“Show Biz kids making movies of themselves. You know they don’t give a F*** about anybody else,” said Steely Dan of Show-Biz Kids.Those of us who have watched once-principled defenders of free expression, such as the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), drift into dormancy can only marvel at their sudden reappearance — this time, to champion the late-night comedian and multimillionaire Jimmy Kimmel.For over a decade, as Washington devised ever subtler and more bureaucratized ways to stifle dissent, these supposed guardians of liberty were conspicuously absent. Now, having been effectively AWOL on press freedom, they return to the stage with a flourish, brandishing a petition signed by hundreds of fearless Hollywood celebrities, courageously demanding justice for one of their own. One can’t decide whether to laugh or seethe. As Juvenal observed of his own age: It is difficult not to write satire..OLDCORN: The public square is for everyone — not just the ‘tolerant’ Left.I first encountered this spirit of conformity not on a screen, but in the seminar room, which ought to have been a marketplace of ideas — a place where convictions were tested by counterarguments and where humility was cultivated through dialogue. But gradually, the search for truth gave way to orthodoxy. Students learned to craft essays that flattered the prevailing dogma, while faculty meetings devolved into rituals of safe assent. Once the conclusion is preordained, discussion is no longer inquiry — it is performance.One incident still stays with me. During a faculty meeting, a colleague calmly proposed that we collect the “offending” books from our library and toss them onto a bonfire. She was not speaking metaphorically. The suggestion was made in earnest, delivered with the bureaucratic detachment of someone proposing a new parking policy. (Old joke: What is a university? A collection of intellectual entrepreneurs united by a common concern for parking.).But what shocked me more than the proposal itself was the reaction: not gasps of outrage and horror, but thoughtful nods, as though this were just another item on the agenda to be voted upon. The books were never burned, but the lesson was unmistakable. Once ideological conformity takes hold, the leap from silencing to burning is alarmingly short. Heine’s grim prophecy still holds: “Where they burn books, they will ultimately burn people.”That same spirit of conformity has moved from the academy into the wider culture, and nowhere is this more evident than in late-night television. Once, these shows thrived on irreverence and surprise. Johnny Carson could crack a joke at anyone’s expense, including his own. Early Letterman enjoyed subverting the typical conventions of the talk-show format. There was a lightness, a playfulness — a feeling that comedy was about exposing pretension, not reinforcing it..OLDCORN: No, we don’t ‘honour martyrs'.But today, the Show-Biz Kids have reshaped late-night TV in their own image. Their “jokes” are predictable moral judgments, delivered with a smirk and punctuated by canned laughter. Instead of humour that disarms, we get sermonizing with punchlines. Instead of satire that unsettles, we get lectures that flatter. The result isn’t comedy but catechism. Ultimately, the comedy isn't in the punchline but in the smug self-righteousness of the hosts.The problem is not that comedy engages politics. Lenny Bruce, Richard Pryor, and George Carlin were profoundly political, but their humour risked offending everyone, regardless of party affiliation. They were not afraid to cut across expectations, to make the audience uncomfortable, to expose hypocrisy wherever it lived. .The Show-Biz Kids, by contrast, aim only at the designated enemy, and always in the same predictable way. What they call “speaking truth to power” is, in reality, the enforcement of consensus. The only thing they mock is the ideas of people who think differently from them.Comedy, like scholarship, diminishes without humility. Humility is the awareness that we do not know everything, that our motives are mixed, and that our victories are only partial and temporary. It moderates our judgments and stops ridicule from turning into cruelty. Without humility, humour becomes weaponized disdain. That is why much of late-night feels not just predictable but also joyless. It is not laughter at the human condition but sneering at the chosen other..WENZEL: Teaching our kids the wrong lesson.The irony is that, like the academy, late-night has become boring. Students quickly learned what views would pass muster, and so their essays became predictable performances. In precisely the same way, the monologues of late-night hosts now unfold like ritual liturgies. The conclusion is preordained, the applause line obvious, the performance unvarying. It is dull, incurious, and suffused with self-importance.I tuned out years ago, not because I object to politics in comedy, but because I object to the late-night comics' absence of imagination. What was once sharp wit eventually became sermonizing with punchlines. Instead of laughter that deflates, I found only sneers that confirm. Instead of satire that reveals uncomfortable truths, I found lectures that rehearse fashionable ones..The night I truly realized the game was up was when I watched a famous TV host invite a young football player onto his stage. The young man was experiencing a moment of fame due to his immense physical size. Instead of engaging in a genuine chat or friendly teasing, the host began mocking this young man’s intelligence, to the delight of the audience. It was cringeworthy. The audience laughed, but the laughter was cruel; it sounded hollow. Comedy had become something smaller and meaner.The Show-Biz Kids were running the show..BAROOTES: Alberta deserves a voice, not a checkbox: Trudeau’s token Senate appointment fails the test.The decline of late-night programming is not an isolated trend, but rather part of a broader cultural shift: curiosity has been replaced by conformity, dialogue by dogma, and humility by self-righteousness. The Show-Biz Kids will go on performing their tired routine, mistaking conformity for courage and applause for truth. They imagine themselves fearless, but the only thing they’ve become is a parody of their own pretensions. It is smugness dressed as satire.
