American comedy has become too safe on TV

At the annual White House correspondents’ dinner comedians sing for their supper—and usually serve up a roast for dessert. Not this year. On April 27th Colin Jost, a host of “Saturday Night Live”, delivered a meek stand-up routine with some perfunctory barbs about the media and political elites, before thanking President Joe Biden for being “a decent man”.

This year ought to offer plenty of material to spin into laughs. The leading candidates for the presidential election in November are maladroit, elderly men prone to gaffes. But many of comedy’s most recognisable names are not taking advantage of the material, at least on TV.

Take, for example, late-night comedy, where monologues are sending audiences to sleep. Stephen Colbert, who made his name as a hilarious mock-conservative, often delivers earnest performances that sound like lectures fit for cable news. “Wow, I am actually surprised that Truth Social had value,” he recently said of Donald Trump’s money-losing social-media business. In a flattering interview with Mr Biden in February, another comedian, Seth Meyers (pictured), cracked a few jokes, before dutifully informing his guest that “You have gotten things done.”

Perhaps they are burned from previous election cycles. Jimmy Fallon, who gently tussled Donald Trump’s hair on air two months before he won the election in 2016 (and was browbeaten into apologising for being so soft), offers a cautionary tale. But a more common problem may be sincerity: Mr Colbert, Mr Meyers and others believe that Mr Trump is a threat to democracy and that Mr Biden has been unfairly maligned. Why knock Mr Biden when the election is expected to be so close, the thinking goes, given the vile alternative? They still want to make their audiences laugh but subordinate humour to politesse out of a sense of responsibility.

An anomaly is Greg Gutfeld, host of Fox News’s comedy programme, “Gutfeld!”, which was the most viewed late-night programme in the first three months of this year. Mr Gutfeld and a rotating panel react to and satirise the news, with rants that are almost accidentally funny because of their incoherence. In a recent riff about Mr Trump’s trial in New York, Mr Gutfeld mused about the “time-honoured pledge” of being discreet about prostitution before mocking Trump Steaks (meat licensed by the former president) and making a crude joke about nude yoga.

A laughable divide has emerged between the establishment on TV and the comedic insurgents, who forge their careers online and take more risks. The most amusing humour is now found on social media, where successful comics still care more about whether a joke works than about its political consequences.

One of the most popular online comics is Shane Gillis. “Has enough time passed that we can admit that Trump was funny?” Mr Gillis asked in a comedy special in 2021 that has 27m views on YouTube. In his recent stand-up set, which spent two weeks on Netflix’s “top ten” list in America, Mr Gillis pines for a Trump-Biden presidential debate: “All I want to see is him debate…Trump’s whole thing is he tries to get in the other guy’s head, dude. Can’t get in Joe’s head. Joe’s not in there.”

Countless other comedians are building followings online with viral short videos, and popular podcast hosts like Joe Rogan have helped amplify their reach. These new comedians’ politics are unpredictable, though many find Robert F. Kennedy junior, who is running for president as an independent, appealing. Perhaps the primary unifying sensibility is their scepticism of the powerful—politicians, scientists, businessmen—and their willingness to find humour in anything. Sometimes the subject of their riffs is Mr Trump sharing his theory of how magnets work; other times it is Mr Biden being pumped with performance-enhancing drugs. Sam Morril, another rising star, has compared the election to a choice between a drunk driver and someone falling asleep at the wheel.

Many of the insurgents are now making good money, appearing on mainstream platforms and using their social-media fame to put on large, sold-out shows. For example Mr Gillis, who boasts some 3m fans across Instagram, YouTube and X, recently hosted “Saturday Night Live”; a scripted show starring the comedian will air on Netflix in May.

But the biggest stages still remain out of reach. In March Barack Obama, Bill Clinton and Mr Biden gathered for a fundraiser at Radio City Music Hall in New York. Mr Colbert served as a friendly moderator, mocking Mr Trump (“Do any of you have plans to sell golden sneakers?”) and asking anodyne questions about living in the White House (“Do you always feel like you’re in a museum?”). For many fans of comedy, traditionally America’s most transgressive artistic medium, it felt jarring to see such a fawning act.

Consider the correspondents’ dinner in 2006, when Mr Colbert delivered a searing critique of George W. Bush as he sat only a few feet away. The roast was so personal and intense—lambasting Mr Bush’s foreign policy and anti-intellectualism—that several Bush aides left in the middle of the act. It is hard to imagine a television host ever again being as harsh as Mr Colbert was nearly 20 years ago. And it is even harder to imagine late-night shows returning to their old place as the heart of American comedy. Americans seeking comic relief, rather than partisan affirmation, will look elsewhere. ■