This week, on the season five finale of Billy on the Street, Stephen Colbert joined the self-described "proudly elitist gay Jewish liberal native New Yorker piece of shit snowflake" host Billy Eichner to ask people what it’s like to live in the “so-called New York bubble.”
The pair also asked New Yorkers what message they want Colbert to pass along to President Donald Trump, prompting concerns about the “Pandora’s Box” he’s opened with his cabinet appointments. “He actually grabbed Pandora’s box without asking permission,” Colbert joked on the spot.
“You know, what, Stephen, I think these people are right,” Eichner says near the end of the segment. “I like being in my New York bubble. It’s the best bubble! I even want to be in a smaller bubble. From there, Eichner jumped into a giant, inflatable hamster wheel contraption and rolled away.
ADVERTISEMENT
With segments like this one and a brilliant piece of commentary last fall in which he asked a pedestrian to play a game of “immigrant or real American,” Eicher has slowly been inching away from the purely silly comedy of his early web series days and towards a more political approach to his unconventional game show format.
Ultimately, channeling his political point of view through his show like this may be more productive than getting in Twitter fights with people like Meghan McCain. “I think they’re effective and important: You’re rallying the troops,” Eichner said of his “angry” Twitter rants in a recent interview. “It’s comforting on some level. You’re talking and communicating with like-minded people. But, it’s going to have to be about more than tweets. We need to take a breath and find big ways and small ways to get active.”
That sounds like one more message President Trump needs to hear.
