This is a vicious and entirely deserved takedown

Current Affairs: The Banal Horror of Jimmy Fallon. It begins: There is a distinctive, deeply uncanny horror to the way Jimmy Fallon laughs. Look it up—there are literally hundreds of videos showing him breaking out into laughter at the slightest provocation. It is not a reaction (he sometimes won’t even wait for his guest to get to their carefully scripted punchline). Rather, it is a performance, a sudden, corporeal convulsion. Fallon leans in his chair, as if pressed back by some unseen force. It’s accompanied by the ritualistic slapping of the desk, a sound that echoes like a gavel in a courtroom. Watching the Tonight Show in the deep hours of the night, beaming out from a phone screen or laptop, there’s an unshakeable impression that this is not really entertainment but a desperate kind of ritual. Fallon acts as the high priest of a terrified optimism, his rictus grin serving as a shield against the encroaching silence of the real. Here, in the sanitized, over-lit heart of the…

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