By Kevin Fallon
Late-night TV is experiencing, in Larry Wilmore’s own words, an Unblackening.
Comedy Central announced Monday that, with just 12 weeks to go before the presidential election, the network is canceling The Nightly Show With Larry Wilmore, with the final episode of the show airing Thursday. The show had launched last January, serving as a replacement for The Colbert Report.
“I’m really grateful to Comedy Central, Jon Stewart, and our fans to have had this opportunity,” Wilmore said in a statement. “But I’m also saddened and surprised we won’t be covering this crazy election or ‘The Unblackening’ as we’ve coined it. And keeping it 100, I guess I hadn’t counted on ‘The Unblackening’ happening to my time slot as well.”
When Larry Wilmore was tapped by Stewart to be Stephen Colbert’s successor in the post-Daily Show time slot, it was a long overdue, sadly still-radical move. Wilmore, who had served as “senior black correspondent” on The Daily Show, became the only person of color among the oft-derided White Guys in Suits who ruled late-night.
More, his show never shied away from his blackness, capitalizing on his wry racial observations as the show’s greatest comedy selling point and doubling down on what’s become a crucial pop-culture realization—that, regardless of race, the perspective will have universal appeal and resonance.
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Source: The Daily Beast
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