Like the Driven Snow

Blogger E suggested in another forum that maybe I'm above blogging, that maybe I've lost my blogo-chops, but fear not loyal reader (I use the singular for obvious reasons), I have not abandoned you. I was out of town over the weekend and precious little has happened since--although, apparently, the grandson of a former Iranian minister told the sitting American President (to his face) that he's nothing more than Cheney's bitch and said president could only muster a chuckle and a graceless exit in response. I guess that's worth blogging about. But the United States' inevitable war with Iran is not what's on my mind today. Less pressing matters await. For instance, what is going on with the Daily Show?

I was watching the other day and Larry Wilmore, "Senior Black Correspondent," came on to talk about Obama's blackness or lack thereof, and it got me thinking, as I have before, what is up with this? How is that a show that butters its bread with the foibles, hypocrisies, and peccadilloes of others continues to be so unapologetically lily-white? And, moreover, instead of making an effort to address its lack of diversity the show just makes light of the issue by bringing in a Senior Black Correspondent to talk about things related to black people--that annoying, knowing, well we can't be racist if we make fun of ourselves this way attitude that I hate. Republished on ColbertNation, but originally posted somewhere else, a comedian recalls a Christmas party conversation with a Daily Show Writer who, when asked about the stunning lack of diversity on the show, said,"We tried a black guy once, but it didn't work out."

Of course, I am going to continue to watch the Daily Show, and continue to marvel at its spot-on mockery of the smug, the lame, and the evil. And of course, as a South Asian person, I was happy to see that Aasif Mandvi had even a bit role on the show, but Jesus Christ, Jon Stewart, you need to get your head out of your ass with this one. You subject us to John Oliver almost nightly--a man who has never told a joke that wasn't followed by the distant chirping of crickets--but you can't hire any real black or Hispanic correspondents for fear that it might not work out? I realize that comedy is an old-boys' network, but so is politics--and time and again the Daily Show has taken politics to task for exactly that reason. As Clarice Starling once said to Hannibal Lecter, "Why don't you turn that high-powered perception at yourself and tell us what you see, or, maybe you're afraid to."