Now, I don't know if you get all the news here in Nashville. I may say something that's very upsetting to many of you. The good thing about doing topical comedy is you look like you're more intelligent than you are. Well, let's go to the news and see what we can unfurl there. You have to be smarter than the first thought that everyone had. I'm being told that I don't have an earpiece. If something happens at three in the afternoon and you're on stage at eight o'clock at night and you can turn that into a joke - that's part of the high. It'd be weird I didn't make a joke the day of a tragedy. Sometimes when I'm at home late at night on Twitter I think of something and I say, "I can end it all right now "with these two little thumbs." North Korea conducted what they claim was a successful test of their biggest nuclear warhead yet, so congrats to them - I'm glad they're finally figuring that out. It's really... Will someone please tell Kim Jong-un they like his new glasses and he looks like he lost weight so he doesn't kill everybody? When it comes to comedy, you look for something that people know about or are talking about and you want to give your take on it. When you do topical humour, it goes right to the brain and the heart and the stomach all the same time. You know, they reintroduce the McRib every (BLEEP) year. It's not big news. The power of topical humour is everybody's on the same page. It is already primed and they're laughing already. So then your joke has rocket fuel in it. The best comedy feels novel, like you've never heard it before. And, you know, the things that are happening in the headlines give rise to brand-new jokes. NEWSREEL: We interrupt this broadcast to bring you this important bulletin from the United Press. Flash - the White House announces Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour. World War II was the most uniting war in the history of the United States. So it was natural that the biggest comedian in America would participate in the war effort. I'd like to stop the show for just a few minutes here and explain exactly why we're here. We want you to buy extra war bonds. When the war started, Bob Hope really became the voice of America. People turned to him to make jokes about what was going on. He was not the first topical comedian but what Bob did was take that topical monologue and add to it the vaudeville rhythms, the joke-telling rhythms. Thank you. How do you do? This is Bob. This is a Bob "command performance" Hope telling each Nazi that's in Russia today that CRIMEA doesn't pay. LAUGHTER It was a very dark time generally, but Bob could always shrug his shoulders and say, "Let's tackle this. "All right. Let's talk about it." And somewhere in talking about it, he'd find a laugh. And, boy, that helps. Up here, a Marilyn Monroe calendar isn't a luxury ` it's a necessity. That topical kind of monologue was something brand-new. It seems like a very simple thing but that's what Bob Hope really innovated. ARCHIVE: It takes a lot to mount a big show. Long hours deep into the night, constantly revising the script. Revisions made necessary by last-minute changes in a changing world. Bob Hope was the first guy to utilise an actual staff of writers to give you topical material of the day. He really did invent the idea of the comedian being the head writer, the managing editor, and having a bunch of writers. The traditions of stand-up comedy in the '50s were still really derived from vaudeville. You know, those performers like Bob Hope had nothing more in their mind than just getting laughs. And that was plenty. The guy who really came along and changed all that was Mort Sahl. Richard Nixon's running for Governor of California. And I realise sometimes the shows are taped ahead. I want this material to be topical. And he'll be running for something, no matter when this show is on. LAUGHTER Mort Sahl was the first person to talk like a human being on stage. It wasn't schmaltzy. He did for comedy what James Dean and Marlon Brando did for acting, which is he humanised it. I have to report to you that... ..the largest news last week was the Soviet spaceman was invited to lunch with the Queen, as you know. Just to put your minds at rest, I probably will not say anything about the Queen. LAUGHTER She hasn't mentioned me, has she? He just came out with a newspaper. And he reacted in live time to the news as he was reading it, which is a real high-wire act. Bob Hope rather famously said, "You know, you got to always "balance your humour or you're going to offend somebody." Mort did not care. I'm not the most tolerant guy in the world. I'm very intolerant. That's the basis of the act. The act is a statement of a lone guy in