86 Time November 25, 2019
REMAKING
THE GENRE
DESUS | 38
AND MERO | 36
By Chris Hayes
I first encountered Desus Nice on Twitter.
His avatar was of a dog in a balaclava,
and he was so damn funny that I started
following him and his equally hilarious
(though notably louder) buddy Kid
Mero. There was something about their
particular sensibility and wit that was both
electrifyingly different from anything else
and also overwhelmingly familiar in a way
I couldn’t quite name.
Then I found out the reason Desus felt
familiar was because we literally went to
elementary school together. Desus was
Daniel, a boy I remembered spending time
with in the schoolyard and at the cafeteria
table. The world we grew up in, the ragtag
world of Bronx kids cracking wise between
classes, had somehow—improbably —
become the basis for a hilarious podcast
and then a TV show.
Desus and Mero are smart-asses, and
I mean that in the fullest, most adoring
sense. They are both extremely smart:
witty and insightful and so quick on their
feet. They are not afraid to clown around
and wild out and simply delight in talking
about the insanity of the world we inhabit.
You could try a million times to make
this work as a TV show and it would fail
almost every time without their particular
presence and rapport. But by God does
it ever work.
Late night has long been dominated
by a certain kind of approachable
and inoffensive white man, and now
suddenly—in America, in the age of
Trump—these two have exploded out of
the Bronx to remake the genre itself. The
lesson is that the Bronx is as much “real
America” as anywhere else in this country.
Here’s to the future belonging to outer-
borough smart-asses.
Hayes is the host of All In With Chris Hayes
on MSNBC