't allowed
to do a monologue.
We were calling them
opening remarks,
because if you called them
a monologue
and there were too many of them,
you would have stepped
on Johnny's toes.
Now, with that in mind,
let's continue
with the opening remarks.
It was just a little off.
It looked like
a talk show, kind of.
Sometimes he wore sneakers,
which was weird.
And they talked about the events
of the day, to a certain extent.
But also was more
focused on weirdness
than on the newspaper.
- "Dave's passing out ham."
- Yeah.
Dave was a very
New-York-centered show.
So Jay could be Monica Lewinsky
and O. J. trial,
and Dave could be, like,
"There was a squirrel today
in the park" --
you know, just some
bizarre, offbeat thing.
So you're not just gonna
get monologue jokes
about the front page.
It's whatever
Dave wants to do.
And, sometimes, it still seemed
like a cable access show.
Like, why is he throwing
a watermelon off a building?
That's an important
consideration for all of us.
And, believe me, ma'am,
you've come to the right place.
You don't tune in
to "Letterman" to see
what's going on
in the country today.
You would have tuned in to Jay
to see that.
And that's the big difference --
comedy of character
and personality,
and then a great joke-teller.
I mean, let's face it. If you
don't like who Dave has on,
or you don't like who I have on,
now you can click around
and then say,
"Well, let me go back to Jay.
Gee, here's something
I might have missed."
I found that they both
evolved their style.
They came out
of the Carson thing,
and the first instinct
is to kind of sort of
do it like that.
And then their
personalities emerged,
and they did their
own versions of it.
The host plays
with the structure.
But you need the structure.
Without it,
you don't have comedy.
People like when they know
what the rules are.
And then it's what you do
with those rules.
How do you begin deciding
how you're gonna be different?
Well, make no mistake about it.
I will be fired from this job.
It's just a matter
of how long it's gonna take.
I don't know.
Really, I don't think
you can invent
anything altogether new.
I'm sure you've heard
Angelina Jolie
filed for divorce
from Brad Pitt.
And, of course, all the
celebrity gossip magazines
are claiming victory.
You know, they broke this story.
They broke the story every week
for the last 11 years...
over and over again.
There are just certain things
that I don't think
will ever go away.
People are always
gonna want to hear jokes
about the news of the day.
It's very --
This is very exciting for me.
I didn't really watch
late-night television
before I started doing it.
And then I didn't watch it
when I was doing it.
I just put things in
to entertain myself.
It's a great day
for America, everybody!
One of the real problems
with broadcast television
is trying to make a show,
you know, which was
a "broad cast,"
which was okay for everybody.
That's seems like --
That seems almost
impossible job.
Hosting "The Tonight Show"
has been the fulfillment
of a lifelong dream for me.
And I just want to say
to the kids out there watching,
you can do anything
you want in life. Yeah.
Yeah, unless
Jay Leno wants to do it, too.
All of them do
some amount of a news segment
just because it's already
been established.
It's become a way
to consume current events.
This jerk left duffel bags
on the street,
and two of the bombs
were discovered
by thieves snatching bags.
Because as all New Yorkers know,
if you see something,
steal something.
There's seriously
too many late-night shows.
Everyone's kind of talking
about the same thing,
and you're really
just trying to put it
in your host's voice,
instead of, you know,
sounding like everyone else.
Of course,
I wouldn't be here tonight
if it weren't for the previous
"Tonight Show" hosts,
so I want to say thank you
to Steve Allen, Jack Paar,
Johnny Carson,
Jay Leno, Conan O'Brien,
and Jay Leno. Very, very nice.
We are delighted to be
back as a regular series.
But to those of you who wrote in
that you hated our pilot show...
...wait till you see this one.
"That Was the Week
That Was" was the innovator.
That was a show that set forward
you can make
the current news funny,
and you can do so in a hip way.
With the candidacy
of Senator Barry Goldwater,
the Republican party
is on the way back.
And who knows?
One day, it may
even go forwards.
The sensibility
was more tame in a sense,
more controlled, more dry.
It was witty,
but it wasn't really
challenging the power structure.
Our top story tonight...
Our top story, President Ford...
...President Ford is finally
over that stubborn
week-long cold.
...the stubborn
week-long cold!
Before "Saturday Night Live,"
everything was so schmaltzy.
"Saturday Night Live" was
the first show that came along
that had a sensibility
of people who'd grown up on TV.
It was making fun of TV.
And this idea of satirizing
the news, we needed it.
