Late-night hosts speak Truth to Power only when their party allows it.
And, in the case of Graham Platner, they never got the Bat signal. Most late-night talkers simply ignored one of the most cartoonishly awful candidates in modern memory.
- The Nazi tattoo
- The social media attacks on fellow service members
- The sexting allegations
- The sexual and phsyical abuse allegations
- The far-far-far-Left political views
- The faux biography (some oyster farmer)
- Did we mention the Nazi tattoo?
Some, like the increasingly wobbly Jon Stewart, ran defense for Platner. Yes, a Jewish political satirist had little to say about his 18-year-old Nazi tattoo. Maybe Stewart should have stayed retired. His Comedy Central comeback has been one faceplant after another.
You can't make it up. And, if you did, who would believe it?
Now, the roof may be falling in on Platner's campaign. Word leaked early this week that Platner was cancelling multiple campaign appearances. Then, hours later, more news leaked that a second alleged victim said he had sexually assaulted her.
It could be all over by the time you read this story. And late-night TV played a role in propping Platner up, much like Kimmel and co. did by insisting that President Joe Biden was fit as the proverbial fiddle.
Until they couldn't hide the truth any more.
Stewart played footsie with Platner on his weekly podcast, but he couldn't muster much more than that on his "Daily Show" gig. His colleague Desi Lydic brought up a wee bit of the Platner Scandal Circus, but she quickly shifted to a nutty Colorado Republican. (And to be fair, Victor Marx deserves all the ribbing late-night can muster).
And it's not just the landscape's hard-Left hacks. Jimmy Fallon, who leans to the Left but lacks the venom Kimmel and co. deliver, ignored Platner in his monologues. That's according to a Google News search on the two names.
Why does it matter? The reasons are obvious and twofold. Political satirists are supposed to hold candidates accountable and make sure the worst of the worst never make it to Election Day.
Plus, if modern Democrats feared late-night hosts and their nightly monologues, they may find candidates with slightly fewer flaws than Platner. Which, on paper, would mean literally every other candidate on the Democrats' farm team. That, in turn, would actually help them at the voting booth.
A separate inconvenient truth? "Saturday Night Live" is on its annual summer break. Even if the recent news broke with "SNL" in regular rotation, the show would either skip the subject entirely or use it to savage the GOP.
Sound crazy? Kimmel did just that weeks ago.
The "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" host showed pretzel-like twists to turn Platner's Nazi tattoo scandal into a GOP problem.
Either way, the media soft-pedaled the drip-drip-drip accusations against Platner, with some downplaying the Nazi tattoo while others suggesting his flaws made him more "relatable" and "blue collar."
Man alive.
Either way, late-night clowns embarrassed themselves anew by not skewering Platner early and often. Now, with his campaign collapsing, they'll only get one more chance to ignore him anew.
Here's betting they take it.