rebellion. That's why people mistakenly call it negative. It's mainly me. I don't talk about the news. I'm a victim of the news. The country was ready for something different. It's almost like Mort Sahl led a revolution that people didn't even know they needed. Mort, are you really a bad guy? All I am is a Western Union messenger and sometimes there's bad news in the wire. But that's not my fault I only work at the office. Mort Sahl influenced this whole generation of coffee house comedians like Lenny Bruce, Richard Pryor, George Carlin, whereas Bob Hope with his large writing staff influenced the format of the late-night comedy show. Heeeeere's Johnny! It'll be a good night. I just saw Bob Hope backstage. We were talking. You know, it's really a wonderful thrill standing next to one of greatest comedians in the entire world. And I'm sure Bob appreciates it. LAUGHTER If you were looking for not just a take on the news but the actual news, because I wasn't reading anything other than the sports and the comics, Johnny Carson was where you would go. And I saw the headline in the National Enquirer this week. The headline article was, "How eating the right foods can "increase your IQ." Isn't that risky for the Enquirer? I mean, they could lose all their readership. LAUGHTER When Johnny Carson would mock something that was in the public eye everybody was in on it. He was the most powerful man in Hollywood because he could kill you with one joke. Somebody told Vice President George Bush that Jesse Jackson was coming to the White House, and Bush says, "Good, maybe he'll autograph my Thriller album." LAUGHTER You wanted to hear what Johnny will say about anything in the news; you don't so much care what other comedians say about it. "Let's see what Johnny'll say." In the paper today, a woman in Michigan, I don't know the city, she was arrested for soliciting sexual favours. That's where they put in the paper - sexual favours - for spaghetti dinners. LAUGHTER You can't make this kind of stuff up. Apparently, she never asked a man for money. All she wanted was... LAUGHTER ..a spaghetti dinner. My question - technically, wouldn't that make her a pasta-tute? LAUGHTER Ho-ho! Our Close Up this morning - the end of an era. After ruling late-night television for 30 years, Johnny Carson steps down tonight. And so it has come to this. I'm one of the lucky people in the world. I found something I always wanted to do and I have enjoyed every single minute of it. I bid you a very heartfelt goodnight. APPLAUSE It's certainly true that with Johnny out, a vacuum was created. The big decision that's had the entertainment industry buzzing is due this week - that, of course, is the fate of NBC late-night stars Jay Leno and David Letterman. The Tonight Show, without Johnny Carson as the regular host, made its debut last night. Jay Leno emerged from behind the curtain. I don't care if you laugh. I got the job. Don't matter to me. LAUGHTER Look at this. They're getting more press than the President. So start up your remote controls. A late-night race is about to begin. Jay was a brilliant stand-up. He continued the tradition of Johnny. He had a big group of monologue writers. That was the main writing on that show. He was writing the best topical jokes that anybody could write. Democratic candidate Bill Clinton said he is also troubled by the amount of sex portrayed on television. Clinton says where he comes from, sex is a deeply personal matter between a candidate and his campaign volunteers. Jay is more Bob Hope in the sense of "set up punch line, set up punch line", and he would tap into exactly the best joke of whatever happened that day. And of course the big story in Hollywood is still The Fugitive. WHOOPING All right. But enough about Michael Jackson? Ya know... Jay made the jokes the joke. Dave was doing the other side of jokes. He wanted the laugh he wanted. These last two jokes are the intellectual property of NBC. Who would have thought you would ever hear the words 'intellectual property' and 'NBC' in the same sentence? There wasn't that much emphasis on that monologue for Dave because when we started on Late Night, we weren't allowed to do a monologue. We called them opening remarks because if you called them a monologue and there were too many of them, you would have stepped on Johnny's toes. Now, with that mind, let's continue with the opening remarks. It was just a little off. It looked like a talk show, kind of. Sometimes he wore sneakers, which was weird. And they talked about the events of the day to a certain extent. But it also was more focused on weirdness than on the newspaper. SOUTHERN ACCENT: Dave is passin' out ham. LAUGHTER Dave was a very New York-centred