Vietnam was going on.
We'd just been
through Watergate.
The idea that we could
laugh at the people
who were making the news
is a pretty nice formula.
Let's take a look
at the top story, shall we?
Anwar Sadat buys himself
an inflatable child.
This story and more coming up
on "Weekend Update."
"Weekend Update" initially
was about irreverence.
It was about a middle finger
to the powers that be.
For an on-the-spot report,
let's go live to Laraine Newman
at the Blaine Hotel.
- Laraine?
- Chevy, I'm standing...
"Update" was cathartic
for people that saw,
you know, the hypocrisy
in the establishment.
I don't think people
took "Update" seriously.
It was a relief.
The first man to walk
on the moon, Neil Armstrong,
lost a finger when
he jumped from a truck
and caught his wedding ring
on a barn door
at his suburban Cincinnati home.
While jumping off the truck,
the former astronaut
was quoted as saying,
"One small step for man,
a giant -- Aah!"
- Jane?
- It was kind of
a parody of a newscast.
And it was a joke basket.
That's what it was, you know?
But it became sort of less
and less that way.
It became more
personalized as it went on
and much less about
a character doing the news.
And by the time
it got to Dennis Miller,
it was Dennis Miller.
And it wasn't about character.
It was about them
speaking their minds.
New York's St. Patrick's Day
parade was held yesterday,
and for the first time
in the parade's history,
a homosexual contingent marched.
So it is a Gaelic thing.
Now...
Every anchor has brought
their own personality to it,
so it's this thing
that is both constant
and constantly changing.
I'm Norm Macdonald,
and this is the fake news.
Times have changed since
I first sat behind this desk.
For example, I used to be
the only pretty blonde woman
reading the fake news.
Now there's a whole network
devoted to that.
News is such a joke
in and of itself now
that I can see why things
like "Weekend Update"
have survived.
The thought of funny news
was what made it so appealing
back when news was serious.
Now that news is entertainment,
you're watching
"Weekend Update" for news.
It's probably not great
that that transition happened.
It probably
should have stayed --
The news should have kept
getting better and better.
But "Weekend Update"
definitely made
a transition into the news.
There's a growing trend
among some parents
toward home-schooling children
because they believe
that mandated vaccinations
for public schools are unsafe.
This is expected to lead
to another new trend,
dying of polio.
They have that
opportunity to tap into things
that are happening
right this second
and cutting through
the bullshit of it
in a way
that the regular news can't do.
"The Daily Show" with
Jon Stewart arrives on the scene
when the traditional
evening news
is starting to deteriorate.
Let the healing begin.
It's headlines.
All of a sudden,
there was what was the beginning
of a 24/7 news cycle.
You can take the form now,
because everybody is beginning
to understand the form
and satirize it.
In 1993, Jordan retired
for the first time,
saying he'd had enough
of the NBA grind
and needed more time
with his family.
And after spending more time
with his family,
he quickly decided he hadn't
had enough of the NBA grind.
When Jon took over
"The Daily Show,"
it was a much different show.
It was much more driven
by pop culture
and parodying broadcasting.
But over time, Jon really
put his laser focus
on real issues.
Welcome to our coverage
of the Democratic National
Convention from Boston.
It's our first night
of coverage.
The convention
kicked off last night.
Any network can bring you news
as it happens.
But here at "The Daily Show,"
we have taken
yesterday's proceedings
and digested it, processed it,
broken it down
to give you highly concentrated
what we call turds of wisdom.
The news can be so heavy.
It can be so intense.
It's actually very nice
to have someone analyze things
from a different point of view.
He became people's go-to
guy to explain the world.
You'd watch the news, and then
you'd watch Jon Stewart.
Or you wouldn't watch the news
and watch Jon Stewart,
and he'd have to remind you,
"I'm not the news!"
There are a lot
of people out there
who do turn to you for --
Not for news.
Well, they turn --
For an interpretation,
- for a comedic interpretation.
- To be informed.
They actually think
that they're coming closer
to the truth with your...
Now, that's a different thing.
That's credibility.
He was able to show you
and make you hear what you wish
you would have thought of.
"Man!
Why didn't I think of that?"
Or, "That's hilarious. I never
thought of it like that."
He grew a stronger
and stronger conscience,
then felt a responsibility,
I think, to carry it out.
But he always slammed
a huge joke in there.
Nothing will change
with the same people,
the same policies that got us
into this status quo.
Another Latin word, status quo.
