Are We Really Doing This?

On Wednesday evening, the nation’s Funniest People™ will deign to make jokes concerning the local weather disaster for a full evening of hilarity. Seven late-night exhibits throughout 5 networks hosted by James Corden, Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Kimmel, Jimmy Fallon, Seth Meyers, Trevor Noah, and Samantha Bee are teaming as much as function local weather change on their exhibits in honor of Climate Week, in what Dateline calls “a rare show of unity across the genre.”

Raising consciousness, you see, is vital, and this can positively make up for them largely ignoring local weather change for all the opposite nights of the yr. I haven’t seen or heard any of the jokes or sketches upfront, and we’ll see what these people provide you with. Maybe they’ll be unbelievable! But the problem right here shouldn’t be how good or dangerous the giggle strains are. No, it’s the concept that devoting one evening to overlaying local weather makes up for the truth that these exhibits have largely ignored the most important story on Earth for years. 

I’m additionally, actually, slightly skeptical concerning the high quality of the jokes. Dateline gave us a scrumptious preview of what’s in retailer for us:

“I don’t want to die,” mentioned Kimmel.

“In the interest of recycling, please use whatever Jimmy Kimmel said,” mentioned Fallon.

“I’m thrilled to participate in Climate Night,” mentioned Bee. “But maybe we should move it up a few days? Just because, you know, it’s urgent?”

“I’m proud to dedicate one entire night of my show to the climate, so I can say I wasn’t part of the problem, I was 1/365th of the solution,” mentioned Colbert.

Well, at the very least Colbert mentioned what we’re all considering.

People typically use the truth that local weather change is all-encompassingly miserable as a motive to not speak about it, not to mention crack jokes. The concept that local weather is so deeply unfunny that it may well solely be approached on one evening after which forgotten the remainder of the yr is, nonetheless, simply wildly fallacious and lazy. There are folks doing climate comedy, and doing it well, everywhere in the web. I spent about 5 minutes fascinated with humorous or joke-worthy stuff we’ve revealed on this very web site and got here up with a lot of potential fodder for the late-night TV writers’ rooms. If you’ll permit me a quick however non-exhaustive record of comedic genius ready to be mined on late-night TV:

The comedians who shall be doing the standup factor of confronting our planetary disaster on Wednesday evening have raked in thousands and thousands of {dollars} over the previous 5 years making nonstop jokes about Donald Trump. The former president is an extremely simple goal, and in lots of respects, the jokes merely write themselves. But the Trump administration was probably the most deeply unfunny moments in American historical past.

We noticed an open white supremacist elected to the very best workplace within the nation, Republicans blithely endorse fascism whereas permitting firms to rake in billions, and a disastrous, politicized response to a pandemic that killed a whole bunch of hundreds. All that was capped by a lethal rebellion that noticed a literal gallows erected exterior the Capitol. If late-night comedy writers may create comedic gold out of all that and extra, local weather change jokes needs to be fairly doable.

Perhaps I shouldn’t be shocked. A millionaire like Seth Meyers making a joke a few president that appears like a Cheeto is slightly totally different than joking concerning the political system that delivered him to energy within the first place. Much of those hosts’ Trump jokes have been pushed by the truth that folks paid consideration: Tright here was some huge cash to be made out of the eye financial system with simple jokes concerning the president’s hair. Those sorts of surface-level jokes do nothing to rattle energy constructions; they may even make folks in cost really feel extra comfy and chummy with their courtroom jesters. (Remember Jimmy Fallon playfully mussing Trump’s hair?) 

But humor can expose abuses of energy at play. Comedy is usually a solution to preserve folks engaged in what’s taking place and undercut dangerous folks and forces in energy by making them look weak and laughable. There’s numerous alternative right here with reference to local weather, if comedy exhibits need to take it—John Oliver famously pissed off coal magnate Bob Murray a lot with one of his segments that Murray sued HBO. (Murray lost and is now lifeless. Presumably these items are unrelated.)

I’d be hard-pressed to put in writing a joke a few wildfire or a lethal heatwave: Tright here’s not rather a lot that’s humorous about susceptible folks struggling. But the local weather change period as an entire is nothing if not darkly comical. Here is an existential risk to humanity that oil firms have spent many years mendacity about to confuse the general public and governments’ response has been to mainly to simply encourage us to recycle. The response to the local weather disaster is actually laughable! Comedy is at its sharpest and best when folks interrogate energy constructions, expose uncomfortable truths, and take a tough take a look at the forces that bought us to the absurd precipice we’re on at present, which isn’t precisely what Jimmy Fallon is, uh, identified for.

Which is why I’m not anticipating far more tonight than a few lazy jokes about being unhappy and responsible and panicked, and perhaps a track or two concerning the climate. At the very least, I anticipate James Corden to do carpool karaoke in an EV. (Do I’ve a job in late-night comedy now?) The wealthy humorous folks will get their cookies for “highlighting the issue.” Then, the local weather disaster will nearly actually be allowed to fade to the background as soon as extra whereas exhibits will return to creating jokes about consuming horse paste, or no matter simple joke is in attain within the information that week.