In a segment kicking off the second season of her late-night show, A Little Late With Lilly Singh, the host explained why she’d been getting “ a million tweets” every day in 2020 asking why she had a live, unmasked studio audience during a global pandemic. (Plus, she was sitting right next to her famous guests—like right up in John Cena’s face!) Singh explained, for what sounds like the billionth time, that she and her NBC bosses had had the brilliant-at-the-time idea to pre-tape an entire season’s-worth of interviews—in 2019. “We’ll bank this evergreen content,” 2021 Singh said of her material about going to movie theaters and hanging out at friends houses, “we can air it forever, it will always make sense.” Live and learn, new kid.
In this season, Singh will be joining her colleagues in doing things remotely, and daily. And from her house’s vibrantly painted “rant room,” at least for the time it takes for enough doses of the COVID-19 vaccine to make it through the outgoing (incompetent, seditious) Trump administration’s half-assed distribution pipeline and the wall of ignorance shielding anti-vaxxers from life-saving science, so we might resume the, as it turns out, vital daily routine of going outside and touching each other. So save your tweets, A Little Late viewers—Lilly’s continuing to do the right thing.
Not that she sees your online rants anyway, as the host noted that she’s, understandably, deleted all her social media. That after a year of watching how, when viewing the world strictly through incessant doomscrolling, “the entire world seems a lot worse than it actually is.” Singh noted how her experience of actually participating in the Black Lives Matter protests last year was a much more life- and humanity-affirming experience (marked by common purpose, human connection, and shared bottled water) than it seemed when filtered through the snippets of camera-friendly mayhem and division selected by both social media and media in general.
And, as Singh noted, we could all use some perspective after the recent terrorist attack at the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday. You know, the one where an election-losing but still-sitting president (and his Republican accomplices and enablers) utilized social media to rile up his base of aggrieved white people over baseless conspiracy theories and lies until they—at his direct instruction—stormed, invaded, and shat upon the halls of government in an attempt to destroy American democracy. Said Singh, “I have lost all patience with anyone that is still questioning privilege.” Noting that “BIPOC people are always told that their justified outrage is wrong, it’s problematic,” Singh pointed to the example of Colin Kaepernick quietly kneeling to protest racial bias and violence in policing being told he was “disrespecting America,” and how she’s pretty sure she’s on safe ground in guessing that every single white, Trump-loving, “back the blue” MAGA terrorist who attacked the Capitol—and killed a cop, and raised the traitorous, white supremacist Confederate flag—were all-in on calling Kaepernick’s action divisive and un-American.
“It was never about respecting or disrespecting America,” concluded Singh, in her take-no-bullshit address, “It was always about white supremacy.” Noting that it’s good (if appallingly, irresponsibly late) that social media companies have finally shut down the still-scheming and seditious Trump’s access to their platforms, Singh pointed back to the mass protests like Black Lives Matter, the Women’s March, and worldwide efforts surrounding India’s farmers and the military conflict in Armenia and Azerbaijan, as proof that people banding together for the common good (and not murdering people, or trying to overturn a democratic election) can actually make a difference. Back from a long hiatus, and coming to us live each week (she won’t make that mistake again), Lilly Singh is ready to bring her own unique voice back to the late-night chorus.