And it stands for,
"Man, the middle class,
everyday Americans are really
getting taken for a ride."
You know, that's the kind
of talk you normally hear
right before
the pharmacist says,
"Ma'am, you've got to
leave the Walgreens."
- It wasn't really about politics.
- It was about moral outrage.
That's what made the show
so riveting and fun.
Bullshitters have gotten
pretty lazy.
And their work
is easily detected.
And looking for it is...
kind of a pleasant way
to pass the time,
like an "I-Spy" of bullshit.
So I say to you tonight,
friends,
the best defense
against bullshit is vigilance.
Police and fire units
are being dispatched
to the scene as we speak.
Comedy seems pretty
inconsequential
in the face of a grave tragedy.
The whole tone, of course,
of the country had changed,
and, naturally, comedy
became difficult.
There was a time
in the days after that
where people
didn't know what to do.
The late-night talk shows
didn't know how to behave.
There was almost
a moratorium on comedy.
It's terribly sad
here in New York City.
Naturally, the whole
tone of these shows had changed,
so there was very little comedy
for the next several weeks.
Most of those late-night
shows booked news people
like Brian Williams
or Tom Brokaw.
They did not book comedians.
9/11 was, obviously,
a dark, dark moment
for our country.
But it was an important
moment for "SNL."
The words spoken at 11:31
every Saturday night
are "Live from New York."
So this was backyard.
So it was almost incumbent
upon "Saturday Night Live"
to play some sort of role
in the nation's healing.
The question is
when is it okay to laugh again?
On behalf
of everyone here,
I just want to thank you all
for being her tonight,
and especially you,
Mr. Mayor.
Thank you, Lorne.
Thank you very much.
Having our city's institutions
up and running
sends a message that New York
City is open for business.
"Saturday Night Live"
is one of our great
New York City
institutions.
And that's why it's important
for you to do your show tonight.
Can we be funny?
Why start now?
It was
that Saturday night we decided,
"Okay, you know, we're gonna
be able to do this again."
And they slowly
brought us through it.
I think it's one of the finest
moments in "SNL" history.
Live...
from New York...
it's Saturday night!
Right after 9/11,
I had to fly to New York
to roast Hugh Hefner
for Comedy Central.
And we didn't know
what was gonna happen.
The question becomes how do you
go about joking again, right?
You're living in
"too soon" territory.
The one and only
Gilbert Gottfried.
Tragedy and comedy
are roommates.
If you joke about a tragedy,
you're kind of beating
the tragedy away.
So I did a joke.
I said, "Today,
I'll be using my Muslim name."
"Hasn't bin Laid."
There's no black or white answer
to when it's time to laugh
and when it's time to laugh at.
I wanted to do a joke
that totally is over the line.
And I said, "I have
to leave early tonight.
I have to catch a flight to L. A.
I couldn't get a direct flight.
We have to make stop
at the Empire State Building."
I lost an audience
as big as anyone
in the history of performing.
Somebody said, "Too soon!"
And that didn't
slow Gilbert down.
That pushed him
to a whole new place.
The father starts
fucking his wife.
This sister starts fingering
the dog's asshole.
He started to tell
the Aristocrats joke,
which is like comedic jazz.
It's a license to offend
just for the fuck of it.
And I remember laughing so hard
that I was sort of crying.
It was just such a release.
And it was just what we needed.
It couldn't have been
a better time,
a better place,
or a better person telling it.
If you missed any portion,
I'll repeat it.
It absolutely
had to be done.
Somebody had to stand up
in front
of the comedy community
and say, "It's okay,"
when it's not okay.
But those words
must be spoken.
God bless you!
God bless America!
I thought what Gilbert
did that night was heroic,
and I think it --
Ultimately, you could say
whatever you want to say
about whether it was appropriate
or not.
It made a lot of people
in that room feel very good,
and that's that.
I don't believe in too soon.
You want to know a little secret
amongst comedians?
The minute someone says
something is off limits,
all we focus on is,
"How do I do jokes about that?"
One of the most striking choices
in those post-9/11 days
and weeks
was The Onion.
They released an issue
dedicated to the 9/11 attacks.
So, at first, this seems like
a terrible, terrible idea.
But when you look at what
the writers of The Onion did,
you realize their brilliance.
They were able to find
some sort of common ground,
"What are we all feeling?"
and were able
to find humor in that
as opposed to making light
of something really terrible.
And it was this amazingly
cathartic moment.
