We regularly divert ourselves mindlessly watching re-runs of late night television shows which over the years that I have addressed the medium are increasingly loaded with political and social innuendo. Perhaps in the early years of television when late night shows were for general consumption; or, what is more probable, were confined to Johnny Carson in the early part of the evening and nut cases thereafter, the comic diet was fairly standard and not designed to hit below the belt. Somewhere along the line however late night TV adopted the same distinguishing credentials as the American public which for convenience is divided between left and right, communists and capitalists, government and freedom. While these oblique divisions succeeded to isolate the good and the bad, the intellects and the Red Necks, neither of them was employed for much beyond the stock superlatives and absurdities (though the persuasion of Democrat or Republican was undeniable). Some of the nuances are less than hints rather outright slurs; but the characterization doesn’t generally capture any more than comic attention and expected alliances. What lately has awakened me is the burgeoning exception. And I have to say, an unanticipated one. It is a piffling but repetitive wade into the murky waters of religion.
