Jen Gerson: The tragedy of Stephen Colbert

It appears that he was more valuable to CBS as a political sacrifice than a comedic icon.

Jon Stewart speaks with host Stephen Colbert on The Late Show, on CBS.

By: Jen Gerson

One of the challenges of transitioning from writer to podcaster is that speaking is a little too easy. Writing requires a degree of forethought and planning. Gabbing, on the other hand, is off-the-cuff. And while this is one of the charms of podcasts — for some people anyway — I sometimes finish a weekly rant wondering if the things I said were conveyed in a way that aligned with what I really meant. Or, to put it another way, I wonder if what people are hearing is the same thing as what I intend to convey.

Writers don't totally avoid this problem, but it's much easier to be a little too loose in a podcast format.

I was mulling this over the weekend as I reflected on last week's The Line Podcast. Matt Gurney and I discussed the case of Stephen Colbert, whose gig as host of the Late Night show on CBS was cancelled last week. Citing "financial" reasons, the parent corporation announced that Colbert will be the final host of the 33-year-old TV institution. Although the show was the highest-rated legacy late-night show, that's not saying much. The genre has been on the same glide path as newspapers for years, and Colbert's show was earning only 2.4 million viewers per night. Reports have suggested that the franchise was losing $40 million per year on a $100-million-per-season budget.

In a statement, CBS and parent company Paramount said the move was "not related in any way to the show's performance, content, or other matters happening at Paramount."

Which was, perhaps, crucial to claim, as Paramount is in talks to move forward on a multi-billion-dollar merger with a movie studio, an acquisition that would require the sign-off of the Trump administration.

And, whoo boy, does the Trump administration not like Colbert. For that matter, CBS has cause to be somewhat miffed with the comedian as well. Just days before his firing, Colbert criticized CBS for paying $16 million to Trump to settle a libel suit the president brought forth over a 60 Minutes segment. CBS probably could have won the case, and the settlement has been treated as akin to bending the knee. Colbert called it a "big fat bribe."

During our own podcast, I made a point rather tangential to all of this, noting that Colbert ceased to hold the kind of cultural relevance that he once had and, especially since the “Peak Woke” era of 2020, was simply not that funny anymore. I think that's true, but I fear some of our listeners might have interpreted this as victim blaming — me saying that Colbert had it coming and that Trump's bullying and CBS's cowardice were justified — and that wasn't actually the point I was trying to make.

In case I should have stated this more clearly: I am violently opposed to pushing critical voices out of platforms in order to appease authoritarian leaders. If Colbert was fired in order to smooth the way for presidential approval of a major media merger, count me in the Strongly Against category.

The point that I was trying to make is that Colbert's firing, even when taken with context, suggests an even more radically alarming trend than what appears at present.

Even if the reports of $40 million losses are true, in an ordinary, healthy democratic capitalist society, it would not be so unusual to keep a high-profile individual in an institutional role for reasons that went beyond mere profit. Cultural capital, for example, can't always be measured in dollars. Colbert might have been a "loss leader," someone whom the network might keep on because his brand brought secondary benefits to the lineup and parent company as a whole — even if his specific program lost money. Other shows in the network's stable would be expected to carry water for the star. This would not be unusual.

But what Colbert's firing indicates is that that math don't math no more. It suggests that major corporations and networks like CBS can no longer afford to make hiring and firing decisions based solely on matters of profit or loss.

In a society that is becoming increasingly corrupt and authoritarian, they have to account for another factor — political liability. This is a real actual thing with a real actual cost that now needs to be considered on real actuarial tables and go-forward statements.

Talk to anyone who has to work in developing nations and you'll soon discover that bribery is simply a cost of doing business, and has to be accounted for as such. There's a reason why autocratic governments lead societies that are less productive and less efficient than high-trust, high-stability nations that prioritize the rule of law. It's because the actual material value of political liability can never be precisely calculated. This is a line item that is capricious by nature; corporations and individuals have to operate with a wider margin of error, a fact of doing business that gradually chills the freedom of everyone down the line.