It's a beautiful statement about
the human species
that eventually, we will
make a joke about everything,
because it means
that we are defying depression
and loss and death and entropy
to live.
And time will give you
the breath to do that.
I like to test myself
by joking about horrible things
and nothing but.
One of my favorite ways
to test myself,
I like to make jokes
about tragedies
the day that they happen.
I don't believe in "too soon."
I'm on a tight schedule.
Too soon's tricky.
Sometimes it's too soon,
but not if
the joke's good enough.
If the joke's good enough,
it's never too soon.
Everyone has their
own version of that,
but the comedian
does not decide.
The audience decides
whether it was
acceptable or not.
Another Malaysian
Airlines plane was --
Too soon, Che!
Too soon, baby!
My problem is it's not too soon,
it's I just wish
I could think of shit faster.
There is a graph
that goes on in my head
that the more offensive
the subject,
the funnier it has to be.
Like,
I was thinking the other day
that you can figure out
how bad a person you are
by how soon after
September 11th you masturbated,
like, how long you waited.
And for me, it was between
the two buildings going down.
So I have a feeling that --
I had to do it. I had to.
Otherwise, they win.
That's the way I was looking
at it at the time.
It was a strange time
for all of us.
If you giggle, if a guffaw
takes place, you're busted,
because something made you
have that involuntary reaction.
And in a way,
life is really hard.
You have to get back
to silly at some point,
or life is even harder.
Boy, that Boston Marathon
was scary, man.
That was scary, man.
Just think about it.
You've been training
for a year.
You finally get
to the finish line,
and somebody screams, "Run!"
That is horrible, man.
For the benefit of all of you
who went to sleep last night,
watch this -- Chris Rock,
arguably one of America's
funniest comedians,
and a former
"Saturday Night Live" alumnus
was on
last night hosting,
and he did this monologue.
Very uncomfortable.
You finally get
to the finish line,
and somebody screams, "Run!"
I got to say,
I can't stand it when the Left
is always telling people
that their jokes aren't funny.
"You shouldn't be allowed
to say that."
I don't like political
correctness in any of its forms.
I'm not saying you shouldn't
be allowed to say it.
Not funny at all.
Because the news cycle
in the Internet age
demands something fresh
and new at all times,
frequently a comedian
who's commenting on the news
becomes the news.
He said what?
"30 Rock" star Tracy Morgan
must have rocks in his head.
Sarah Silverman was on "Conan
O'Brien," and she told a joke.
It offended certain members
of the Asian community.
Trevor Noah went
from relative obscurity
to landing one of the most
prestigious posts
in late-night TV.
It didn't take long
for his tweets to be condemned.
Everybody thinks you
have to be burned at the stake
if you've said something
that is deemed to be offensive
by however many thousand people
on Twitter have decided
it's offensive.
I really think that we're
at a point in this country
where people really need
to take the thumb
out of their mouth
and grow up a little bit
and realize
there's a lot bigger problems
out there
than what a comedian
did a joke about.
I mean, you have to feel
the same way about comedy.
Yeah, I do this joke about
the way people need to justify
their cellphone.
"I need to have it with me
because people
are so important."
- Right.
- You know, I said,
"Well, they don't seem
very important
the way you scroll through them
like a gay French king,"
you know, just...
There's a creepy
P. C. thing out there
that really bothers me.
The rise of this new
politically correct trend
is the cover story
in the new issue
of The Atlantic magazine.
The protective atmosphere
on many campuses
has become so charged
that comedian Jerry Seinfeld
won't perform for some students.
They're so P. C. They
just want to use these words.
"That's racist. That's sexist.
That's prejudiced."
They don't even know
what they're talking about.
An opinion echoed by Chris Rock.
You know, when Chris Rock,
Jerry Seinfeld,
and Larry the Cable Guy
say you have
a stick up your ass...
you don't have to wait
for the X-rays to come back.
People are constantly looking
for ways to get offended.
Yeah, I say things
that are offensive sometimes.
I'm working. I'm trying it out.
Too soon for
the Celine Dion jokes?
There goes
my Michael J. Fox routine.
I'm not making fun
of Michael J. Fox.
That's shaky
ground right there.
A comedy club
is like a gym for comedians.
It's where people experiment.
So it's very dangerous to say
that you're not allowed
to make a mistake.
The only apology that
should ever be made for a joke
is, I'm sorry people
didn't find it funny,
because maybe you took
a swing and a miss.
But you should never apologize
for having a go.
