"Difficult Conversations"

Why Ziwe doesn't work

The most uncomfortable interview I’ve seen this year begins with footage of three racist women. It starts with a clip of Amy Cooper trying to kill birdwatcher Christian Cooper. She calls the police and says "There is an African American man—I am in Central Park—he is recording me and threatening myself and my dog” (Christian wasn’t.) It cuts to footage of Jennifer Schulte, AKA “BBQ Becky,” who called 911 on a Black family and said “I’m really scared! You gotta come quick!” despite being in no danger.  It ends with a clip of Miya Ponsetto tackling a then-14-year-old Black boy in a hotel lobby. Ponsetto accused the boy of stealing her iPhone and tried to sic hotel staff on him. It was later revealed she’d left her phone in an Uber.

Newly-minted late-night host Ziwe Fumudoh reads over the footage: “Karen: a pejorative slang term for obnoxious, angry, entitled, and often racist middle-aged white women, who use their privilege to demand their way at the expense of others.” But Fumudoh’s definition is too broad. Cooper, Schulte, and Ponsetto weren’t just “obnoxious, angry, and entitled.” They were evil, racist, and murderous. Fumudoh’s “Karen” definition lumps together annoying restaurant customers with modern-day Carolyn Bryants. During the next segment, it becomes clear why.

After the introduction, Fumudoh interviews a panel of four white women all named Karen. But unlike the “Karens” in the video’s intro, these women are mostly fine. Fumudoh baits the four women into embarrassing themselves. “Do you think Karens’ lives matter?” she asks them. She later leads them in a chant of “Karen and proud!” Three of the Karens tactlessly accede. And that’s on them. They’re adults and they’re responsible for what they do on camera. 

But if what the four Karens do on camera is socially cringe, it’s also ethically sound. The four women agree that racism’s wrong. One calls what Amy Cooper did “horrific.” And most crucially, the women disavow their power to call 911 and kill people. “Before we act, let’s think: is it a good idea to call the police?” one of the women says. Which begs the question: why is Fumudoh lumping these four women in with Cooper, Schulte, and Ponsetto? So long as these white women don’t use the cops as contract killers, who cares if they like wine, true crime, and to be in bed by nine?

The Karen interview touches on Ziwe’s true problem: the show pretends its interview subjects’ cultural preferences are political power. This is because if you’re a leftist, you’re only allowed to humiliate people who’re perceived to be powerful. But confronting actual power is risky. So Fumudoh offers a compromise: she’ll channel your anger towards safe targets, like anonymous women and celebrities.

This isn’t a new idea. But it also makes me wonder why are so many people are falling for Ziwe’s schtick. 

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Ziwe is part of a new wave of late-night comedy shows helmed by Black women, which is a tremendous accomplishment in a spectacularly racist industry. It follows The Rundown with Robin Thede and The Amber Ruffin Show, but it’s stylistically closer to The Eric Andre Show and SNL than Colbert. Ziwe’s been praised from Salon to CBS to NPR to InStyle, as “unflinching,” “tough” and “no-holds-barred.” The media machine’s already marketing the show as “necessary,” and Gayle King pushed Ziwe’s assertion that watching her show can help people “unlearn racial bias.”

The problem is Ziwe isn’t good. It runs on aggrievement, which is an exhaustible fuel source. Her music videos are just lists of things meant to outrage us. And her interview style is antagonistic, with little attention paid to what makes antagonism funny. Some people on Twitter like her and her fans regularly call her “iconic,” which seems to be shorthand for “petty.” But pettiness isn’t pleasurable to watch if it’s directed at an undeserving target.

This is most clearly on display during Fumudoh’s interview with critic and notable New York shit-talker Fran Lebowitz. “What bothers you more: slow walkers or racism?” Ziwe asks Lebowitz. “That’s a real question?” Lebowitz responds incredulously. “Obviously, they’re not comparable,” she follows up. Ziwe gives an exaggerated side-eye to the camera as if to say, “Can you believe this woman?” But I agree with Fran. I’d be insulted if someone asked me that, too. “Do you really think so little of me?” I’d respond. (I wish that Fran had—I wish someone would put Ziwe on the spot the way she does others.)

