After two seasons on the air, Thursday is the final episode of “The Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore.” The Comedy Central show occasionally trained its sharp comic and satirical sights on U.S. education, though not as often as I had wished.
I was a fan of the show, which was in the mold of “The Daily Show” once hosted by Jon Stewart and lately by Trevor Noah. The Atlantic said this week that “there was something particularly disappointing about Comedy Central’s decision to cancel the show for low ratings.
“Wilmore is late night’s sharpest, most candid voice when it comes to tough issues concerning race, and his nightly program featured refreshingly honest panel discussions within a genre that can so often feel manufactured,” The Atlantic’s Laura Bradley wrote.
The show is an example of a genre of comedy shows—"The Daily Show,” “The Colbert Report,” “Last Week Tonight” with John Oliver—that tackle serious and tough issues with comedy thrown in.
I reported here last year about an extended segment Wilmore did on “The Nightly Show” about reports that the Texas state board of education had approved elementary and secondary textbooks that were “whitewashing” history.
Below are videos of two other education segments on Wilmore’s show.
The first is about the battle over a desegregation plan for the small community of Cleveland, Miss. (To his credit, Wilmore unraveled some of the ways the news media was oversimplifying the story of what the most recent court ruling in the 50-year-old case meant.)
The second is a five-minute report about the sorry state of Detroit’s public schools and other public education horror stories.
Larry, we’ll miss your show, but hope to see you back on the air somewhere soon.