Ethical considerations of just leaving Colin Jost in Tahiti

I have powerful parasocial beef with Colin Jost. It’s not entirely about how he’s not funny—if that were a crime, this blog would easily earn me a life sentence. I wish it was about something so sophisticated as how he’s an empty suit behind a plywood desk, a perfect poster child for how talent isn’t necessary for success in comedy but complicity and unending loyalty to Lorne Michaels are. That’s all true, but I read about all of that after I already knew I couldn’t stand the guy.

Part of it is about how he’s so unremarkable, yet he owns six homes and commands six-figure booking fees. Part of it is that he’s reclaimed the accurate descriptor that he has a very punchable face, so now I’m down an insult for him. A dearth of suitable insults certainly isn’t the problem—he makes sure of that. I’m just annoyed that I have to give him even a little bit of credit.

He’s not even important enough to be a harbinger of the death of comedy or anything lofty like that. It’s just that he fucking sucks. He’s the Dunning-Krueger effect incarnate, smarm and mediocrity curdling in a perfect TV-ready package, the stench radiating like expired milk every time Weekend Update airs.

So imagine my dismay when NBC announced that Jost would be their surfing correspondent in Tahiti. I found the surfing kind of unexciting in Tokyo, but from what I’ve seen so far, this year’s competition is set to deliver.¹ I’d really rather not have to mute Jost’s desultory attempts at jokes while watching people stare death in the face. Thankfully, at least so far, NBC is leaving the actual commentary to people who know what the fuck they’re talking about. They’ve mostly marooned him on shore to watch from the beach seats. Unsurprisingly for Jost, it sure doesn’t sound like he’s doing much over there except for rubbing his good “fortune” in everyone’s faces.

Jost of all people getting a paid vacation should make me hate him even more. Don’t worry, it does. But it also got me thinking: what if something unfortunate happened to his passport, or if NBC pretended they’d never met him in his life, or if there’s another worldwide Microsoft outage but specifically in French Polynesia? What if he just… didn’t come back?

First and most obviously, he would not be on SNL anymore. I’ll concede that having takes about SNL in general is pretty annoying at this point because everyone just says “it used to be so much funnier in [year where it was even more okay to creep on your female coworkers].”² But I will say that I miss enjoying Weekend Update before Jost and Michael Che took over. Forcing them to shake things up because one of their hosts is thousands of miles away would at least get someone new behind the desk. Hell, maybe Che would even join his buddy on the island—two birds with one stone.

A banished Jost would also be unable to keep bleeding public universities dry. Imagine what Miami University (in Ohio) could have done with $110,000 or what the University of Illinois could have done with that $70,000. Financial aid! Field trips! Hiring a better comedian! Leaving him in the Pacific wouldn’t just be great for me, it’d be a boon for all of academia.

However, we must acknowledge that we would be leaving him in what’s often called paradise—hardly a prime location for enjoying some schadenfreude. There are sharks, but they’re not very interested in humans.³ It might be less of a gilded hell than just gilded. Plus, we’d just be making him the Tahitians’ problem, and I think the Western world has doled out enough misfortune onto them.⁴  

We must also consider a very apt historical precedent: sticking Napoleon on an island didn’t do much the first time. Why should we assume it would work here? Do we need a second island as plan B? If we don’t think this through, the logistical nightmare of shuttling him to island after island may start to outweigh the benefits of his exile.

Well, we actually do have a plan B: it’s called the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics. It might not be a distant island, but it is across the continent, and you can’t be live from New York!!! if you’re on the opposite side of the country. I truly have no ethical qualms about making him California’s problem. What’s one more hack in LA? They’re as ubiquitous as traffic and smog over there.⁵  

Instead of falling for instant gratification, we should treat his deployment to Tahiti as preparation for the next Olympics. The plan’s simple: in the leadup to the LA games, we get a producer to say “hey Colin, you did such a good job doing n- covering surfing in Tahiti! Would you do it again this summer?” Then, once he’s blissfully ignorant on the beach, we put him on the no-fly list. This is the hard part, especially given the bureaucratic hurdles and Jost’s skin tone, but we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.⁶ Without access to air travel, someone who, again, owns six homes surely wouldn’t take a road or train trip like a fucking plebian. And just like that, New York will be free.

So while we’ll have to wait, patience is a virtue, my brothers in hating. A better future awaits us. It may not be the guillotine, but it is LA, which is honestly worse.

1  No seriously, the surfing is BANANAS. Someone SNAPPED THEIR BOARD IN HALF TODAY. I know there’s a fair amount of surfers waiting around for a good wave, but listen to the broadcast while you make some dinner or something and tune in when the announcers say someone’s about to go. That’s exactly what I’m doing writing this post right now. It’s great to put on in the evening after things wrap up in Paris proper—midday in Tahiti is about 7pm for us on the east coast, so if you’re still craving sports after the festivities in France, surfing’s got you.

2  Except, you guessed it, Seth Simons. Seriously, read the entire review of Jost’s memoir—I highlighted the most relevant bits, but the whole piece is well worth your time.

3  The area was designated as a sanctuary for sharks in 2006, making it illegal to kill them. It hasn’t been going perfectly; the rule was made without local input, sharks and fishermen can sometimes compete for fish, sharks can still get caught on fishing gear by mistake, and collecting data on their numbers is incredibly difficult. But it sounds like this might be a conservation success story. Either way, they’re not gonna do anything to Jost.

4  First colonialism, now Colinialism. They deserve a break!

5  I recently realized that if someone held a gun to my head and said I had to move to LA or game over, I would honestly think about it for a second. I’d do it, but it wouldn’t be that easy of a decision.

6  If the catgirls can hack the no-fly list, surely the catgirls can slip someone in. Someone get Maia on the line. Her work isn’t done just yet.