They wrote a very nasty article
about me
with the headline,
"You cannot joke about rape."
Nah.
Turns out you can.
The whole
politically correct thing
that's going on right now,
I'm happy that it's going on,
but it's nothing new.
Every couple of decades,
there has to be this big, ugly,
let's-take-it-all-apart,
and we see what comes out
the other side.
I caught myself a few years ago
fighting "gay."
I say "gay." Like,
"That's so gay!" I just say gay.
I have gay friends.
I don't mean it like gay.
I mean it like it's gay,
like it's lame.
And then I stop myself and said,
"What am I fighting?"
I am -- I have become the guy
from 50 years ago who said,
"I say colored!
I have colored friends!"
You have to listen
to the college-aged,
because they lead
the revolution.
They're pretty much always
on the right side of history.
And I think it's important...
People are so afraid of change.
They fight it so hard.
But if you can't change
with the times,
it makes you old,
and it makes your comedy stale.
Like, comedy isn't evergreen,
unless it's poop jokes.
Poop jokes are evergreen, yes.
It's like none for you.
- It's not the topic that stinks.
- It was your joke that stinks.
If you made them cringe
rather than laugh,
then you're doing a bad job.
I'm all about Asian men.
They're the best.
Asian men, no body odor.
They just smell
like responsibility.
This language-police
thing that's going on
has a lot of validity,
but also a lot of issues.
There's a kind of
a stirring of the pot,
but we don't know
what's gonna settle.
We don't know how the soup's
gonna taste yet.
Can there be a case
where if you don't use
the right word
for a right ethnic group
for a right gender
where people get a little too
hyped up about it? Yes.
But those are exactly the waters
that comedy should be traveling.
I will always change.
I will always try to learn
the new terms,
but you've got to give me
some wiggle room.
And, by the way,
I don't know if you know,
if you get hung up on words,
then you're gonna let a lot of
evil motherfuckers slip through,
because evil people
learn the correct terms
very quickly.
And a lot of times
the good guys,
they fuck up a couple of words,
but listen to their heart.
Having constraints
makes comedy better in some ways
because it spurs innovation.
Sometimes when you
have to work around something,
even for a silly reason,
it can make things funnier.
I love that they're setting
this high bar,
because comedy will always
find a way over it.
Funny wins.
That's the worst thing
I ever said.
I think I just finally said
the worst thing
I have ever said.
And it feels good.
It feels good
to have found the bottom.
You guys were great.
Thank you very, very much.
I'm gonna talk
about something now
that sort of splits
a crowd a little bit.
Gun control.
Now -- Wait, wait.
Before you get --
Don't -- Don't get excited,
because the other
people have guns.
When you bring out
a topical subject,
it's about timing. It's whether
it's in the Zeitgeist
and people are gonna
latch onto it.
There's nothing wrong
with saying, "I like something.
Don't take it away from me."
But don't give me
this other bullshit.
The main one is,
"I need it for protection.
I need to protect me.
I need to protect my family."
Really? Is that why they're
called assault rifles?
What we do is we like to do
funny stuff that creates a stir.
And any time
you can see that lead
to some sort of change,
you know,
you just kind of keep
your mouth shut and walk away.
Bam!
- You're at a gun show!
- You're at a gun show.
Social change is
a really nice side effect
of being really present
and really brilliantly funny.
The best comedy
is driven by a point of view.
And a point of view isn't just
about their own experience,
but where someone
has something to say.
Now, I'm not sure
what you heard about me,
but I do things
a little different
than y'all are used to
here at Stuford Heights.
I just need you to go
with me on this one.
No raping?!
- But, Coach, we play football!
- My team, my rules.
You don't like it,
don't let the door
rape you on the way out.
Good comedians talk about stuff
that bothers them
or interests them.
Then you can be
passionate about it.
Excuse me a sec. Joe?
Thank you so much.
Thank you.
Partial birth abortions
aren't a thing!
Thank you so much.
We cover, you know,
really challenging material,
but it's important
to bring it back to comedy.
If you for one moment
think of yourself
as important, you are dead.
You are out of comedy.
Forget it.
The "Ethical
and Religious Directives
for Catholic Health Care
Services" is a slim volume
of 72 medical commandments
that fit neatly between
a patient and her doctor.
More and more,
what you're seeing
are people
who care about the world
being unafraid to bring that
into their comedy and saying,
"Do I care about the stuff
that really matters?
And if I do, then that's
fair game for comedy, too."
