What happened to late-night comedy?

The world of late-night network television has become a perplexingly and distressingly political animal. Where once there was an everyman appeal, peppered with topical eye-rollers, groaners, and well-deserved guffaws, there is now increasingly embittered, partisan hackery.

The offenders are CBS’s Stephen Colbert, NBC’s Seth Myers, and ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel. It’s like the three of them take turns acting as the worst person on the network funnyman beat. Last night, it was apparently Kimmel’s shift.

In reference to the unverified and extremely thin allegations of sexual assault leveled against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, Kimmel said, “I think there’s a compromise here. Hear me out on this. So, Kavanaugh gets confirmed to the Supreme Court, okay. Well, in return, we get to cut that pesky penis of his off in front of everyone.”

The joke, you see, is that genital mutilation can be funny, especially when recommended against a conservative judge. That’s the joke. That people who don’t want to get Kavanaugh confirmed to the Supreme Court should be allowed to — cut off his penis?

I don’t see any point in demanding an apology from Kimmel — he’s just a partisan errand boy anyway, and I’m not going to change his mind. Nor am I suggesting a boycott against ABC. Policing “bad jokes” is a fool’s errand. Leave that sort of moral panic to the Church Ladies.

The only purpose of this article is to ask: What the hell happened to network late-night comedy? It used to be funny, and now it isn’t. It’s heavy on the political sermonizing and very light on the actual comedy.

The Kimmel penis joke is just an objectively lousy and dumb gag. The joke is “Brett Kavanaugh.” The punchline is “penis.” I mean, I guess that’s funny if you’re 14 years old, but still. This is almost as amusing as when Colbert said the only thing President Trump’s “mouth is good for is being Vladimir Putin’s c—k holster.”

These aren’t jokes. These are applause lines for a political rally, and to the extent that they receive approbation, they’re receiving it in the form of political hurrahs.

The transformation of late-night network television from comedy to Democratic and anti-Trump #Resistance propaganda seems like a broader indictment of our culture. It’s not that these men are performing in a vacuum, tossing money directly into a toilet. They’re part of a larger business that responds to market demand. Their ratings aren’t smashing, but they’re still contenders in a crowded and competitive field. We can grouse all we want that the jokes aren’t funny and that we yearn for Johnny Carson, but someone is consuming the Colbert and Kimmel material or else they’d stop making it.

Perhaps this is simply what some people want now before bed: For the man on TV to assure them that their beliefs and values are right and good and correct. This has replaced comedy for them. They’ve become increasingly humorless since the 2016 election, but this helps them feel better about themselves.

If that’s where we are, that’s where we are. Network late-night has apparently succumbed to the Jon Stewart model of comedy, and the only way to go back is if people stop watching.

Until then, at least we still have Conan O’Brien.