And this is, sadly, the path that America is choosing for itself. In other words, in the new political and economic environment in the United States, it’s not enough for Colbert to simply be the most popular late-night television host. He had to be popular enough to account for the potential risk of the loss of an $8 billion merger that relied on a totally unstable factor — Donald Trump's personal feelings about Paramount and CBS.

And if the studio executives were watching the long-term trends, if they had decided that the whole genre is a financial dead letter anyway, then, well, why not chop off Colbert's head to present it ceremoniously to the court of a King?

Apparently, the bribe didn't end at $16 million. Colbert was more valuable to CBS as a political sacrifice than a comedic icon.

That's just the new accounting in Donald Trump's America.

That doesn't mean that Colbert's political leanings in recent years didn't also hurt his math. I don't want to chime in with the cliché "go woke, go broke," because I think it's more complicated than that. Late night was always a bad fit for Colbert, who cemented his comedic career as an iconic satiric caricature of a right-wing news pundit. The Colbert Report was scathing, not smug. Gleeful rather than affable. Colbert's Alter Ego schtick worked because it highlighted both Colbert's critical eye for hypocrisy, and his own self-awareness. He leaned into his ego, his anger, and his thinly suppressed resentment. Even right-wing audiences had to love it.

Late night is a very different kind of persona, and Colbert quickly seemed lost in it. As Woke peaked in 2020, Colbert's persona followed his politics into something loosely left wing and, frankly, lazy. Say what you will about the now-fading wave of identitarian leftist politics; for most people the call for equality may have been well-intentioned. But the movement was also chronically militant, self-righteous, pious, and — crucially — deeply humourless. It was a bad moment for progressive comedians.

The most relevant moment of the entire run of Colbert's Late Night came when Jon Stewart made a long-awaited appearance on the show next to his former co-star:

"I think we owe a great debt of gratitude to science,” Stewart said. “Science has, in many ways, helped ease the suffering of this pandemic, which was more than likely caused by science. There’s a novel respiratory coronavirus overtaking Wuhan, China. What do we do? Oh, you know who we could ask? The Wuhan novel respiratory coronavirus lab.”

Stewart compared the coronavirus outbreak to “an outbreak of chocolatey goodness near Hershey, Pennsylvania.”

The bit was completely hilarious, not only for Stewart's take, but also for Colbert's reaction. (See the photo above.) Throughout, the man who once fearlessly skewered every absurdity in America's political current, just sat there looking concerned and confused as Stewart went on to state the blindingly obvious directly to the recording camera. Colbert looked nervous and timid.

And look where we are only a few years later. Even today, it’s hard to imagine anyone taking a similar run at Jon Stewart, even as he takes shots at Trump. Stewart has leverage that Colbert does not.

Why?

After several years at the head of one of TV's most venerable institutions, Stephen Colbert neutered himself. In failing to serve his role as court jester to absurdities and petty evils of all persuasions, he undermined his own ability to take a stand against the Big Evil when it came.

Herein lieth the lesson.

Institutions that fail to both understand and uphold their own mandates set the scene for their own eventual annihilation. Brain-dead populism is stupid and self-destructive, but it doesn't exist in a vacuum; it feeds on the corruption and decay of institutional failure.

If you exist to provide fair and impartial information to a general audience, and you allow yourself to be consumed by an ideological fervor that demands you behave like an activist outlet, expect that to end poorly for you.

If you are elected on a mandate to pick up city garbage and keep the peace, pick up garbage and arrest criminals, or be prepared for vigilantism.

And if your mandate is to be a comedian, to reflect all the dark foibles of human society, well then you damn well better make people laugh.

Or as I put it in last week's Dispatch, if you're going to come at a king, best be funny. (I thought that Wire reference was funny.)

That's not to say that what is happening to Stephen Colbert is acceptable. It's not acceptable. But it is predictable. And the thing we can learn from it is that if you fail to come to terms with your raison d’être, prepare for the inevitable evaporation of the d’être.

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