show, so Jay could be Monica Lewinsky and OJ trial, and Dave could be like... "There was a squirrel today in the park." You know, just some bizarre, offbeat thing. You're not just going to get monologue jokes about the front page. It's whatever Dave wants to do. And sometimes it still seemed like a cable access show. Like, why is he throwing a watermelon off a building? I think that's an important consideration for all of us. Believe me, ma'am, you've come to the right place. You don't tune into Letterman to see what's going on in the country today. You would have tuned in to Jay to see that. And that's the big difference. Comedy of character in personality and then a great joke teller. You don't like who Dave has on, you don't like who I have on... Now you can click around and then say, "Why don't we go back to Jay? "Oh, there's something I might have missed." I found they both evolved their style. They came out of the Carson thing, and the first instinct is to kind of sort of do it like that, and then their personalities emerged and they did their own versions of it. The host plays with the structure. But you need the structure. Without it, you don't have comedy. People like when they know what the rules are, and then it's what you do with those rules. How do you begin deciding how you're going to be different? Make no mistake about it. I will be fired from this job. It's just a matter how long it's going to take. I don't know. I really... I don't think you can invent anything altogether new. I'm sure you've heard - Angelina Jolie filed for divorce from Brad Pitt, and of course all the celebrity gossip magazines are claiming victory. You know, they broke this story. They broke the story every week for the last 11 years... over and over and over again. LAUGHTER VOICEOVER: There are certain things that I don't think will ever go away. People are always going to want to hear jokes about the news of the day. It's... This is very exciting for me. I didn't really watch late-night television before I started doing it. And I then didn't watch it when I was doing it. I just put things in to entertain myself. It's great day for America, everybody! VOICEOVER: One of the real problems with broadcast television is trying to make a show, you know, which was a broadcast, which was OK for everybody. It seems like... It seems an almost impossible job. Hosting the Tonight Show has been a fulfilment of a lifelong dream for me. And I just want to say to the kids out there watching, "You can do anything you want in life." Yeah. Unless Jay Leno wants to do it, too. LAUGHTER All of them do some amount of a news segment just because it's already been established. It's become a way to consume current events. This jerk left duffel bags on the street, and two of the bombs were discovered by thieves snatching bags. LAUGHTER Because, as all New Yorkers know, if you see something, steal something. There's seriously too many late-night shows. Everyone's talking about the same thing. And you're really just trying to put it in your host's voice instead of sounding like everyone else. Of course, I wouldn't be here tonight if it weren't for the previous Tonight Show hosts. I want to say thank you to Steve Allen, Jack Paar, Johnny Carson, Jay Leno, Conan O'Brien and Jay Leno. LAUGHTER We are delighted to be back as a regular series. But to those of you who wrote in that you hated our pilot show... ..wait till you see this one! That Was The Week That Was was the innovator. That was a show that set forward you can make the current news funny and you can do so in a hip way. With the candidacy of Senator Barry Goldwater, the Republican Party is on the way back. And who knows, one day it may even go forwards. LAUGHTER The sensibility was more tame, in a sense, more controlled, more dry. It was witty but it wasn't really challenging the power structure. Our top story tonight... President Ford is finally... MAN REPEATS, SHOUTING ..over that stubborn week-long cold. Before Saturday Night Live, everything was so schmaltzy. Saturday Night Live was the first show that came along that had a sensibility of people who had grown up on TV - it was making fun of TV. This idea, satirising the news, we needed it. Vietnam was going on. We'd just been through Watergate. The idea that we could laugh at the people who were making the news is a pretty nice formula. Let's take a look at the top story, shall we? Anwar Sadat buys himself an inflatable child. This story and more coming up on Weekend Update. Weekend Update initially was about irreverence. It was about a middle finger to the powers that be. For an on-the-spot report, let's go live to Laraine Newman at the Blaine Hotel. Laraine? Chevy, I'm standing... VOICEOVER: