Larry Wilmore On Bill Maher
If Jimmy Carter is our best ex-President…
Larry Wilmore is our best ex-talk show host.
I’m a fan of Jon Stewart but I rarely watched the “Daily Show.” However I’m addicted to John Oliver’s “Last Week Tonight,” wherein the British comedian speaks truth to power via research, a sharp contrast to the opinions bloviated on all the supposed hard news stations. I do believe these late night news/comedy programs have great influence. Sure, not everybody watches them, but we’re all looking for gurus, we’re all looking for explanations, and in a world where all the straight news outlets got it wrong and we’ve lost faith in the purveyors, why not believe in comedians who seem closer to you and me and are not busy cozying up to elected officials, thinking access is everything. Remember when musicians were outsiders? Now that role is being played by comedians. And never forget, it was a quip at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner that got Trump to run. Nothing hurts more than a joke that hits home. The harder you laugh, the truer it is.
So, if Oliver could break out from the “Daily Show,” couldn’t Wilmore?
Can’t say I watched him much, but he was too busy being funny.
He wasn’t funny on Bill Maher’s program.
Obama was too busy being Jackie Robinson, so fearful of being the angry black man that he didn’t stand up and get intense when he should have. In light of the ascendance of Bernie Sanders and the election of Donald Trump we must now acknowledge we live in a new era where people can handle both the truth and edge. Of course, Trump trades in subterfuge, but his acolytes believe it, and despite committing one faux pas after another, touching the third rail again and again, he won.
If you watched last Friday’s “Real Time” you saw that Wilmore was not champing at the bit. He waited for the holes and inserted well-reasoned truth in a show that’s often too nice, as if we’re all friends here and anybody living in Trump’s America knows we are not, we are utterly divided.
It was like Wilmore was chucking a spear into a Girl Scout camp.
Oops, that’s an Al Campanis moment. I can’t put “spear” and a black man in the same sentence. But Trump proved I can. But the point is we’re so busy trying not to offend that we rarely speak the truth.
Wilmore spoke the truth to Milo Yiannopolous.
Bill Maher is taking a victory lap, saying he was the catalyst for Milo’s demise. I believe he’s overstating the case. For Bill didn’t challenge him the way…
Larry Wilmore did.
It’s just that some people are stars and some people are not. And when someone fails publicly we believe they do not have it, that something extra that allows you to succeed on television. But the truth is Larry Wilmore was miscast, he was so busy trying to be late night funny on Comedy Central that he buried his essence, which is to be razor sharp, chucking that spear.
He uses the F-word and takes down Milo so efficiently all you can do is sit there and smile. End of story. Case closed.
One moment can turn you into a star.
It happened to Amy Schumer, roasting Charlie Sheen.
And it happened to Larry Wilmore Friday night.
I just finished reading “Norwegian By Night,” by Derek B. Miller. Written in English but originally published in Norwegian, there’s a lot of wisdom in this genre book, and none struck me more than the following:
“‘I remember when Harry James hit that C note above high C at Carnegie Hall in 1938. It was Benny Goodman’s orchestra. No one was sure if jazz deserved that level of respectability – if those musicians were serious enough to deserve Carnegie Hall. And then that one note. The city went wild.'”
There you have it. Your brilliance can shine and you can close somebody instantly.
I was closed by Larry Wilmore Friday night. He deserves another chance. He needs to be used properly. As the voice of wisdom and reason. We need someone serious who does not appear biased, who has no dog in the hunt, who can throw down lightning and stop us in our tracks with their veracity. Someone who can wow us and entertain us at the same time. Someone who can wait his turn, but can kill ’em when he gets the opportunity.
Furthermore, he looks just like my father, it’s uncanny.
P.S. Be sure to hang in with this clip to 4:16, where Larry tells Milo to go…
