This Week’s Late Night Awards

Emmy nominations were announced last week, and David Letterman, Bill Maher, Stephen Colbert, Jon Stewart, and Saturday Night Live all got one. I believe Conan O’Brien and Jimmy Fallon are too new to be considered this year, making Craig Ferguson the wallflower. He suggested that the reason he was skipped over was because the Academy hates Americans. (I think he’s on to something). Letterman bragged he got one for “Best Apology.”

I have no proof, but it appears if there is a new sponsor for Letterman’s daily Ruth Madoff joke. For the past several weeks he’s been doing the same exact joke about Bernie Madoff’s wife claiming her $92 million wasn’t from swindling, that it was money she saved by switching to Geico®. His repetition makes me think the insurance giant’s paying Worldwide Pants to do the joke every night. This week, he added a joke every night about Ruth’s favorite item at California Pizza Kitchen® that suggested they were a new sponsor. On successive nights it was chicken ponzi, chicken al-fraudo, and veal scaloponzi.

Eight months after the election, Sarah Palin and John McCain are still in the monologues. O’Brien told another John McCain Twitter joke this week, claiming that McCain tweeted “The Nurse is stealing all my stuff.” Fallon claimed that Sonya Sotomayor looked frail and her hair was thinning: It is part of her plan to run for President in 2012, as John McCain. Maher mocked Republicans for calling Obama’s health-care bill convoluted, while still being able to make sense out of a Sarah Palin Speech; and said the despite Time Magazine calling her a renegade, “the only thing Sarah Palin ever rebelled against (besides grammar, wildlife, and sports analogies) was family planning.”

Colbert did an interesting line that left his audience puzzled. In an attempt to get Keith Olbermann to name him as the “Worst Person,” he pretended to slap a baby with a puppy. Then he said, “If that didn’t work, here is something I KNOW will light your fuse: George Bush followed through on his promise to fight AIDS in Africa with billions of dollars of funding!”

Obama’s pathetic baseball pitch was quite a popular topic. Letterman claimed his arm got so sore that he had to call Rush Limbaugh for some Oxycontin. Stewart claimed the Fox play-by-play announcers called it in the dirt when it wasn’t. (It would it been, were it not for a great save by Albert Pujols.) Only Maher went as far to correctly identify the pitch as being thrown “like a girl.” But the…

Funniest Obama Line of the Week  goes to Jimmy Kimmel who claimed that the jeans President Obama wore at the All Star Game were weird–that they made him look like his Aunt Linda. The following night he did a video piece about those jeans, which was the only bit of the week that actually used Obama as the foil.

Letterman claimed that you know the economy is bad when the President has to take a second gig (pitching at the All-Star Game) However…

Lamest Attempt at a Obama Joke goes to Conan O’Brien for this ultra-lame video piece. His writers actually made a montage of foolish things President Obama has done that would have been comic fodder during any Republican Presidency, but instead made fun of mean Republicans for making fun of Obama’s simple human tendencies.

Another interesting flip on reality came from Letterman: “A teleprompter is just a machine that tells the President what to say. In Bush’s case the machine was called Dick Cheney.” (Why is it okay for Obama to be a puppet?)

The shattered teleprompter was a popular topic. Jimmy Fallon said, “It’s so bad, even speeches about the economy are crashing.” Fallon really has some funny lines, but his monologues are still falling flat, even after four months on the air. It seems his delivery talents are just not up to speed with his writers. He also has no qualms with Obama material: “Obama was there for the All-Star Game so he could give a ten run bailout to whoever was losing.”

Most Over-used Person as a Punchline was Amy Winehouse who’s getting a divorce. Letterman said it was for the sake of the children’s Robitussin. Conan said she was shocked, that she had no idea she was even married. Ferguson claims they’re fighting over custody of the crack pipe, and Fallon said it was inevitable after a long while of sleeping in separate gutters.

The fortieth anniversary of the Moon landing was also a popular topic. Conan claimed it was man’s greatest accomplishment, unless you’re counting putting cheese inside of a pizza crust. Letterman bemoaned the fact that they can put a man on the Moon, but they still can’t put a man on Sonya Sotomayor.

Writers over Shoulders Award goes to Conan O’ Brien and Jimmy Kimmel for their takes on the tape of the Moon landing being erased. Conan claimed it was done for reruns of Alf, Kimmel claimed it was for reruns of Growing Pains.

Most Interesting Interview was Astronaut Mike Massimino on Craig Ferguson. Not only was he personable, he gave a wonderfully vivid description of what it’s like walking to the shuttle on the morning of a launch day. He is also the first Astronaut I remember, actually admitting that they wear diapers during a launch.

Oldest Presidential Joke: Stephen Colbert again went all the way back to the Nixon Era: “Nixon Supreme Court nominees Clement F Haynsworth jr. and G Harrold Carswell were rejected on suspicions of racism. The evidence? They were nominated by Richard Nixon.”

The confirmation hearings of Sonya Sotomayor were a far more popular topic on the Late Night Shows than they were in the ratings. O’Brien, Colbert, and Kimmel all found it amusing that the questioning turned to Nunchucks. Letterman claimed that on day two, she sang “I Dreamed a Dream.” O’Brien claimed she demonstrated her lack of bias against white people by showing up with a Coldplay CD and a yoga mat. He also said she’s a Yankees fan, “That’s great. They can use a strong leftie off the bench.”

Angriest White Man was a given now that Bill Maher is back at work. But this week he shares it with Jon Stewart. Both hosts are blaming racism for Republican opposition to Sotomayor. Maher said they’re accusing her of reverse racism, which means she is giving the real racists a bad name. Stewart said Republican Senators like the racist part about her, they just hate her race.

Then to illustrate their liberal open-mindedness, both launched into racist routines: Maher claimed the old white Senators were frustrated with her like the cleaning woman who had been stealing from the club. “Too much agua, you’re killing the orchids.” Stewart ran a clip of Sotomayor introducing her family members in attendance while he chanted off screen, “Please don’t say you all came in the same hatchback! Please don’t say you all came in the same hatchback! … Hey, since Carlos Mencia isn’t on anymore, someone has to do it!”

Hey, if you weren’t a Democrat, you probably couldn’t do it. I’m thinking of switching my party affiliation, so I can be an Emmy-nominated racist comic too!