With tonight’s Stephen Colbert
“Late Show” finale, many will understandably feel emotional over the fact that a TV personality they love is leaving television.
On the flip side of
that coin, Colbert will be seen by others as the guy whose emphasis on divisive politics killed late-night TV on CBS.
Colbert was already steeped in
political comedy when he came to CBS in 2015 after 18 years at Comedy Central.
Political spoofs and jokes had long been his act. CBS hired Colbert on the
basis of his success on the satirical “Colbert Report,” which he hosted for nine years (2005-14).
The network may have hoped and even expected
that Colbert would widen the scope of his comedic point of view into areas of American life other than politics when he took over for David Letterman on “The Late Show.”
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But political comedy was Colbert’s specialty, and his term on “The Late Show” began in
September 2015 just four months after Donald Trump announced in June that he would run for President.
With
Trump drawing unprecedented media attention every day that summer, aiming monologue jokes at him was a no-brainer.
Trump was always larger than life, an
image he himself promoted and relished.
For a late-night comedian, Trump was a target as big as the proverbial broad side of a barn. No wonder Colbert took up the topic.
But at some point in Colbert’s 11 years as host of “The Late Show,” Trump became, for all intents and purposes, Colbert’s only topic.
As the years went by, Trump became more than just a monologue subject. He became an obsession.
We live in a period characterized by anger and division, and the violence stemming from both of them. Putting on
a rigidly partisan late-night show in the midst of all that was dumb.
While very little on TV in the current era is really to be considered mass appeal
anymore (major sports excepted), a network late-night show is supposed to at least try to draw a general audience, and not one made up solely of the anti-Trump-obsessed.
But that was not to be, and Colbert’s “Late Show” ends Thursday night and with it, “The Late Show” itself.
Colbert’s exit marks the end of a late-night era at CBS that began in 1993 with the launch of the original “Late Show.”
With
Colbert’s incessant attacks on Trump, and by extension, potential viewers who did not think as Colbert did, this late-night comedian came to be lumped by many into the same pool as the partisan
hosts of the odious, intolerant right-left talk shows on the cable news channels.
Had Colbert not ventured permanently into partisan commentary, “The
Late Show” might not have come an end.
Instead, the show was a turn-off to untold numbers of people
who just wanted to hear a few jokes they could relate to before drifting off to sleep.