Trevor shows foreigners are taking Americans’ jobs

American late-night television shows have probably never had so many anchors with foreign accents as they will have soon.

Trevor Noah, a South African comedian, will become at least the third non-American native to host a popular TV comedy show later this year when he takes over The Daily Show from Jon Stewart. He will join two Britons, John Oliver of Last Week Tonight on HBO and James Corden, who recently started hosting The Late Late Show on CBS.

Noah is an unconventional choice for the host of a show on American television, which has had plenty of British actors and comedians over the years. He was born to a black Xhosa mother and a white Swiss father and is from a country where mixed-race unions are still uncommon. And, perhaps most important, many Americans have never heard or seen him perform.

But Noah’s foreignness might be just what the The Daily Show and American television broadly need. It is hard to remember now, but when Stewart took over the show and later spun off The Colbert Report, fake news was not a big part of our comedy diet. Yes, there was the Weekend Update segment on Saturday Night Live, but it came on just once a week and did not always deliver the goods.

Maybe what we really need now is to have foreigners apply their brand of satire to the United States – its politics, culture and race relations – to tell us something about ourselves that American comedians are not capturing. And they can perhaps also enlighten us about what’s funny and tragic in the rest of the world as Oliver has done ably on his show. Aside from a few jokes about Europe, most late-night shows rarely dwell on international subjects.

Still, Noah’s appointment has disappointed some fans of The Daily Show who had hoped that Comedy Central would pick a woman like Samantha Bee, who is leaving the show to start her own satirical program on TBS. It is disappointing that none of the several late-night shows on the air now have a woman as host. Perhaps Bee will so successfully shatter that glass ceiling that the executives at other networks will seek out more women to be hosts.

There will probably also be criticism from some quarters that Noah, Oliver and Corden represent a foreign invasion of television that is depriving hard-working American comedians of important jobs. Just last week, a columnist for Deadline.com suggested that some deserving white actors were not getting roles on new TV shows because the industry was designating many more characters as reserved for nonwhite actors.

I, for one, am looking forward to Noah’s stint in the host’s chair. I found his three appearances on The Daily Show to be funny in a unique way – watch him explain why it was bad for the United States to try to lure top chess players away from other countries. And I laughed at clips of his stand-up act in which he mimics the odd speaking style of President Jacob Zuma of South Africa. I hope he is just as unsparing to our politicians.- 2015 New York Times News Service -Timeslive