This is a palate cleanser the same way Kate McKinnon singing “Hallelujah” after the election was a palate cleanser, the same way ipecac is a palate cleanser.

I can’t explain why they chose to do this on camera instead of in the dressing room before the show apart from Jimmy Fallon feeling a certain amount of “woke envy” relative to the competition. Colbert has fully embraced shrill anti-Trump liberalism after discovering last year that it improved his ratings; Jimmy Kimmel has gone in three weeks from former host of “The Man Show” to, ahem, “America’s conscience” by emoting nightly about health-care reform and gun control, with help from Chuck Schumer. Seth Meyers, Trevor Noah, and Samantha Bee seem to spend upwards of 75 percent of their airtime attacking Trump and Republicans. Fallon stands out as the guy among them who aspires to be class clown more so than the class smart-ass; he’s a goofball at heart and behaved convivially with Trump when he was a guest last year, a sin for which the left has never forgiven him. The irony is, this Kimmel-esque attempt to wring feelz out of what’s supposed to be bedtime light humor may gross out the left as much as it does the right. Berniebros find Hillary as sleazy as Trumpers do for their own reasons. And unlike Trumpers, they can complain that she blocked their path to power.

Anyway, if there’s one thing late night comedy needs more of, it’s maudlin “o captain, my captain” tributes to famously terrible, uncharismatic left-wing politicians. Do Al Gore next! It can only help the GOP.