Smarter than the average Colbert

Earl Fowler

Two quick thoughts on the craven CBS decision to end the long-running Late Show and award-winning tenure of fierce Trump administration satirist Stephen Colbert.

In case you haven’t heard the news, today’s report in The Guardian is as succinct as any:

The late-night comedy show has been on CBS for 33 years and the news (of its cancellation) arrived just days after Colbert called out the network’s parent company Paramount for settling a “frivolous” lawsuit with Donald Trump for $16 million US. Paramount is seeking approval for a $8.4-billion merger with Skydance, a company ran by David Ellison, son of close Trump ally Larry Ellison.

Colbert called it a “big fat bribe” earlier this week and later announced to his audience that the show would be ending next year. “Let me tell you, it is a fantastic job,” he said. “I wish someone else was getting it. And it is a job I am looking forward to doing with this usual gang of idiots for another 10 months.”

Together with Thursday night’s purblind clawback by the Republican-controlled Congress of $1.1 billion in congressional funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which helps finance National Public Radio (NPR) and the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), the demise of David Letterman’s old CBS gig is a low watermark in the continuing implosion of the American republic into a fascist autocracy with zero tolerance for truth and honest reporting.

No need for elaboration if you’ve been paying attention. But a bit more from The Guardian:

Colbert’s late-night rivals also weighed in, sharing their frustration with the decision. In an Instagram story Jimmy Kimmel poked fun at the network’s much-ridiculed comedy shows, writing: “Love you, Stephen. Fuck you and all your Sheldons, CBS.” Jimmy Fallon wrote: “I’m just as shocked as everyone. Stephen is one of the sharpest, funniest hosts to ever do it. I really thought I’d ride this out with him for years to come.” Seth Meyers also added: “For as great a comedian and host he is, [Colbert] is an even better person. I’m going to miss having him on TV every night but I’m excited he can no longer use the excuse that he’s ‘too busy to hang out’ with me.”

Trump has already taken a victory lap on Truth Social, writing: “I absolutely love that Colbert got fired. His talent was even less than his ratings. I hear Jimmy Kimmel is next. Has even less talent than Colbert! Greg Gutfeld is better than all of them combined, including the Moron on NBC who ruined the once great Tonight Show.”

In case you were wondering, Greg Gutfeld has a late-night “comedy” talk show on Fox about as funny as the Holocaust, which, he has implied, separated useful survivors from the less skilful chaff who perished.

The point I wanted to make here is that as much as I enjoy yukking it up while watching Colbert, Meyers and Jon Stewart revel in the demented, racist drivel that spews from the mouths of the Great Orange Turd and his putrid gang of crooked quislings and minions, the self-congratulatory endorphins released by knowing that I’m on the right side (well, left, if you want get technical about it) of history don’t amount to the square root of sweet Francis Ann.

I’m reminded that the late, great American folk singer Dave Van Ronk, a giant of New York City’s Greenwich Village scene back in the sixties, concluded from bitter experience that singing protest songs “doesn’t do a damn thing except dissociate you and your audience from all the evils in the world.”

In his terrific book Dylan Goes Electric, Elijah Wald quotes American folkie and filmmaker John Cohen, a founding member of the New Lost City Ramblers, as arguing “that topical songs were actually less relevant than old ballads and fiddle tunes, since they ‘blind young people into believing they are accomplishing something … when, in fact, they are doing nothing but going to concerts, record stores, and parties.’ ”

Enjoying the trenchant observations and witty barbs of talk show hosts, and then packing it in for the night or switching to a streaming service for a movie, is the modern version of singing along to “If I Had a Hammer” and then puking or passing out at a party.

Only now it’s American democracy, and with it the whole world, that’s getting wasted.