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Deadline Defends Late Night TV with Obvious Lie

The current late night TV landscape is overwhelmingly liberal.

That’s like declaring water is wet and the sky is blue. Think Noah, Colbert, Corden, Oliver, Maher, Kimmel, Desus & Mero and Bee.

It’s a far cry from the Johnny Carson model of yore. Jimmy Fallon of “The Tonight Show” fame is the most balanced. His recent takedown of Beto O’Rourke proved both rare and hilarious.

Beto O'Rourke's Hands Announce His 2020 Presidential Campaign

Still, Fallon typically trots out Trump jokes like his peers.

Veteran talker Conan O’Brien also falls on the less political side of the ledger. He did attack First Lady Melania Trump, even though First Ladies are generally off limits. And O’Brien once called Trump supporters racist.

Not funny … or fair.

No matter. You don’t channel surf over to TBS’s “Conan” for hard-hitting jokes at the Left’s expense. That’s precisely what a new story by the liberal Hollywood site Deadline.com implies. Here’s the headline:

Conan O’Brien, Equal Opportunity Jokester, Takes On Dem President Candidates

OK, here we go … a late night talker is finally going to pounce on the Democrats for a change. Even better? The targets are the clown car passengers in the 2020 Democratic presidential jalopy.

Finally, a dollop of balance on late night television. And then we read the blister-worthy jokes hurled at Team Democrat.

“During a campaign event in Iowa, South Bend Mayor Pete Buttegieg was heckled by an anti-gay protestor,” O’Brien noted. “Buttegieg handled it like a pro, saying, “Settle down, Mr. Vice President.”

Oh, that was an attack on Mike Pence. It also reinforced the mayor’s false meme that Pence actively dislikes him and publicly says so.

Not true at all. Still, O’Brien’s shtick promoted the lie. The comic then served up another “blistering” attack on the young presidential candidate.

Buttigieg, who officially announced duriong the weekend that he’s running for president has a special distinction. “If he wins,” O’Brien said, “Buttigieg would be our first openly gay president. When I say ‘openly gay’ I’m talking to you, Millard Fillmore.”

Again, Buttigieg isn’t the target here.

According to Deadline, the red-hot O’Brien was just warming up.

O’Brien also skewered another Dem White House hopeful. “In his memoirs, presidential candidate John Hickenlooper gives detailed accounts of his sexual conquests,” he said. “Apparently, his signature move was giving women ‘the Ol’ Hickenlooper.’”

That’s just silly and hardly the kind of cutting comments he’d tell about other politicians.

So where are the sick burns the site promised? More importantly, why would Deadline.com frame the story that way? The site essentially shared some tepid jokes from a late night monologue.

What could be less newsworthy?

Here’s why the story exists in the first place.

Deadline would love readers to think the Late Night landscape is more fair and balanced than it actually is. It’s one thing for an avowed liberal like Bill Maher to mock Trump, Pence or other GOP politicians. It’s another for a bipartisan joke slinger to do the same.

The latter has more impact. Simple.

Deadline.com and Team Late Night are on the same team. They’re partisans trying to advance progressive agendas. If that means torturing the truth for a false, clickbait headline, so be it.

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