{"id":41792,"date":"2015-07-17T16:16:51","date_gmt":"2015-07-17T16:16:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=41792"},"modified":"2015-07-19T17:12:27","modified_gmt":"2015-07-19T17:12:27","slug":"in-the-writers-room-one-woman-quietly-makes-late-night-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=41792","title":{"rendered":"In The Writer&#8217;s Room, One Woman Quietly Makes Late Night History"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.npr.org\/sections\/codeswitch\/2015\/07\/10\/421883378\/in-the-writers-room-robin-thede-quietly-makes-late-night-history\" target=\"_blank\">In The Writer&#8217;s Room, One Woman Quietly Makes Late Night History<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.npr.org\/sections\/codeswitch\/\" target=\"_blank\">Code Switch: Frontiers of Race, Culture and Ethnicity<\/a><br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.nrp.org\" target=\"_blank\">National Public Radio<\/a><br \/>\n2015-07-12<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.npr.org\/people\/243254424\/eric-deggans\" target=\"_blank\">Eric Deggans<\/a><\/strong>, TV Critic<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/www.npr.org\/player\/embed\/421883378\/422275416\" width=\"100%\" height=\"290\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>How do you write jokes for a TV comedy about race and culture when there are riots over how police treat black suspects, and a <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Charleston_church_shooting\" target=\"_blank\">gunman just shot down nine people in a black church<\/a>?<\/p>\n<p>If you&#8217;re <a href=\"http:\/\/www.robinthede.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">Robin Thede<\/a>, head writer for <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/The_Nightly_Show_with_Larry_Wilmore\" target=\"_blank\"><em>The Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore<\/em><\/a>, you think carefully about where you focus the joke.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The thing about tragedy, is that it causes people to react in a myriad of ways &#8230; [and] some of them are very hilarious,&#8221; Thede says, laughing. &#8220;You don&#8217;t make fun of the actual tragedy. You make fun of the ridiculous ways people react to it.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Her example: The way some news outlets focused on the involvement of the gang <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Black_Guerrilla_Family\" target=\"_blank\">Black Guerilla Family<\/a> when <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/2015_Baltimore_protests\" target=\"_blank\">rioting broke out in Baltimore last April<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;You&#8217;ve got people on the news saying &#8216;Black Guerilla Family&#8217; 4,000 times because they get a kick out of saying &#8216;gorilla&#8217; when connected to black people,&#8221; she says&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/pDK8Vt8Ng9Y?rel=0\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>&#8230;That voice first emerged in January, when <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Larry_Wilmore\" target=\"_blank\">Wilmore&#8217;s<\/a> <em>Nightly Show<\/em> debuted in the timeslot originally held by<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Stephen_Colbert\" target=\"_blank\"> Stephen Colbert&#8217;s<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/The_Colbert_Report\" target=\"_blank\"><em>Colbert Report<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Wilmore made a bit of history then as the only black man hosting a major late night talk show.<\/p>\n<p>And Thede also made history: She&#8217;s the first black woman to serve as head writer for such a show. But she&#8217;s quick to counter the notion that <em>The Nightly Show<\/em> is just a parody of <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Meet_the_Press\" target=\"_blank\"><em>Meet the Press<\/em> <\/a>centered on jokes about race&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Read the entire article <a href=\"http:\/\/www.npr.org\/sections\/codeswitch\/2015\/07\/10\/421883378\/in-the-writers-room-robin-thede-quietly-makes-late-night-history\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>. Listen to the story (00:04:09) <a href=\"http:\/\/www.npr.org\/player\/v2\/mediaPlayer.html?action=1&amp;t=1&amp;islist=false&amp;id=421883378&amp;m=422275416\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>. Download the story <a href=\"http:\/\/pd.npr.org\/anon.npr-mp3\/npr\/wesun\/2015\/07\/20150712_wesun_in_the_writers_room_one_woman_quietly_makes_late_night_history.mp3?dl=1\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>. Read the transcript <a href=\"http:\/\/www.npr.org\/templates\/transcript\/transcript.php?storyId=421883378\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In The Writer&#8217;s Room, One Woman Quietly Makes Late Night History Code Switch: Frontiers of Race, Culture and Ethnicity National Public Radio 2015-07-12 Eric Deggans, TV Critic How do you write jokes for a TV comedy about race and culture when there are riots over how police treat black suspects, and a gunman just shot [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,2850,8413,8,20],"tags":[14788,13058,20452,2309,2833,20451,20453],"class_list":["post-41792","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-audio","category-communications","category-media-archive","category-usa","tag-code-switch","tag-eric-deggans","tag-larry-wilmore","tag-national-public-radio","tag-npr","tag-robin-thede","tag-the-nightly-show-with-larry-wilmore"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41792","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=41792"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41792\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=41792"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=41792"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=41792"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}