John Oliver's come out
of the Jon Stewart mold
of just, you know, having
a great specific sense of humor.
He does cover a lot
of the week's topics
from his point of view,
and then he turns the show
into one topic,
which is kind of great,
because no one's doing
long form like that.
Our main topic tonight
concerns debt.
I would like to talk
to you about drugs.
Our main story tonight
is income inequality.
A good way to figure out
which side of it you're on
is whether you're currently
paying for HBO or stealing it.
More than ever, comedy is a way
to hold people's attention
while you tell them
important truths.
I'm not saying the IRS
is a likeable organization.
But not everything
that's important is likeable.
Think of our government
as a body.
The IRS is the anus.
It's -- It's nobody's
favorite part,
but you need that thing
working properly,
or everything
goes to shit real quick!
The comic has become the person
who pulls back the curtain
to show the world that,
"Do you see that
this is happening?
I -- We didn't make this up.
This wasn't a funny idea we had.
This is what's happening."
The Constitution isn't the Star
in "Super Mario Bros."
It doesn't make you invincible
so you can just do whatever
the fuck you want.
You teach us about things
we should know about.
It's embarrassing, in a way,
to have someone come over here
and explain how things
like healthcare work.
- It's less than ideal, so...
- Yeah.
- Comedy brings awareness.
- It's a practice of noticing.
And there's an effect
with John Oliver,
because he's actually
creating change.
Vanity Fair New
Establishment says,
"Oliver has established himself
as perhaps the most disruptive
journalist on television."
So are you aware
of this thing called
the John Oliver Effect?
The John Oliver Effect
is like activism,
which is funny in nature
but, at the same time,
illuminating issues
that everybody else is missing.
And once they're illuminated,
they're very difficult
to ignore.
You say you want to make people
laugh more than anything else.
But it's got
to be gratifying
that you've also
made people think.
I guess so.
I guess so.
That is like a --
That's a pleasant byproduct.
But, you know, the main thing
we're doing is comedy.
So if you get
to the end of a joke
and someone
is just thinking,
you have failed.
He probably would hate
that there's something called
the John Oliver Effect.
He's really all about
doing a really tight,
well-researched comedy show.
And beyond that,
it's out of your control.
39 states hold elections
for judges,
and America is virtually
alone in doing this.
In fact, there's only one
other country on earth
that does it on this scale.
You can guess which.
You're wrong. It's Bolivia,
a country you think about
so little,
you haven't even realized
that's not Bolivia.
This is Bolivia. Actually --
Actually,
that's still not Bolivia.
This is Bolivia.
Or is it? Or is it?
The truth goes down a lot easier
when a joke is attached to it.
It just does.
It was worth the trip in,
wasn't it, just to --
So many things that
are going on just seem so crazy.
You feel so powerless,
so the comedian that deals
with topical issues,
they're giving people
who are voiceless a voice.
I'll be honest with you,
it's beginning to look like
I'm not gonna get
"The Tonight Show."
What's a comedian's take
on that election?
What's that comedian's take
on that hurricane?
We are speaking...
on behalf of the consumer,
the voter, the victim.
The joke, you'll
forget. You'll forget the joke.
But if it's the right moment
and the right condition
and you acknowledge
what just happened,
it's a beautiful thing.
The fact
that you can take something dark
and make light of it
is one of the few
superpowers people have.
You remember when a laugh
steered you back
to sanity and comfort.
All of the awful things
in the world,
if they can be mocked,
then you can handle it.
So what about the adage
that tragedy plus time
equals comedy?
I don't think there's a formula
for any of these things.
And so when people contemplate
whether something is --
has it been enough time
or is it too soon or not,
again, you cannot generalize.
There's some topics
that you can never talk about
forever.
You're not allowed to talk
about the Holocaust, never!
What do you get when you cross
the Atlantic with the Titanic?
Halfway.
Now, if I had said that in 1912,
people would have gone, "Hey!"
Funny is funny, man.
It just doesn't matter.
I think I got
an AIDS laugh today.
Then there's things
like Prince dying.
Three days.
The bar has always been,
like, are you funny
or are you not funny?
John Denver dying -- You could
joke about it that afternoon.
People can do the cliches about,
you know, timing and tragedy
and all that.
But I think you have to have
a level of discomfort.
I don't know if you've seen me
with Anderson Cooper,
but I count on his discomfort.
If you're doing a JonBenét
routine in Boulder, Colorado...
you better be nailing it.