Comedy is Supposed to be Funny. Late-Night Comedy is not.

I am a lifelong fan of stand-up comedy. I believe in the old adage that laughter is good for the soul. Stand-up comedy, by definition, is supposed to be funny and provoke laughter – knee-slapping, breathtaking laughter. Not get them offended or enraged.

And yes, politicians and stereotypes have been major sources of comedy. We laugh at pain and death – as long as it is not real. We have self-deprecating humor.

In all of it, there is a dark side – when stand-up comedy is weaponized. When so-called comedy is used to advance an agenda rather than simply make people laugh. Comedy is uniting. The misuse of comedy as a weapon is divisive.

That is the problem we have today with the late night so-called comedians. They are not really comedians who make us laugh – who unite us through comedy. They are partisan social and political commentators who misuse humor to divide – appealing to those of similar opinions while offending and demeaning those with whom they do not agree. The humor is hateful and strident – cheap and ugly.

The nasty ones have taken over late night television. They come from the far fringes of both the left and the right. The left dominates because the left dominates television … period. They have names. On the left are Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Kimmel, Jon Stewart, Jimmy Fallon, Seth Meyers, John Oliver, and Bill Maher. On the right are Greg Gutfeld and Jimmy Failla.

The guys on the left are fungible. They could pass around their nasty left-wing scripts, and one would hardly know the difference. They deploy long predictable nasty soliloquies against Trump, Republicans and conservatives as stand-up comedy.

Ironically, the most popular of them is FOX’s Gutfeld. In many ways, I find him the worst of the breed. Yes, his bias tracks more closely with my political views, but his humor of vulgar, extremely repetitious and offensive. His obsession with scatological humor is borderline disturbing. He can hardly do a night without making fun of Nancy Pelosi’s looks, Biden being dead or pooping his pants, the women of The View as cows, and Don Lemon as the butt of unfunny gay jokes.

I don’t find any of them to be very funny. They do not make me laugh. Rather, they make me wonder how late night comedy descended into such humorless decadence. It was not always that way.

The obvious comparison is the late Johnny Carson. Clips from his old programs – featuring an array of old style comedians, such as Rodney Dangerfield, Jonathan Winters, Robin Williams — remain among the most viewed on Facebook and other platforms. That is because the humor is ageless and funny.

The corruption of late-night television humor does not mean good funny stand-up comedy, itself, is dead. No. No. No. There are a lot of really funny guys and gals in comedy clubs and on online platforms. One guy I personally find to be hilarious is Greg Warren – who talks about his days making Jif peanut butter. Then there is Brian Kiley and Andy Huggins — just to name a few.

I hope the drop in ratings for the late-night characters — and the dumping of Colbert – are signs of things to come. Perhaps the media moguls are learning that pushing political propaganda, tedious lectures and shaming in the guise of humor has a shelf life with a “use by” date long past.

I have a dear friend – a New York City bred left-wing Democrat, who spent his career in Hollywood writing for some of the funniest shows on television. He refers to much of what we see and hear today as “cheap humor” – using vulgarity and mean-spirited nastiness to get a shock-value laugh. They may get a chuckle, but not that uncontrolled belly laugh that good comedy produces.

Unfortunately, the current status of late-night stand-up comedy is no laughing matter.

So, there ‘tis.