BROADCAST BIAS: Networks lament end of Colbert show. They love his anti-Trump antics

The leftist bubble could easily be defined as people who think late-night comedians are the best Americans ever. The demise of Stephen Colbert's CBS show was greeted by Democrats like a funeral for a "national treasure." That's what they called Colbert.

Outside the bubble, "The Late Show" sounded more like a leftist therapy session, combined with a Democratic Party precinct meeting. Colbert could not imagine why anyone would support President Donald Trump. It's inconceivable to them, and they can't imagine anyone who thinks Colbert is insufferably smug and vicious, not the spin as "kind and generous."

NBC’s "Today" broke out the eulogies on the morning of Colbert’s last show. Entertainment reporter Chloe Melas gushed, "this farewell tour, it has been full of big moments, even bigger laughs as these lights get ready to dim." Melas added Colbert would love to have the pope as a guest on his final show, spurring co-anchor Savannah Guthrie to claim: "Well, Stephen is a devout Catholic."

That hasn’t been true at all. Even at Comedy Central, Colbert mocked the Holy Eucharist, and featured a close-up photo of a priest distributing condoms instead of the consecrated Host. In his last week of shows, when Catholic comedian Jim Gaffigan asked what happens after we die, Colbert gave a nebulous answer that didn’t sound like Christianity at all.

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Melas vaguely admitted Colbert’s show was full of "politically charged humor," and addressed the show’s cancellation by saying "questions swirled if it had anything to do with the show’s critical eye towards President [Donald] Trump" despite CBS’s insistence it was "purely a financial decision."

The conspiracy theorists who adored this show would naturally believe that Paramount (with a merger proposal in front of the Trump administration) were somehow currying favor. The left expects corporations to endlessly subsidize their propaganda no matter how many millions it loses. Ask Washington Post owner and billionaire Jeff Bezos.

NBC also interviewed an angry David Letterman about the show’s end. Craig Melvin offered a ponderous softball: "What does the end of that show say about comedy in America?" Letterman compared Colbert to Johnny Carson, like they were similar in any way. He complained, "we’re losing a valuable perspective. I think it’s very, very important to the American culture. I think it’s too bad that Stephen is gone. I think it’s a huge mistake."

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But it’s really like Burger Chef losing out to McDonald’s and Burger King. There’s no shortage of greasy Trump-hating jokes on television. There’s a surplus. Over the last few years, Colbert’s show told 87% of its political jokes on Trump and the Republicans – that’s nearly the same percentage as the other late-night "comedy" options.

This is where the lamentations of rocker Bruce Springsteen on the penultimate show (and others) were wrong that Trump "couldn’t take a joke." He takes thousands of jokes a year from this People’s Republic of Late Night. As usual, calling these jokes "negative" is under-selling it. Many remember Colbert’s rant in 2017 that the only thing Trump’s mouth was good for was to be a holster for Putin’s sex organ.

Colbert rejoiced when Trump was politically endangered. In 2019, he oozed: "Tomorrow is the first day of televised impeachment hearings. I’m so excited, I won't be able to sleep." In 2022, he found Christmas wasn’t about Christ: "It may be hot outside, but in here it’s Christmas. Because yesterday, we all got the present we wanted: FBI agents raided Mar-a-Lago." In 2023, when Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg indicted Trump, Colbert gushed he’d eaten ice cream out of a baseball helmet and "we're finally saying Merry Christmas again."

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This year, Colbert erupted against ICE. In January, Colbert cracked: "Do not compare ICE or Border Patrol agents to the Nazis. That’s an unfair comparison. The Nazis were willing to show their faces." This is the "comedy" David Letterman is going to miss.

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On Friday, NBC’s Melas was back to celebrate Colbert’s last show as "the end of an era, as one of television's most respected figures steps away from the spotlight." There’s the bubble again, that they can’t imagine anyone who thinks he deserves a "Most Respected" title, as if he is making something noble.

Inside the leftist bubble, they also shamelessly describe Colbert’s performative denunciations of the Trump side as the "truth." NPR critic Eric Deggans recalled how Colbert in his Comedy Central days coined the concept of "truthiness," that his fake conservative expressed "I don't trust books …They're all facts and no heart."

This goes along with his Bush-mocking joke at the 2006 White House Correspondents Dinner that "reality has a well-known liberal bias." Therefore, Deggans mourned the loss of the Colbert show "speaking truth to truthiness at a time when the world needs it most."

The news divisions of the broadcast networks see the late-night comedy shows as a way of reinforcing their narratives and putting a nastier spin on it. Team Trump might get a soundbite or two or rebuttal in a news story. There is no rebuttal space in late night. It’s all aggression, all the time. One less aggressor isn’t going to make much difference. 

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