Colbert FAFO: Money Losing Plus Smug Doesn't Sell Anymore

To many the cancellation of Stephen Colbert’s late-night CBS show marks the end of common culture in our society. Johnny Carson, the apolitical host, is no more. Bias is King. Colbert was once a popular comedian on Comedy Central doing satires of conservatives. But as time went by he and is show forgot about comedy and became bug-eyed water carriers for Left-wing politics in the U.S.

The show was always anti-Trump, but the point of no return for half of America might have come with Covid and, specifically, the vaccine mandates being forced on Americans. Colbert’s show staged a musical number in which dancers representing hypodermics gyrated onstage while Colbert himself sashayed to something called the Vax Scene. His fanatics loved it, but the spectacle looks ridiculous now. It  marked the show’s decline as a national institution. . 

It also didn’t help when his mentor Jon Stewart, who’d launched Colbert on The Daily Show, came on Colbert’s show to lecture him about  how wrong he was about the origins of the Covid virus. A stuttering Colbert looked like a school boy. 

Which is not to say that Colbert still didn’t have his fans. Even as CBS cancelled  him Colbert was drawing 2.1 million in David Letterman’s old 11:30 PM slot— many of them prominent in politics and culture.  His demise was noted by @BenStiller “Sorry to hear @CBS is canceling one of the best shows they have.” And senator Elizabeth Warren, the imitation indigenous woman, thundered, “America deserves to know if his show was canceled for political reasons.”

Monday, his fellow choristers in the Woke orchestra joined his show to lament that a guy losing $40 M a year for his network should be accountable. Jimmy Fallon, John Oliver, Seth Meyers and Jon Stewart showed up to show solidarity after CBS cancelled the DNC’s mouthpiece. Stewart came forward to defend all his bastard children in a bizarre demonstration.

The problem was that Greg Gutfeld, their competition on FOX, was getting 3.289 M a night. But this is still a business, and Colbert’s act was getting tired with advertisers as DEI, CRT and ESG hurt the bottom line. When Colbert ripped CBS last week for settling a libel suit with Trump it was over-and-out for Colbert. 

Sean Trende of Real Clear Politics had this epitaph for all the late-night liberals. “Jon Stewart unintentionally broke comedy. All of his protégés (Oliver, Colbert, Bee) kept the meanness and self righteousness without the subtlety, self-awareness, and willingness to criticize his own side (remember Stewart’s re-debut was mocking Biden’s age) that made him work.”

Telling half of America to FO everynight doesn’t help, either. Clips from Carson explaining why he eschewed politics on his long-running show hammered home the destructive sepukku performed by is successors. “Why are you doing this?” he asked an inquiring 60 Minutes’ host Mike Wallace. “I’m not running a boiler-room operation. I have no phoney real estate scam. I’m not taking any kickbacks. I did steal a ring from Woolworths once when I was 12 years old.”

While Colbert’s demise has unique aspects— it’s TV, after all—  it does serve as a model for the poisonous schism in American society. Even as the documents made clear the active role Barack Obama and his administration played in trying to stage a 2017 coup against incoming POTUS Donald Trump, his mynah birds were still chirping about Trump’s dictatorship and tyranny.

While America seems to be rousing from its Obama Dreams— You did not build that bridge!—Canadians seem determined to widen there gap between the ruled and the rulers. As we pointed out last month Canada had a similar cultural rift with the firing of Don Cherry and the subsequent gentrification of HNIC, the national hockey program. This past week the heel turn of his former wingman Ron MacLean cemented the split.

The recent Canadian election tore that split wide open across the country with separatist movements now ascendent in Quebec and Alberta as a result of Mark Carney reviving the Justin Trudeau mandate. While experts from the paid media claimed it was a referendum about Trump, globalism and capitalism. this election was largely about fear. Fear from the indulged urban middle class, because Trump was going to take the equity in their million-dollar shacks. Damn the young folks, what would happen to their nest eggs? 

They stampeded away from salty Pierre Poilievre, because he didn’t give them “champagne wishes and caviar dreams”. Carney the banker would save them when the game went to a shootout against Trump. With their votes salted away, the new Carney solution is to now join Europe in the march of the financial zombies. The flippers on the seals are slapping with excitement. 

The problem with that is that 11 EU members have no appetite for a deal with Canada because of… drum roll, please… Canada’s protected markets for dairy and more. In short, Quebec’s embrace of Carney in April will now be an assault on their precious sacred cows (literally) if he goes full Euro. And the gap between the realities in Canada grows wider.

As opposed to America, Canada would rather be clever than correct. Posturing to defy Trump is more important than coming to a tariff deal with the U.S. (only Canada and China have instituted counter tariffs against America). As opposed to its U.S. cousin, the self-contented Canadian media scene remains as placid as ever. 

Yes, Travis Dhanraj, once the host of his own CBC TV news show, resigned, accusing CBC of “tokenism masquerading as diversity, problematic political coverage protocols, and the erosion of editorial independence.” (CBC VP refused to go on her own show to rebut the claim.)

But there were no fellow hosts at other networks defended Dhanraj. No dance routines. No politicians decrying censorship. With the threat fgone rom Poilievre to defenestrate CBC, this too shall pass, they said. In Canada it usually does. How to else to explain Justin Trudeau running free?

Final thought: Even if CBC were the greatest broadcaster in the world does Canada  need a state-supported broadcaster? In a world saturated with news and opinion there is no call any longer for a pet broadcaster   Let alone at these prices. If it’s so damn special let someone private monetize it.

Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster  A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada's top television sports broadcaster, his new book Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL And Changed hockey is now available on Amazon. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his previous book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org . His 2004 book Money Players was voted sixth best on the same list, and is available via brucedowbigginbooks.ca.