Update was cathartic for people that saw the hypocrisy in the establishment. I don't think people took Update seriously. It was a relief. First man to walk on the moon, Neil Armstrong, lost a finger when he jumped from a truck and caught his wedding ring on a barn door in his suburban Cincinnati home. While jumping off the truck, the former astronaut was quoted as saying, "One small step for man. "A giant...arghhh! "Arrghhh!" Jane. It was kind of a parody of a newscast. And it was a joke basket, that's what it was. You know. But it became sort of less and less that way. It became more personalised as it went on, and much less about a character doing the news. By the time you get to Dennis Miller, it was Dennis Miller, and it wasn't about character; it was about them speaking their minds. New York's St Patrick's Day parade was held yesterday and for the first time in the parade's history, a homosexual contingent marched. So it is a Gaelic thing. Now... LAUGHTER Every anchor has brought their own personality to it, so it's this thing that is both constant and constantly changing. I'm Norm Macdonald and this is the Fake News. Times have changed since I first sat behind this desk. For example, I used to be the only pretty blonde woman reading the Fake News. Now there's a whole network devoted to that. New is such a joke in and of itself now that I can see why things like Weekend Update have survived. The thought of funny news was what made it so appealing back when news was serious. Now that news is entertainment, you're watching Weekend Update for news. It's probably not great that that transition happened. It probably should have stayed... The news should kept getting better and better. But Weekend Update definitely made a transition into the news. There is a growing trend among some parents toward home-schooling children because they believe that mandated vaccinations for public schools are unsafe. This is expected to lead to another new trend - dying of polio. They have that opportunity to tap into things that are happening right this second and cutting through the bullshit of it in a way that the regular news can't do. The Daily Show with Jon Stewart arrives on the scene when the traditional evening news is starting to deteriorate. Let the healing begin. It's headlines. All of a sudden it was what was the beginning of a 24/7 news cycle. You take the form now because everybody was beginning to understand the form and satirise it. In 1993 Jordan retired for the first time, saying he'd had enough of the NBA grind and needed more time with his family. After spending more time with his family, he quickly decided he hadn't had enough of the NBA grind. When Jon took over The Daily Show, it was a much different show. It was much more driven by pop culture and parroting broadcasting. But over time, Jon really put his laser focus on real issues. Welcome to our coverage of the Democratic National Convention from Boston. It's our first night of coverage. The convention kicked off last night. Any network can bring you news as it happens. But here at The Daily Show, we have taken yesterday's proceedings and digested it, processed it, broken it down to give you highly concentrated, what we call, turds of wisdom. The news can be so heavy, it can be so intense. It's actually very nice to have someone analyse things from a different point of view. He became people's go-to guy to explain the world. You'd watch the news, then you'd watch Jon Stewart. Or wouldn't watch the news and watch Jon Stewart. He had to remind you, "I'm not the news." There are a lot of people out there who do turn to you for... Not for news. Well, they... For an interpretation. A comedic interpretation To be informed. They actually think they're coming closer to the truth with your... Now, that's a different thing. That's credibility. He was able to show you and make you hear what you wish you would have thought of. "Oh, man. Why didn't I think about it?" Or, "That's hilarious. I never thought of it like that." He grew a stronger and stronger conscience, then felt a responsibility I think to carry it out. But he always slammed a huge joke in there. Nothing will change. With the same people and the same policies that got... ..us into the status quo. Another Latin word, status quo. And it stands for "man, the middle-class everyday Americans "are really getting taken for a ride". LAUGHTER APPLAUSE AND CHEERING You know, that's the kind of talk you normally hear right before the pharmacist says, "Ma'am, you've got to leave the Walgreens." LAUGHTER It wasn't really about politics; it was about moral outrage. That's what made the show so... so riveting and fun. Bullshitters haven gotten pretty