'The Daily Show' Brings a Low Point Into an Otherwise Stellar Week of Guests

By Grainger Heavensbee | Late Night TV | November 30, 2015 |

By Grainger Heavensbee | Late Night TV | November 30, 2015 |

I don’t know how many of you are still keeping up with The Daily Show with Trevor Noah (overall ratings are down, but more of the youths watch!), but he’s doing something cool this first week back from Thanksgiving by featuring as guests some of the finest black entertainers around. Tonight, he’s got Spike Lee. On Wednesday, he has Lupita Nyong’o, and on Thursday, Idris Elba is stopping by (presumably to promote the Luther two-part special due out later this month).

Nice.

There’s just one problem. Tuesday’s guest is Chris Brown.

Chris Brown is going to be on The Daily Show? Maybe this means nothing to you, but it feels symbolically shitty. After all, this is the same Chris Brown who was arrested for physical violence so brutal that it put his then girlfriend Rihanna in the hospital, and who would later tell his critics — a.k.a., those who abhor domestic violence — to fuck off after he won the Grammy.

It inspired this from our own Courtney Enlow:

It was the day that the art of poetry was raised another level, because Courtney coined the phrase “cunting fuck puppet” to describe Brown. Even Maya Angelou was like:

But bygones, right? I mean, if we can forgive Trevor Noah for a few off-color tweets from four years ago, we should also forgive Chris Brown for putting a woman in the hospital, right? I mean, the man has a Christmas song to promote, and what better place to do so than a progressive, politically liberal show like The Daily Show.

It’s doubly weird because, as Genevieve reminds us, Trevor Noah’s mother was nearly killed by an abusive ex-husband who shot her twice and only stopped there because the gun jammed. The choice of guest seems out of character for The Daily Show.