Tea at Trianon: The Death of Late-Night Comedy

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Sunday, August 3, 2025

The Death of Late-Night Comedy

From Direst Line:

Colbert didn’t just lean political—he built his entire post-Report career around Trump-bashing monologues, finger-wagging commentary, and curated guests from one end of the political spectrum. Letterman, once the disheveled king of sarcasm, reinvented himself as an earnest, beard-stroking sage preaching progressive orthodoxy from a Netflix pulpit. Kimmel cried on air about healthcare. Fallon got canceled by the left for… tousling Trump’s hair.

What’s missing? Comedy.

As CBS reportedly shutters The Late Show with Colbert, it’s worth asking—what killed late-night TV? It wasn’t streaming. It wasn’t TikTok. It was politics. Or more precisely, it was the arrogance of hosts who thought half the country didn’t deserve to laugh.

In a recent interview on YouTube with Donny Most—forever Ralph Malph from Happy Days—he recalled a time when television brought people together. Whether it was the warm family humor of The Carol Burnett Show or the gentle satire of Carson’s monologues, the point wasn’t to divide but to connect. Donny noted how Happy Days became a hit only after switching to live-audience tapings—because real people crave real reactions, not ideological applause lines.

Carson knew that. That’s why he didn’t let his personal views dominate the airwaves. It wasn’t cowardice—it was class.

That era is long gone. Today’s late-night is a parody of itself—less Tonight Show, more DNC infomercial. And America has tuned out. Viewership has plummeted. Trust has evaporated. Laughter, once shared, now feels like a partisan badge.

But the good news? Audiences are hungry for something real. Something spontaneous. Something funny. (Read more.)