lazy. And their work is easily detected. Looking for it is kind of a pleasant way to pass the time. Like an 'I Spy' of bullshit. So I say to you tonight, friends, the best defence against bullshit is vigilance. NEWS: Police and fire units are being dispatched to the scene as we speak. HORN TOOTS We've got a plane that's crashed into the World Trade Center. Comedy seems pretty inconsequential in the face of a grave tragedy. The whole tone, of course, of the country changed. Naturally, comedy became difficult. There was a time in the days after that where people didn't know what to do. The late-night talk shows didn't know how to behave. There was almost a moratorium on comedy. It's terribly sad here in New York City. Naturally, the whole tone of these shows had changed, so there was very little comedy for the next several weeks. Most of those late-night shows booked news people like Brian Williams or Tom Brokaw. They did not book comedians. VOICEOVER: 9/11 was obviously a dark, dark moment for our country but it was an important moment for SNL. The words spoken at 11.31 every Saturday night are "live from New York". So this was back yard. So it was almost an incumbent upon Saturday Night Live to play some sort of role in the nation's healing. The question is, when is it OK to laugh again? On behalf of everyone here, I just want to thank you all for being here tonight, and especially you, Mr Mayor. Thank you, Lorne. Thank you very much. Having our city's institutions up and running sends a message that New York City is open for business. Saturday Night Live is one of our great New York City institutions. And that's why it's important for you to do your show tonight. Can we be funny? LAUGHTER Why start now? LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE It was that Saturday night we decided, OK, we're going to be able to do this again. And they slowly brought us through it. I think it's one of the finest moments in SNL history. Live... from New York... WHOOPING ...it's Saturday night! Right after 9/11, I had to fly to New York to roast Hugh Hefner for Comedy Central. And we didn't know what was going to happen. The question becomes "how do you go about joking again?" You're living in "too soon" territory. LAUGHTER The one and only Gilbert Gottfried! Tragedy and comedy are roommates. If you joke about a tragedy you're kind of beating the tragedy away. So I did a joke. I said, "Today I'll be using my Muslim name Hassan bin-Laid." There's no black or white answer to when it's time to laugh and when it's time to laugh at. I wanted to do a joke that totally is over the line. And I said I had to leave early. "I have to catch a flight to LA. "I couldn't get a direct flight. "We have to make a stop at the Empire State Building." I lost an audience as big as anyone in the history of performing. Somebody said, "Too soon!" And that didn't slow Gilbert down. That pushed him to a whole new place. The father starts fucking his wife. The sister starts fingering the dog's asshole... He started to tell the Aristocrats joke, which is like comedic jazz. It's a licence to offend just for the fuck of it. And I remember laughing so hard that I was sort of crying. It was just such a release and it was just what we needed. It couldn't have been a better time, a better place, or a better person telling it. If you missed any portion, I'll repeat it! It absolutely had to be done. Somebody had to stand up in front of the comedy community and say, "It's OK," when it's not OK. But those words must be spoken. APPLAUSE God bless you! God bless America! I thought what Gilbert did that night was heroic. And I think ultimately you could say whatever you want to say about whether it was appropriate or not, it made a lot of people in that room feel very good. And that's that. I don't believe in "too soon". I'll let you in on a little secret amongst comedians - the minute someone says something is off limits, all we focus on is, "How do I do jokes about that?" One of the most striking choices in those post-9/11 days and weeks was the Onion. They released an issue dedicated to the 9/11 attacks. So, at first this seems like a terrible, terrible idea. But when you look at what the writers of the Onion did, you realise their brilliance. They were able to find some sort of common ground. What are we all feeling? And were able to find humour in that as opposed to making light of something really terrible. And it was this amazingly cathartic moment. It's a beautiful statement about the human species that eventually we will make a joke about everything, because it means that we are defying depression and loss and death and entropy to live. Time will give you the breath to do that. I like to