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Flashback: Conan Makes Fun of Haitian Poverty

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I personally love the irony whenever one of my liberal friends (I do have them, yes) rants and raves about conservative news outlets and talk radio, and then goes home and turns on late-night TV.

What was once the province of men like Johnny Carson, David Letterman and Arsenio Hall has now become as political as a Rush Limbaugh show, except uniformly liberal, with 95 percent less intelligence and at least 500 percent more fart jokes. And not half as funny.

Stephen Colbert led the transformation, but Jimmy Kimmel has picked up the torch and run with it like an uninformed, hysterical Usain Bolt. Even Jimmy Fallon, whose ability to find his way to his own studio unaided has always constituted a minor miracle in my eyes, has taken a sharp turn to the left.

Oh, and then there’s Conan O’Brien. I almost forgot. Ever since having the “Tonight Show” yanked from from him by the machinations of one Jay Leno, he’s become to the late-night landscape what the United States Virgin Islands are to America as a whole. I mean, he’s there. And largely ignorable.

However, in the age of President Donald Trump, anyone on late night can become relevant if they just take aim at the White House and fire indiscriminately. And fire indiscriminately Conan did, deciding to visit Haiti last month in order to make hay out of Trump’s alleged “s***hole countries” remark.

Conan spent a week in the country recording episodes, quipping that he was trying to counter the president’s “very negative Yelp review of Haiti.”

“I have no idea what the president has against the people of Haiti, but if the president doesn’t like them, they must be lovely people,” Conan said on one show, according to the Los Angeles Times. “I’m sure I’m going to love Haiti, because Trump hates it so much. What I’ve noticed is whenever that guy hates something, I wind up loving it.”

Of course, as Brietbart pointed out, Conan stayed at a luxury resort during his time in the country, which says a great deal about what he thinks about the country as a whole. As Breitbart notes, outside of luxury resorts, the U.S. Department of State has urged people to “reconsider” travel to the nation, noting that, “Violent crime, such as armed robbery, is common.” Just usually not at luxury resorts or with film crews and/or security.

Do you think late-night TV has gotten too political?

It’s worth noting that despite the glowing praise he heaped upon the nation during his visit, O’Brien had already given his opinion of Haiti back in 2005 — and it was considerably worse than pretty much anything the president might have said. Granted, the comments were part of a piece called “Conan O’Brien Hates My Homeland,” but as you can see, the media is more willing to forget certain remarks about the Caribbean nation than they are others.



“Haiti, you just celebrated 200 years of independence, congratulations,” O’Brien said. “Now make a wish and blow out your burning pile of tires.”

Haiti’s grinding poverty and spasms of political violence? Hilarious! And it wasn’t the only s***hole country that O’Brien enjoyed making fun of. For instance, El Salvador, where he said “no resumé is complete without the phrase ‘Supervised six-person death squad.'”

In fact, it almost seems as if — at least for liberals — Conan O’Brien would a worse version of Donald Trump.

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He has lower opinions of Haiti and El Salvador. His hair looks even more artificial. And both of them no longer have jobs at NBC.

Please like and share on Facebook and Twitter if you agree Conan’s Haiti stunt was hypocritical.

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C. Douglas Golden is a writer who splits his time between the United States and Southeast Asia. Specializing in political commentary and world affairs, he's written for Conservative Tribune and The Western Journal since 2014.
C. Douglas Golden is a writer who splits his time between the United States and Southeast Asia. Specializing in political commentary and world affairs, he's written for Conservative Tribune and The Western Journal since 2014. Aside from politics, he enjoys spending time with his wife, literature (especially British comic novels and modern Japanese lit), indie rock, coffee, Formula One and football (of both American and world varieties).
Birthplace
Morristown, New Jersey
Education
Catholic University of America
Languages Spoken
English, Spanish
Topics of Expertise
American Politics, World Politics, Culture




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