Slate - "The Weirdest Dream. Why it was such a tricky high wire act for late-night comedians to

cover Trump’s win."

http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/2016/11/why_it_was_such_a_high_wire_act_for_late_night_comedians_to_cover_trump.html

"In the days after Donald Trump was elected president, late-night TV struggled with the rest of us to come to terms with the new reality. In his monologue the day after, a rattled Stephen Colbert asked repeatedly if he was dreaming or on drugs. Jimmy Kimmel said he’d had “the weirdest dream last night,” that we had elected “the guy who used to host The Apprentice.” Seth Meyers delivered an emotional monologue addressed to “the first female president,” whomever she might be. Samantha Bee, full of cathartic rage, joked acidly that “the X-factor that none of the forecasts accounted for” was her own bad luck: In voting for Hillary Clinton, she had jinxed the whole election. On Saturday Night Live, Kate McKinnon, dressed as Clinton but stripped of the voice and the mannerisms, sang a raw rendition of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah.” Only Conan O’Brien seemed free of existential angst. It was a “strange day,” he said, but the country had “been here before” and ought to be proud of its functioning democracy.

The broad spectrum of responses was a window into the particular challenge of covering Trump’s win as a late-night comedian. In some ways, these shows seemed to be applying a formula minted by Jon Stewart in the immediate wake of 9/11: When tragedy strikes, you take a moment to gravely register it, channeling the mood of a shaken nation. But unlike 9/11, the election of Donald Trump wasn’t 9/11. About half the country disagrees that Trump’s ascendance is a problem, let alone a tragedy. And if there is a tragedy to speak of, it is cultural in nature: the failure of one segment of the population to communicate its values to another.

We will be unpacking that cultural calamity for some time to come. Did our left-leaning culture drive right-leaning Americans to “register dissent” at the voting booth, as Ross Douthat suggested might happen? Did it “normalize” Trump, presenting him first as a hapless wannabe and then as a lovable schmuck, but never as a credible threat? Whatever the role our culture played in the election of Donald Trump—the second pop culture figure to become president, after Ronald Reagan, and the only one never to have served in government—you can’t pin the blame on any one artifact, performer, or institution. Not the “hectoring” Samantha Bee (Douthat’s phrase), not “professional sycophant” Jimmy Fallon. Not Hollywood, not Hamilton, not even Jeff Zucker. No one alone caused Trump, and no one alone is responsible for reversing the damage. No one alone can fix it.

But if you’re on national TV at 11 p.m. on Nov. 8 as the results are coming into focus, or midnight the day after as reality is sinking in, or that Saturday night as protests pound through cities, you have to say something. Do you tell jokes? Do you mourn? Do you apologize? As a liberal comedian charged with reaching mass America, how do you establish the seriousness of the moment and convey your own grief without presuming a consensus among your audience that may not exist?"

snip

A very worthwhile read