test myself by joking about horrible things and nothing but. One of my favourite ways to test myself - I make jokes about tragedies the day that they happen. I don't believe in too soon. I'm on a tight schedule. LAUGHTER "Too soon" is tricky. Sometimes it's too soon. But not if the joke's good enough. If the joke's good enough, it's never too soon. Everyone has their own version of that, but the comedian does not decide. The audience decides whether it was acceptable or not. LAUGHTER Another Malaysian Airlines plane... Too soon, Jay! Too soon, baby! My problem is, it's not too soon; it's I just wish I could think of shit faster. There is a graph that goes in my head that the more offensive the subject, the funnier it has to be. Like I was saying the other day, you can figure out how bad a person you are by how soon after September 11th you masturbated, like how long you waited. LAUGHTER And for me it was between the two buildings going down. So I have the feeling that... LAUGHTER I had to do it, I had to. Otherwise they win. That's the way I was looking at it. It was a strange time for all of us. If you giggle, if a guffaw takes place, you're busted. Because something made you have that involuntary reaction. In a way, life is really hard. You have to get back to silly at some point. Or life is even harder. That Boston Marathon was scary. That was scary, man. Just think about it. You've been training for a year. You finally get to the finish line... ..and somebody screams, "Run!" LAUGHTER For the benefit of those who went to sleep last night, watch this. Chris Rock, arguably one of America's funniest comedians, a former Saturday Night Live alumnus, was on last night hosting and he did this monologue. Very uncomfortable. You finally get to the finish line and somebody screams, "Run!" LAUGHTER I can't stand it when the left is telling people that their jokes aren't funny, you shouldn't be allowed to say that. I don't like political correctness. I'm not saying you shouldn't be allowed to say it. Not funny at all. Because the news cycle in the internet age demands something fresh and new at all times. Frequently, a comedian who's commenting on the news becomes the news. He said what? 30 Rock star Tracy Morgan must have rocks in his head. Sarah Silverman was on Conan O'Brien and she told a joke. It offended certain members of the Asian community. Trevor Noah went from relative obscurity to landing one of the most prestigious posts in late-night TV. It didn't take long for his tweet to be condemned. Everybody thinks you have to be burned at the stake if you've said something that is deemed to be offensive by however many thousand people on Twitter have decided it's offensive. I really think that we're at a point in this country where people really need to take the thumb out of their mouth and grow up a little bit and realise there's a lot bigger problems out there than what a comedian did a joke about. You have to feel the same way. Yes, I do this joke about... the way people need to justify their cell phone - "I need to have it with me, because people are so important." I said, "Well they don't seem very important, the way you scroll "through them like a gay French king." LAUGHTER There's a creepy PC thing out there that really bothers me. The rise of this new politically correct trend is the cover story in the new issue of the Atlantic magazine. The protective atmosphere on many campuses has become so charged that comedian Jerry Seinfeld won't perform for some students. An opinion echoed by Chris Rock. You know, when Chris Rock, Jerry Seinfeld, and Larry the Cable Guy say you have a stick up your ass... ..you don't have to wait for the x-rays to come back. VOICEOVER: People are constantly looking for ways to get offended. Yeah, I say things that are offensive sometimes. I'm working. I'm trying it out. Too soon for the Celine Dion jokes? LAUGHTER There goes my Michael J Fox routine. LAUGHTER I'm not making fun of Michael J Fox. That's shaky ground right there. LAUGHTER A comedy club is like a gym for comedians. It's where people experiment, so it's very dangerous to say that you're not allowed to make a mistake. Danger and risk is part of it. There has to be a little bit of fear that something could happen. This is a clean one. The only apology that should ever be made for a joke is, "I'm sorry people didn't find it funny." Because maybe you took a swing and a miss. But you should never apologise for having a go. They wrote a very nasty article about me with the headline, "You cannot joke about rape." Argh. LAUGHTER LAUGHTER The whole politically correct thing that's going on right now, I'm happy that it's going on, but it's nothing new. Every couple of decades