Old School. Biblically Independent.
By Dustin Rowles | TV | October 17, 2023
Roy Wood, Jr. recently announced that he quit The Daily Show after being passed over as host, although he left room open for the possibility of returning to be the host. That possibility arose because a New Yorker article revealed that the frontrunner for the job, Hasan Minhaj, had littered his stand-up act with lies that he called “emotional truths.” (Given his performance on Celebrity Jeopardy, I do not understand why he was even the frontrunner).
Despite no longer being a correspondent on The Daily Show, Roy Wood, Jr. appears to be everywhere on the same week the Comedy Central series returned, including Rolling Stone, where he was candid about Minhaj. Asked about the controversy, Wood expressed hope that Minhaj, in the wake of it, would find the line between stretching “the truth for the sake of laughter” and “when you do it for the sake of feeling.”
Wood, Jr. doesn’t think that The New Yorker piece is necessarily disqualifying, but “there’s a lot of atonement that would have to probably happen” for Minhaj to secure the gig (FYI: Minhaj has done no atoning, so far). If he were already the host of The Daily Show, however, he thinks that Minhaj could survive the controversy. He also thinks that Minhaj could still be trusted to report on the news accurately because he was able to— despite the lies in his stand-up — on The Patriot Act.
“To a degree, this whole thing with Hasan is like taking a comedian’s jokes and flipping them over to read the nutritional facts,” Wood said. “It’s like when you find out that orange juice you were drinking is only 10 percent juice, and you’re infuriated. But you’ve been drinking it for years, so why is it an issue now?”
Wood is right. If the orange juice were already in the fridge, Comedy Central would continue to drink it. But since they haven’t actually made the purchase yet, there’s still an opportunity to buy 100 percent juice with all that pulpy goodness. I’m talking about Roy Wood, Jr. here. He is the 100 percent orange juice. Or that concentrate in the frozen cans you dump into a pitcher of water. That’s the good stuff. Hire him.
Source: Rolling Stone
