I am here for any and all "Sam Bee" takes. What a ridiculous show, almost unwatchable for a blue dog Dem observing their party while its people slipped into madness.
I would have thought Andrew Yang used the 50K in his New York City mayoral run the following year, another exercise in tech-bro cringe.
Otherwise, thanks for this, one of the many pieces to the puzzle of how we got from Obama twice winning more than 50% of the popular vote to wherever we are right now.
I would love to read more about Full Frontal! My wife and I used to watch the show. It seemed perfect for us, two lesbians who enjoyed the Daily Show.
Eventually we said to each other, “She’s just screaming at us….?” and stopped watching.
It made me feel like a bad feminist, I admit. “Oh, you don’t like when women are ‘shrill’ and scream at you? You probably love when men yell about their opinions.”
But no, it applied to men too. We stopped watching all late night around 2020.
Worth noting: Full Frontal did not start out bad. I remember watching the early episodes and thinking "This is fine, it's a Daily Show spin-off, like us." It devolved over time.
It was a fun show for the first couple of years. I think Trump's election broke a lot of things. You can only stew in muck for so long before you get sick.
It's kind of a bummer that we look back on the things we thought were momentous at the time and think "yeah, that wasn't as significant as we thought, and we should have been focusing on other things that turned out to be really important". And I don't know how to correct for that, because as soon as I think something really is important, I start to doubt it.
If you knew the answer to what will become important in the future, you could probably make a lot of money in the stock market. Or at least write a pretty good blog.
It had jumped the shark by the time Bee did it, but the original Colbert Super PAC thing was awesome and won a Peabody award. Colbert’s character originally tried to create a PAC, but Viacom’s lawyers nixed it … but in light of the then recent Citizens United decision they had to allow the Super PAC. Then Colbert had the former FEC chair Trevor Potter, who he hired as his personal lawyer, come on repeatedly to demonstrate how absurd the situation was. Plus there was the recurring bit about Ham Rove and the tie in to the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear and the Colbert characters’s presidential run. This was a great bit originally that later got watered down by others.
>Full Fronts helped snap my vision into focus because it made it clear that these shows could and perhaps inevitably would become the left-wing version of Fox News.
It's hilariously true. Some of my friends are very progressive. Think "still have anti-racist baby on their 1 year old's gift registry in 2025" progressive. I got grandfathered in despite being impure. They thought Sam Bee was *hilarious* and still believe any talking point John Oliver states. They're not quite to the level of my Boomer dad, but they're not far behind. I love them dearly, but I worry about them.
Please put whatever you learned in the "oral tradition" to paper (or Substack). This was a great piece! A nice story of the interaction between traditional media (Sam Bee's show and what it thought its place was in the political landscape) and online communities (the Redditers who hijacked the game for Andrew Yang).
Jeff, your perfectly overlapped Venn diagram of Warren supporters and Full Frontal watchers with green dot you on periphery reminded me of a sperm cell and ovum...
I am here for any and all "Sam Bee" takes. What a ridiculous show, almost unwatchable for a blue dog Dem observing their party while its people slipped into madness.
I would have thought Andrew Yang used the 50K in his New York City mayoral run the following year, another exercise in tech-bro cringe.
Otherwise, thanks for this, one of the many pieces to the puzzle of how we got from Obama twice winning more than 50% of the popular vote to wherever we are right now.
I would love to read more about Full Frontal! My wife and I used to watch the show. It seemed perfect for us, two lesbians who enjoyed the Daily Show.
Eventually we said to each other, “She’s just screaming at us….?” and stopped watching.
It made me feel like a bad feminist, I admit. “Oh, you don’t like when women are ‘shrill’ and scream at you? You probably love when men yell about their opinions.”
But no, it applied to men too. We stopped watching all late night around 2020.
^^This was the trajectory for so many people!
Worth noting: Full Frontal did not start out bad. I remember watching the early episodes and thinking "This is fine, it's a Daily Show spin-off, like us." It devolved over time.
It was a fun show for the first couple of years. I think Trump's election broke a lot of things. You can only stew in muck for so long before you get sick.
It's kind of a bummer that we look back on the things we thought were momentous at the time and think "yeah, that wasn't as significant as we thought, and we should have been focusing on other things that turned out to be really important". And I don't know how to correct for that, because as soon as I think something really is important, I start to doubt it.
I think it helps us keep perspective.
People experiencing history almost never have any idea what will happen next.
If you knew the answer to what will become important in the future, you could probably make a lot of money in the stock market. Or at least write a pretty good blog.
It had jumped the shark by the time Bee did it, but the original Colbert Super PAC thing was awesome and won a Peabody award. Colbert’s character originally tried to create a PAC, but Viacom’s lawyers nixed it … but in light of the then recent Citizens United decision they had to allow the Super PAC. Then Colbert had the former FEC chair Trevor Potter, who he hired as his personal lawyer, come on repeatedly to demonstrate how absurd the situation was. Plus there was the recurring bit about Ham Rove and the tie in to the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear and the Colbert characters’s presidential run. This was a great bit originally that later got watered down by others.
Yeah, it was good! And that's why everyone tried to repeat it.
>Full Fronts helped snap my vision into focus because it made it clear that these shows could and perhaps inevitably would become the left-wing version of Fox News.
It's hilariously true. Some of my friends are very progressive. Think "still have anti-racist baby on their 1 year old's gift registry in 2025" progressive. I got grandfathered in despite being impure. They thought Sam Bee was *hilarious* and still believe any talking point John Oliver states. They're not quite to the level of my Boomer dad, but they're not far behind. I love them dearly, but I worry about them.
Please put whatever you learned in the "oral tradition" to paper (or Substack). This was a great piece! A nice story of the interaction between traditional media (Sam Bee's show and what it thought its place was in the political landscape) and online communities (the Redditers who hijacked the game for Andrew Yang).
Jeff, your perfectly overlapped Venn diagram of Warren supporters and Full Frontal watchers with green dot you on periphery reminded me of a sperm cell and ovum...
Hey, I'll remember that when Tulsi Gabbard is president I heard it here first!
I don't see credits listed on the opening photos. Isn't that a rule or something or is it at your discretion?
This one is just a screenshot of a video, so technically, *I* took it. Photos from Getty or other places need attribution.