there has to be this big, ugly "let's take it all apart and we see what comes out the other side". I caught myself a few years ago fighting.... ..gay. I say gay like, "That's so gay." I just think... I have gay friends. I don't mean it like gay, I mean it like it's gay. Like it's lame. And then I stopped myself and said, "What am I fighting?" I am... I have become the guy from 50 years ago, who said... "I say coloured. I have coloured friends." You have to listen to the college-aged because they lead the revolution. They're pretty much always on the right side of history. VOICEOVER: People are so afraid of change. They fight it so hard, but if you can't change with the times, it makes you old and it makes your comedy stale. Comedy isn't evergreen. Unless it's poop jokes. Poop jokes are evergreen. Yes. None for you. VOICEOVER: It's not the topic that stinks. It was your joke that stinks. If you make them cringe rather than laugh, you're doing a bad job. I'm all about Asian men. They're the best. Asian men - no body odour. They just smell like responsibility. LAUGHTER This language police thing that's going on has a lot of validity but also a lot of issues. There's a kind a stirring of the pot, but we don't know what's gonna settle. We don't know how the soup is going to taste yet. VOICEOVER: Can there be a case where if you don't use the right word for a right ethnic group, for a right gender, where people get a little too hyped up about it? Yes. But those are exactly the waters that comedy should be travelling. I will always change. I will always try to learn the new terms. But you got to give me some wiggle room. And by the way, if you get hung up on words, then you're going to let a lot of evil motherfuckers slip through. Because evil people learn the correct terms very quickly, and a lot of times the good guys, heh, they fuck up a couple of words but listen to their heart. LAUGHTER Having constraints makes comedy better in some ways, because it spurs innovation. Sometimes when you have to work around something, even for a silly reason, it can make things funny. I love that they're setting this high bar, because comedy will always find a way over it. Funny wins. That's the worst thing I ever said. I think I just finally said... LAUGHTER ..the worst thing I have ever said. And it feels good, it feels good. You guys were great, thank you very much. I'm going to talk about now that sort of splits the crowd a little bit. Gun control... Now. AUDIENCE MEMBER WHOOPS Wait. Before you... Don't... Don't get excited, because the other people have guns. When you bring up a topical subject, it's about timing. It's whether it's in the zeitgeist and people are going to latch on to it. There's nothing wrong with saying, "I like something, don't take it away," but don't give me this other bullshit. The main one is, "I need it for protection. I need to protect me. "I need to protect my family." Really? Is that why they're called assault rifles? What we do is we like to do funny stuff that creates a stir. And any time you can see that lead to some sort of change, you know, you just cannot keep your mouth shut and walk away. Bam! You're at a gun show! You're at a gun show! Social change is a really nice side effect of being really present and really brilliantly funny. The best comedy is driven by a point of view, and a point of view isn't just about their own experience but where someone has something to say. Now, I'm not sure what you heard about me, but I do things a little different than you're used to here. I just need you to go with me on this one. ALL: No raping? But, Coach, we play football. My team, my rules. You don't like it, don't let the door rape you on the way out. Good comedians talk about stuff that bothers them or interests them. Then you can be passionate about it. Excuse me a sec. Joe... Thank you so much. Thank you. (CLEARS THROAT) Partial birth abortions aren't a thing! Thank you so much. CHEERING VOICEOVER: We cover really challenging material. But it's important to bring it back to comedy. If you for one moment think of yourself as important, you are dead. You are out of comedy. Forget it. The ethical and religious directives for Catholic Health Care Services is a slim volume of 72 medical commandments that fit neatly between a patient and her doctor. More and more, what you're seeing are people who care about the world being unafraid to bring that into their comedy and saying, "Do I care about the stuff that really matters? "If I do, then that's fair game for comedy too." John Oliver has come out of the Jon Stewart mould of just, you know, having a great, specific sense of humour. He does cover a lot of the week's topics from his point of