When CBS announced that it was killing The Late Show with Stephen Colbert effective next year, it said it was doing so just for financial reasons. It had nothing to do with content or programming. It’s true that the late night category has been having serious financial problems in recent years, and that even though Colbert leads Kimmel and Fallon in the ratings, that these shows don’t make as much money as they used to. But if you believe that Stephen Colbert’s jokes about CBS bribing Donald Trump in recent monologues had nothing to do with this decision, nothing to do at all, I’ve got some swamp land I want to sell you.
Look, I’ve been a friend of Stephen Colbert’s for more than 20 years. I’m not speaking for him tonight. But it’s obvious that David Ellison of Skydance Media and the CBS board want this deal to go through, and they don’t want a petulant, angry president to take any more out of their hide. They want to get off on the right foot with Trump, and so they’ll bend the knee. The problem is that to hold Trump accountable for the duration of his presidency we need ridicule. All of the experts on authoritarian regimes say that making fun of the leader is an essential part of holding him accountable. So after his show goes off the air, we need Stephen Colbert back in the fray and we need other voices of ridicule and other people who are willing to speak truth to power the way Stephen Colbert has in recent months and years.
