Stephen Colbert
Late-night hosts celebrated Halloween on Tuesday evening with digs at those who hand out anything other than candy for trick-or-treating, such as the first lady, Jill Biden, who handed out books at the White House. “Boo! Don’t give kids books on Halloween,” said Stephen Colbert on The Late Show. “No one wants to suck on a copy of Catcher in the Rye! It’s phoney.”
President Biden, meanwhile, gave out Hershey’s Kisses in little boxes stamped with the presidential seal. “OK, that’s kinda nice and special as a keepsake,” said Colbert, “but come on – this is America! The most powerful, the richest country in the world. The White House should be giving out full-sized Snickers!”
Colbert turned his attention to the new speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, who has expressed some scary anti-gay positions. The Republican from Louisiana once said that gay marriage was a “dark harbinger of chaos and sexual anarchy”.
“And Mike Johnson fears sexual anarchy,” Colbert deadpanned. “He believes in sexual government with three sexual branches: man, woman and … the judiciary. They like to watch, and judge.”
Johnson’s “not alone in his backward views”, said Colbert, noting that the new speaker hosts a podcast from a “Christian perspective” with his wife, Kelly. “Though if Mike and Kelly are such conservatives Christians, why is the latest podcast they recorded – and this is true – episode 69?
“Really? Two Johnsons in a 69? You’re sending mixed messages, folks,” he added.
Kelly is, “if possible, just as weird as her husband”, he continued, because she runs Onward Christian Counseling Services, which “offensively and outrageously” equates being gay with bestiality. “Evidently, Kelly believes it’s Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve, and don’t get her started on Turner and Hooch,” Colbert joked.
The counseling service separates people into five types: melancholy, choleric, sanguine, supine and phlegmatic. “Those are some 13th-century beliefs!” said Colbert. “Which explains speaker Johnson’s plan to replace Obamacare with the Affordable Leech Act.”
Right after her husband was elected speaker, Kelly Johnson’s counseling website became inaccessible. “Now when you go to see the site, you just see ‘Error 404: this seemed OK before I knew we’d be famous,’” Colbert joked.
Jimmy Kimmel
For Halloween, a right-leaning company called Consumers’ Research put out a “woke alert” for such candy as M&Ms (a gender-bending ad campaign), Kit Kats (which sponsored an organization that supports the LGBTQ+ community) and Skittles. “Meanwhile, nobody says a word about Mike and Ike and their little vacation to Key West,” joked Jimmy Kimmel.
“What a dumb group of people spreading their dumb thoughts on dumb things,” he added. “Candy is woke? The whole concept of Halloween is woke. Putting on makeup and getting dressed up in fabulous outfits to walk the streets with your friends – if Halloween happened in June, it would be a Pride parade.”
In other news, “the not-so-great pumpkin was up all night last night mashing his little pink fingers, posting all-caps rants about this gag order that clearly isn’t working too well”, said Kimmel, as Donald Trump publicly complained about the “radical left judge taking away my right to free speech” and, hours later, posted “ELECTION INTERFERENCE!”
“He woke up and thought, ‘Oh, I forgot to say “election interference!” in all caps,’” Kimmel said, laughing. “What is it with him and all caps? He types in all caps, he wears red caps, he had his supporters storm the Cap – he’s a real piece of cap.”
Seth Meyers
And on Late Night, Seth Meyers recapped how the Bidens hosted neighborhood families for trick-or-treating. “They didn’t get that many visitors, though, because kids know a raisin house when they see one,” he quipped.
For the holiday, Candystore.com released a list of the most popular candy in the country, including Sour Patch Kids in New York, Butterfinger in Massachusetts and “Marlboro Reds in Florida”, Meyers joked.
Trump’s children Eric, Don Jr and Ivanka are set to testify in his civil fraud trial in New York, “and for the first time in a long time, it’s good to be Tiffany”, said Meyers of Trump’s less prominent child.
The rock bands Lynyrd Skynyrd and ZZ Top announced their upcoming tours on Monday, “and if you’re excited about this news, you’re due for a colonoscopy”, Meyers joked.
And firefighters in Michigan rescued a raccoon that was stuck in a hole at the bottom of a dumpster. “Does that really count as a rescue?” Meyers wondered. “That’s like saying you rescued Pitbull from a VIP lounge in Miami.”