view, and then he turns the show into one topic, which is kind of great, because no-one is doing long form like that. Our main topic tonight concerns debt. I would like to talk to you about drugs. Our main story tonight is about income inequality. A good way to figure out which side of it you're on is whether you're currently paying for HBO or stealing it. More than ever, comedy is a way to hold people's attention while you tell them important truths. I'm not saying the IRS is a likeable organisation, but not everything that's important is likeable. Think of our government as a body. The IRS is the anus. It's nobody's favourite part. But you need that thing working properly or everything goes to shit real quick. The comic has become the person who pulls back the curtain to show the world that... "Do you see that this is happening? "We didn't make this up. This wasn't a funny idea we had. "This is what's happening." The Constitution isn't the star in Super Mario Brothers. It doesn't make you invincible so you can just do whatever the fuck you want. You teach us about things we should know about. It's embarrassing in a way to have someone come over here and explain how things like health care work. It's less than ideal. VOICEOVER: Comedy brings awareness. It's a practice of noticing. And there is an effect with John Oliver because he's actually creating change. Vanity Fair New Establishment says, "Oliver has established himself "as perhaps the most disruptive journalist on television." Urgh... So are you aware of this thing called the John Oliver Effect? Urgh... The John Oliver Effect is like activism, which is funny in nature but at the same time illuminating issues that everybody else is missing. Once they're illuminated, they're very difficult to ignore. You say you want to make people laugh more than anything else but it's got to be gratifying that you've also made people think. I guess so. I guess so. That is a pleasant by-product. But the main thing we're doing is comedy. So if you get to the end of a joke and someone is just thinking, you have failed. VOICEOVER: He probably would hate that there's something called the John Oliver Effect. He's really all about doing a really tight, well-researched comedy show, and beyond that, it's out of your control. 39 states hold elections for judges, and America is virtually alone in doing this. In fact, there's only one other country on Earth that does it on this scale. And guess which. You're wrong - it's Bolivia, a country you think about so little, you haven't even realised that's not Bolivia. This is Bolivia. LAUGHTER Actually... Actually... That's still not Bolivia. This is Bolivia. Or is it? Or is it? The truth goes down a lot easier when a joke is attached to it. It just does. It was worth the trip in, wasn't it? VOICEOVER: So many things that are going on just seem so crazy, you feel so powerless. So the comedian that deals with topical issues, they're giving people who are voiceless a voice. I'll be honest with you. It's beginning to look like I'm not going to get The Tonight Show. VOICEOVER: What's that comedian's take on that election? What's that comedian's take on that hurricane? We are speaking... on behalf of the consumer, the voter, the victim. VOICEOVER: The joke, you'll forget. You'll forget the joke but if it's the right moment and the right condition and you acknowledge what just happened, it's a beautiful thing. VOICEOVER: The fact that you can take something dark and make light of it is one of the few superpowers people have. You remember when a laugh steered you back to sanity and comfort. All of the awful things in the world, if they can be mocked, then you can handle it. What about the adage that tragedy plus time equals comedy? I don't think there's a formula for any of these things, and so when people contemplate whether something, has it been enough time or is it too soon or not, again, you cannot generalise. There's some topics that you can never talk about forever. You're not allowed to talk about the Holocaust, never. What do you get when you cross the Atlantic with the Titanic? Halfway. Now, if I'd said that in 1912, people would go, "Hey!" Funny is funny, man. It doesn't matter. I think I got an AIDS laugh today. But then there's things like... Prince dying. Uh... three days. The bar has always been, like, are you funny or are you not funny? John Denver dying - you could joke about it that afternoon. People can do the cliches about timing and tragedy. But I think you have to have a level of discomfort. I don't know if you've seen me with Anderson Cooper. But I count on his discomfort. If you're doing a JonBenet routine in Boulder, Colorado... ..you'd better be nailing it. Able 2018