Samantha Bee moralizes. More than most comedians, even in this grating era of sanctimony, she uses her platform to lecture, to unload political rants with the voice of America’s Moral Authority.
Sometimes it’s funny, usually it’s not. But she’s the latest and greatest in a long line of entertainment industry stars who zealously claim the moral high ground with a sense of confidence substantiated mostly by the approval of other liberals in the media.
That’s why she’s a perfect emblem of the industry’s problem.
Making feminism the foundation of your deliberately didactic routine, then dropping the c-word to describe the first daughter, isn’t a good way to convince people of your credibility. And it’s pretty terrible public relations for the already-narrow movement you purport to represent.
Hollywood’s moral credibility has already been shattered. The past year has clarified what many people already suspected, that the people most intent on using their platform to lecture the rest of us are much better at talking the talk than walking the walk.
It would be less egregious if the worst offenders weren’t also the most eager to lecture others.
Sanctimony kills good comedy. There’s nothing less funny than people taking themselves too seriously. And great comedians rarely have a leg to stand on for good reason, which is their unique willingness to eschew decency in favor of delivering unvarnished truths, without partisan loyalty or favoritism. In the era of Trump, the industry is wavering on this tradition. Throwing stones from a house you acknowledge is glass is much funnier than insisting it isn’t.
If Hollywood could bring itself to drop the sanctimony and find some humility, the more its jokes would land and the more tolerable its lectures would be.
