Chelsea Handler’s making a solid case for becoming the Handmaid’s Tale-era host of The Daily Show.
She expertly trolled the anti-choice crowd with a satirical bit last Friday about enjoying life as a childless woman, then followed it up Wednesday with a response to outraged commentary from Fox News Great Replacement theorist Tucker Carlson, screechy podcast scold Ben Shapiro, and conservative radio host Jesse Kelly.
Any questions? @TheDailyShow pic.twitter.com/RvRykt5TYK
— Chelsea Handler (@chelseahandler) February 16, 2023
As ever, the alt-right’s “don’t tread on me” ethos doesn’t extend to female autonomy, as conservatives took to social media to explain, below her original clip, how childbearing is the one and only source of real joy for women. Coming as this did in a month that’s seen their camp calling for the revival of the Comstock Act—an 1873 law banning the mailing of dirty postcards—to stop people obtaining abortion pills by mail, Handler’s salvos are perfectly timed.
The comedian wasn’t the only one eating up the hand-wringing in the comments:
i loved this video and then I saw all the defensive reactions below from people who can't stand the idea that parenting is optional and i loved it even more
— dr timaree (@timaree_leigh) February 15, 2023
These comments delivered. God forbid a woman actually enjoy being childless.
"This video sucks and my baby smiled at me today, so it's all worth it!"
Who are you trying to convince?
— Marielle (@TheNolaChick) February 15, 2023
I wouldn't trade my children (Colt, Velveeta, Luger, Starbuck, Kirkland, Jerry Lee, Reagan, Tammy & Pammy (twins!), Garthbrooks, and Amy) for all the mid-day naps and fancy shoes on G-d's green earth.
— Rick G. Rosner (@dumbassgenius) February 15, 2023
"I wouldn't trade my child for the world."
Okay? Nobody asked you to?
Not doing that is actually kind of legally required because trading children is frowned upon.
Chelsea chose to not have kids and is sharing her gratefulness for the vast benefits of her decision.
Chill.
— MT (@MasterTainment) February 15, 2023
Handler hasn’t been coy about wanting to take over former host Trevor Noah’s seat for real. In a new interview with Rolling Stone, she says “there’s so little representation when it comes to female relatability. Why are we only having men tell us about the news? There are some women in news, and in late-night there are two women, but they just fired Samantha Bee.”
To that end, she included, alongside broadsides at George Santos, Marjorie Taylor Greene and Trump, some unapologetically female-directed news.
I bought one but still. pic.twitter.com/isWQ5781WM
— Chelsea Handler (@chelseahandler) February 12, 2023
Handler’s critics say she’s protesting too much that she’s happy being childless. Yeah, why won’t she shut up about normalizing the right not to have kids, already?
Maybe because of what’s going on right now in Texas. And Kentucky. And Wisconsin. And in Washington, D.C., Tennessee, South Carolina. Plus Missouri, also Florida. As well as online, and in the U.S. as a whole.
Handler’s a longtime advocate of reproductive rights who guest-hosted another show, Jimmy Kimmel Live, right after the Dobbs decision, and referenced her own high school abortions in a particularly acerbic monologue. “At this point,” she said, “I’d probably have more rights if my vagina was an AR-15.”
Meanwhile Sarah Silverman’s in the Daily Show chair this week, making her own headlines parsing the right’s definition of the term woke:
“Woke for the right is really just an umbrella term so that they don’t have to say specifically that they’re pieces of shit. It feels cooler to say ‘I’m not woke!’ than the truth, which is ‘I’m terrified of what I don’t understand and I only know how to process that as anger because I can’t look inward.'”
Per the longstanding late-night ratio, the following weeks will see a succession of five male comics at the Daily Show desk.
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