By XAMXAM When Donald Trump decided that Stephen Colbert was an enemy worth destroying, the confrontation followed a familiar Trumpian script. Public insults. Demands for termination. Celebration…

By XAMXAM For a figure who has long thrived on noise, confrontation, and spectacle, Donald Trump has always appeared most comfortable when the room is loud and…

By XAMXAM Comedy has always had a complicated relationship with power. At its best, it punctures pretension; at its worst, it merely flatters the crowd. In recent…

By XAMXAM Late-night television rarely claims the authority of a courtroom or the permanence of a ledger. Its tools are timing and tone, not exhibits and oaths….

By XAMXAM Televised confrontations in American politics tend to reward volume. The sharp elbow, the cutting aside, the viral insult—these are the currencies of a media economy…

By XAMXAM Late-night television is rarely mistaken for a place of reckoning. It is designed for release, not reflection; for laughter that dissolves tension rather than exposes…

By XAMXAM For decades, American late-night television has functioned as a release valve: a place where the day’s excesses are softened into punch lines and the powerful…

By XAMXAM Public humiliation, when it happens, rarely announces itself. It arrives as a pause that lasts too long, a sentence that lands too cleanly, a room…

By XAMXAM Late-night television is designed to release pressure, not create it. The familiar rhythms—band music, applause cues, a host’s genial swagger—signal that whatever follows will be…