Ziwe later asks Lebowitz “What percentage of white women do you hate?” Lebowitz purses her lips. “I would say that I am less concerned with race than you are,” she responds truthfully. Ziwe further antagonizes her, calling her the “MLK of women writers,” and “Comrade Fran.” Lebowitz seems to realize this is a no-win scenario for her and gives up. “No argument,” she says resignedly, as if to an exhausting child.

I get the sense we’re supposed to enjoy watching Lebowitz squirm. But after the interview, I was the one squirming. Ziwe fails to address the question of why I should care about Fran Lebowitz getting caught wrong-footed. She doesn’t pass legislation or bribe congresspeople. She can’t deploy police or suppress wages. She’s just a critic in New York. Her biggest crime is being a “big guy in the art world who insists she’s a little one.”

In this sense, Ziwe fails where other antagonistic comedy shows succeed. The point of political antagonism is that it’s supposed to punch up. And the point of putting it on TV is that public embarrassment is the closest thing the powerful will face to consequences. That’s what made Jon Stewart’s skewering of Jim Cramer, Eric Andre’s deft dismantlement of corporate “girlboss” culture, and Sacha Baron Cohen’s humiliation of Roy Moore for being a pedophile so satisfying to watch. But Fumudoh doesn’t do any of that. Her antagonism has no goal beyond making her famous. Which would be fine, if she hadn’t marketed her interview style as an antiracist political technique.

Journalist Allegra Hobbs wrote that people direct venom towards celebrities online because “there are no real solutions to our misery. Because those in power don’t seem to be listening.” Ziwe feels like a McKinsey analyst figured out how to turn that rage-redirection into a TV show. Fumudoh talks about racism because it’s something her audience is angry about. But she directs that anger towards celebrities like Lebowitz, Alison Roman, Alyssa Milano, and four random white women named Karen, who aren’t responsible for racism and couldn’t singlehandedly fix it, even if they all joined anarchist militias tomorrow.

Fumudoh’s interview subjects even seem to enjoy being humiliated, because Ziwe feels tailor-made to appeal to liberals’ idea of antiracism. To liberals, racism is something they do behaviorally. It’s microaggressions, the number of Black friends they have, and whether they capitalize the “B” in Black. Capitalist interests like corporate TV divorce it from land seizures, forced labor, and low wages for Black workers. In the liberal imagination, racism is something you can fix by buying a book, voting for Kamala Harris, or having “difficult conversations.”

“I want people to have difficult conversations so we can move forward,” Fumudoh said in an interview with CBS. But what exactly do Ziwe’s “difficult conversations” let us “move forward” to? Does making Alison Roman count her Black friends do anything about imperialism? Does asking Fran Lebowitz which white women she hates do anything about mortgage discrimination? Does embarrassing celebrities do anything besides generate Ziwe views? “Difficult conversations” are useful for luxuriating in white guilt that’s actually euphoria: the opportunity to feel power by “acknowledging privilege.” Asking someone to commit to dismantling the empire is much riskier.

The disconnect between Fumudoh’s stated goal of creating a “welcoming environment” and the show’s antagonism suggests this isn’t a political project at all. I get the sense Ziwe’s motivated by something far more specific than the imperialism she critiques in her show. She works too hard, her details are too precise, and she’s too meticulous for this not to be personal. But because she hides her feelings behind righteous political indignation, I have no idea what she really believes.

Her most illuminating quote occurs in an interview with CBS This Morning. She describes incidents where people have micro-aggressed to her at parties and says “This [show] is my version of healing and working through all the trauma I’ve experienced.” Personally, I’d love to see an honest expression of humor, rage, and pain. But after four years of cable news, I’m tired of moral outrage as a marketing strategy.