OPINION:
Monday night the hosts of television’s late night talk shows defended their colleague, Michelle Wolf, and attacked the White House correspondent’s Association for criticizing her performance Saturday night which included graphis jokes encouraging abortion and personal insults of Sarah Huckabee Sanders and Kellyanne Conway.
Trevor Noah from The Daily Show on Comedy Central (where Wolf used to work) went right after the media for not understanding that, in his opinion, the essence of comedy is to challenge authority. “Michelle roasted these people so hard they wanted police protection,” he said.
As is the usual habit on The Daily Show, Noah ran several clips of anchors and pundits expressing outrage over Wolf’s performance and then showed Trump insulting Rosie O’Donnell and Carly Fiorina:
“See? Now that’s how you insult a woman’s face. Michelle’s joke was about how Sarah Sanders creates makeup out of lies. When Trump insults a women, he just says ‘fat ugly face.’ None of that smart comedy with layers of meaning, just insults, that’s why you don’t send a woman to do a man’s job.”
Meanwhile, on CBS, Stephen Colbert suggested the WHCA should “grow a pair” and hammered them for disavowing Wolf:
“Look, you didn’t like it, you have that right. Don’t invite her back again, but grow a pair. This was a roast! And you’re the ones who hired Michelle Wolf! Being mad at her for doing her job is like accusing the valet of briefly stealing your car. And don’t act like you’re surprised. I thought news people did research! But you’re telling me you couldn’t spend 90 seconds on YouTube to find out what her act was like? As a great man once said, ‘Fake News.’”
It should be noted that this Colbert’s take was pretty much exactly Rush Limbaugh’s take yesterday. Of course the White House press corps knew what Wolf was all about and they hired her hoping that she would bring the exact kind of performance she brought.
Over on NBC, Seth Myers echoed Colbert’s reaction. “She is filthy and she is mean, which is what we love about her, because those are wonderful qualities for comedians and terrible qualities for free world leaders.” He then reminded the WHCA, repeatedly, that they hired Wolf and they got exactly what they asked for.
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