Today’s Required Viewing
Larry Wilmore seems to be talking a page out of John Oliver’s book with his new Nightly Show. Unlike the primordial Daily Show ooze that borne each of their shows, Wilmore and Oliver are using their half hours to drill down further into single topics, and in the process are creating something that approaches actual journalism.
Last night’s show was on black fatherhood, and rather than comment on it I would jus encourage everyone to take the time to watch it. I’ve seen this topic covered by actual cable news networks, and what Wilmore presented in his satiric news show puts them all to shame. (Or at least it would if cable news had any shame.)
Watch it here.
Wait, Steve Sailer has a black father!? That is news.Report
Sailer is the classic self-hating African-American.Report
I’ve given up on the nightly show. I was happy that Colbert’s spot was going to someone who would highlight minority voices and minority issues, but the show’s panel structure just doesn’t work for a nightly, half-hour show.
With five people bantering, there’s just not enough time to get to the interesting part of the conversation in the way that Jon Stewart’s one-on-one interviews do reliably. And the panels themselves just don’t have enough chemistry to make for entertaining television.
I’m spoiled by British TV–but British panel shows have figured out how to handle the problems that the Nightly Show is struggling with. I suspect the solution is to have permanent panelists and to film long and cut down.Report
Imo, Maher does a decent job of managing a panel, and he has to do so live. But, to further your point about time & quantity of voices, he has a full hour to work with (and an HBO hour at that), so any given panel is at least twenty to twenty-five minutes – and he breaks it into a three person segment, then a four person one.Report
I disagree, @kolohe . I like Maher’s show because I think he has good guests. But he is needlessly nasty (Really? More Christie-fat jokes?), he talks over people, and he heavily puts his thumb on the scale in favor of whatever his argument is. When the panelists engage with one another, the show is at its best. When Maher is prominently involved, it often goes over the rails.Report
Stewart’s interviews are consistently one of the worst part of the shows. Unless his intent to come in swinging, he’s usually way too sycophantic and accepting of what his guest says as true. For example, the Kennedy vaccine interview or the Bigelow interview on the day that Congressional torture report came out. His best interviews are with comedians because they just riff with each other.Report
And I disagree with this. Sure, Hollywood non-comedian celeb interviews are the normal vacuity shown on the rest of the late night and morning talk show publicity circuit, but Stewart (and Colbert too for that matter) are unique outside of fishin C-Span for interviews with authors of non-fiction books. That they let their guests make their points without too much interference (yes, even Colbert, if you know the schtick and just roll with it) is a point in their favor. And Stewart definitely has the tact, class, and a sense of professionalism that Maher lacks.
(Though it was hilarious in hindsight when everyone dug up the Daily Show interview with Pretraeus’ biographer that occurred a year or so before the affair between them came to light)Report
Stewart’s interview style is that he finds someone with something new and interesting to say, and lets them say it. Even when he disagrees with a guest, he does so by meaningfully engaging with their thesis.
Does that mean that sometimes he lets his guests go unchallenged? Sure. But I much prefer that to the standard approaches of bringing people on that merely reinforce the host’s existing views or just having the host and the interviewee argue past each other.
With the nightly show, when Wilmore disagrees with a guest, he basically just adopts an “agree to disagree” stance and never really engages with what the guest is saying. If he doesn’t really care why so-and-so opposes gay marriage or thinks vaccines cause autism, why bother to invite them on at all?Report
Google Stewart’s interview with Jason Bateman. Piss your pants funny. And they never even really get on topic. Especially enjoyable if you are Jewish or familiar with Jewish culture (Passover in particular).Report
I’ve given up on the nightly show …
Already? Seems kind of hasty. The show’s only been on a couple of weeks. (There’s this thing called a learning curve …)Report
Didn’t realize the show had started already. I’ve got to set the DVR. Really enjoyed this episode.
Interesting that they brought up Sherman. I heard Adam Carolla go on a rant about how of course it was his “girlfriend” who was pregnant, not his wife. Wondered if he ever said such things about Brady and Bridget Moynihan.Report
That’s unfair to Brady; he has kids with his wife too.Report
Well, I could see 71%, but 72% seems a bit high.Report
In the middle of viewing this now.
The first thing that stuck out was the news report giving the “72% of black children are born to unwed mothers” statistic and immediately following it up with the assumption that that meant “that means absent fathers”. Good to see Common contradict that assumption and point out that not being married doesn’t mean the father isn’t around.
So, I checked the US census and found that the proportion of black children raised by single mothers is 48.6% (as compared to 18.6% of white children), and 35% raised by single mothers who never married. That’s still high, obviously, but it adds some nuance to the statistic.Report
On a second look at the census data, the original statistic seems incorrect; 34.5% of black kids have families with married parents who are both present, which means 65.5% (not 71%) do not.Report
You’re better off looking at how many have women as head of household, if you want to know about absentee fathers.
I knew someone, a professional, who was black and never married her significant other. They were together for years on years, and had a kid. Just not married.Report
You’re better off looking at how many have women as head of household, if you want to know about absentee fathers.
“Head of Household”, as in tax filing status? How does that suggest whether or not a father is involved in his kids’ lives?Report