You'd have to be blind not to realize television has a noticeable lack women and people of color in late night right now — and by "noticeable lack," what I really mean is "almost complete and total absence of" — but never has that point been driven home further for me than hearing those words from The Late Show host David Letterman. After all, as a 68-year old white male millionaire, he's basically a member of the exact group of people who have the least to gain from any change to the standard order — so it's particularly telling that Letterman revealed to the New York Times that he feels there was a missed opportunity to replace him on Late Show with a woman or person of color when he leaves the show on May 20.
I thought, well, maybe this will be a good opportunity to put a black person on, and it would be a good opportunity to put a woman. There are certainly a lot of very funny women that have television shows everywhere. So that would have made sense to me as well.
Um yeah, me too! And I bet Chelsea Handler was thinking the same thing! But instead the job went to Stephen Colbert (who I think will do an excellent job, of course, because he is Stephen Colbert), a decision Letterman says he had nothing to do with.
When we sign off, we’re out of business with CBS. I always thought Jon Stewart would have been a good choice. And then Stephen.
Call me crazy, but when even the guy who's done the job for 22 years says we need to shake things up, I think that's a pretty solid indicator that late night television is majorly overdue.
