Can we stop rooting for Jimmy Fallon to fail?

Jimmy Fallon is losing the late night battle for ratings to Stephen Colbert, and the internet is loving it. The main takeaway from these pieces is that Jimmy Fallon is losing because he’s not using his show as a platform to take down Donald Trump, which is what people want from television at this point. And we can’t believe we’re actually saying this, but: good on ya, Jimmy.

It’s not that we love Jimmy Fallon by any means; in fact we have always found him to be a  grating experience on screen, and are quite sure we would hate him if he didn’t come across as being such a likable guy. And that means a lot coming from us, since we once had to sit through one of the Lip Sync battles on his show – because the remote was in another room and we didn’t feel like moving – and it was absolutely horrendous.

We too reacted semi-shocked when then presidential candidate Donald Trump appeared on Fallon’s show, and got away with just getting his hair tussled a bit. Disregarding the amazing job by the make-up department for getting that comb-over to hold, it was a segment bereft of any value.

So of course we got more out of Stephen Colbert’s show then, since he went after the guy hard. Yet now we’re at this point where we – along with the entire world – is just fucking sick of Donald Trump. And we feel like democratic hosts and Donald Trump are in an almost symbiotic relationship, where they feed off each other to survive. Trump loves attention, and that’s what he gets from people like Colbert.

Does that mean shows from the likes of Meyers, Colbert, and Oliver offer no value? Of course they do, but whenever they highlight minor shit Trump did like “mess up a word” during a speech, I can’t help but feel they stopped caring about hurting Trump and care more about pleasing their fan-base and keeping their ratings up.

So what’s wrong exactly with the way Fallon is doing his show? We don’t really see it. As far as we know, the tonight show isn’t the platform people use to inform themselves about the world in its current state. Is there anything wrong with a guy who throws a show with – shudder – lip sync battles and leaves the politics to actual political shows? Have we focused so much on hating Trump that we’ve forgotten that he doesn’t necessarily deserve a place in every fucking show on television?

Fallon isn’t a political TV host, and his show isn’t the perfect platform for this anyway. Good on him for continuing down his path, instead of joining the Trump suck-fest.