Letterman’s YouTube Account Is Using Old Clips to Make a Political Statement
America’s late-night talk show hosts are currently reeling from the dismal election results, but what about ex-hosts?
Well, Jay Leno proclaimed that it was a “great day for democracy” during an interview on The Talk, proving once again that we really don’t need to hear from Jay Leno on any subject ever again for the rest of his life. Meanwhile, Leno’s former competitor David Letterman has also been weighing in on the election, albeit in a slightly subtler manner.
Letterman was a vocal supporter of the Democrats this year, and was scheduled to host a fundraiser for Joe Biden until he dropped out. The event still happened, but with Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff instead — although not getting Commander, Biden’s bitey German Shepherd, to perform some Stupid Pet Tricks feels like a missed opportunity.
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While Letterman hasn’t made any public statements this week, his official YouTube channel has uploaded some choice clips. The “Letterman” account frequently uses archival footage to respond to current events, like uploading interviews with celebrities who just passed away. So it’s certainly no accident that on the day of the election, Letterman’s team put up a video from a 2008 episode of The Late Show in which comedian Andy Kindler makes fun of a panel of undecided voters.
Letterman himself tore into America’s electoral ignorance as well. “How in God’s name can there be undecided voters?” the host said of those who couldn’t discern between Barack Obama and John McCain. “This campaign has been going on for over two years. You’re telling me people in two years haven’t made up their minds who they’re going to vote for?”
Even more pointedly, the day after the results came in, the Letterman channel uploaded an old clip of Green Day performing “American Idiot” in 2004.
The choice of clip didn’t go unnoticed by right-wing media outlets like The New York Post, or by commenters, who posted messages such as “20 years later and the song is still as relevant as it was back then” and “this account is now my favorite news source.”
Today, Letterman’s channel opted to post a video themed around unity and optimism. Or, rather, a bitterly ironic take on unity and optimism: the 1985 Late Night “anthem.” The “We Are the World”-esque song, performed by Paul Shaffer and the “Late Night International Children’s Choir,” features cloying stock footage of American flags, soup chefs and shoe-manufacturing plants. Also, a shot of Letterman playfully peeking through a bouquet of flowers.
The song’s introduction claims that the anthem will “inspire the nations of the world to settle their differences, leaving them more free time to watch network television.”
It’s unclear whether the video was posted because it’s the closest that the show ever came to genuinely promoting unity in the face of hardship, or if it was selected as a reminder that hacky patriotic platitudes won’t help anyone right now.
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