Tucker Carlson diagnosed the disease that is late-night TV during a conversation with his Fox News colleague Greg Gutfeld.
Carlson concluded on Thursday’s episode of “Gutfeld!” that most modern comedians have become fearful of telling jokes. Not only that, he said, but talk show hosts, such as Jimmy Fallon, Stephen Colbert and Jimmy Kimmel, are mouthpieces for far-left causes, more than they are anything else.
As a result, potential viewers have turned elsewhere for entertainment.
“If you were to offer up a program that was actually funny and not terrified, you could probably beat the existing offerings in late-night comedy,” Carlson told Gutfeld.
Carlson opined that sharing laughter would be simple for Gutfeld’s late-night rivals if they would simply release themselves of the “fear” of offending the American left.
“It’s not a complicated formula,” he said.
He took particular aim at Colbert, whose “The Late Show” put on the equivalent of a Broadway musical promoting vaccines almost two years ago, during a program that is supposed to induce laughter.
For many, it did not.
“Like, if you’re Stephen Colbert — who is talented, I’ve always thought he was talented — and then you become like a shill for Pfizer because you’re so afraid of getting yelled at by your wife or whatever is going on in his personal life,” Carson said.
Carlson concluded once comedians, such as Colbert, are driven by an agenda other than comedy, the outcome is predictable: “You lose.”
“Doesn’t it occur to you, ‘I’m humiliating myself’?’” he asked the CBS host. “’I’m being beaten by Greg Gutfeld!’”
He added the “paranoia” over cancel culture has caused comedians to filter what they say — and deduced the issue goes beyond trying to entertain.
“It’s no longer a free country on the most basic level,” he said. “In other words, people don’t feel free. And that’s really what matters, so there’s that. And anyone who’s willing to say what he really thinks and observe reality as he sees it and not filter it through some sort of internal propaganda machine, that person has to make a conscious effort not to be afraid.”
Carlson added Gutfeld’s rivals are so determined to please only one segment of the population, they have written off attracting viewers.
“Is that fear so overwhelming that they’re willing to destroy their careers?” he asked. “You find yourself, like, making a joke defending Joe Biden, you’re just sucking up to power. Don’t you hate yourself?”
“There’s a huge cost to becoming a b****,” Carlson concluded.
Gutfeld quipped he was glad those who host shows on free broadcast networks have not made the decision to beat him. Doing so would only require them each to set out to attract the largest audience possible.
Anyone who has watched the late-night landscape shift over the last two decades knows the opposite has happened. The disease of so-called progressivism has taken its toll.
When ABC launched “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” in 2003, it was hilarious, crude and it spared no one.
Jay Leno was no Johnny Carson, but he was intellectually miles ahead of where Fallon is or ever has been.
Colbert killed David Letterman’s creation immediately after he took over “The Late Show” in 2015.
Meanwhile, “Gutfeld!” has been besting its broadcast network competition in the ratings since last year. Some have crowned the host the “king” of his genre.
Gutfeld’s cable program has no business beating any of the broadcast shows. Each is available for free every night with the one-time purchase of an antenna.
Each show books guests almost nightly who have millions of fans.
All of them trail a Fox News host whose only advantages are he is relatable and not afraid to be offensive.
Late-night TV used to set out to offend everyone — and most of us who watched it laughed, even when it was our turn to get roasted.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
