by Rachel Stewart

From May next year American TV icon ‘The Late Show with Stephen Colbert’ will be just that – late. The announcement was made by Colbert on air last week, and on this week’s show he’s a Democratic man promising retribution on anyone he perceives as the bad guy.

So, as you can see already the axing of the 30-year-old show is turning into a Dems vs. Republicans cage fight. There is a multitude of theories on why it happened, and all likely credible and perhaps intersecting.

Why is it worth talking about? It isn’t actually because in the scheme of things it’s all bollocks, but like everything media-related in the US it’s so hyper-partisan on so many levels that it’s worth exploring who’s blaming who.

But first it’s fair to acknowledge that under David Letterman’s ten years as host, this was a show that soared. The jokes were amusing, and any political bias was mostly under wraps. It was a show with something in it for every American.

But the Stephen Colbert iteration turned unfunny relatively quickly. When you swap out humour for hatred and pranks for partisanship it gets, well, boring.

Colbert’s now got nine months before the show ends to essentially behave as badly as he wants towards all of his perceived enemies and clearly he’s going to go for broke. Which likely means he won’t get the nine months. He’ll get a huge payout to wrack off early – on top of his $50m contract per year. He’d probably be better off to use that time to have a baby. You know, as men can do these days.

In the meantime, he has vowed to keep bashing Trump and has openly said that “the gloves are now off”. Really? Have the gloves been on over the last ten years? Wow. That’s some next level hatred, and blatant hijacking of a show that’s already losing $50m a year.

CBS have said in a statement that his sacking was about pure economics. And the hand of the market rules all in America. But no. Colbert and his supporters – mostly humourless aging comics like him – are whipping up the useful storyline being about the hand of Trump intervening.

The decision to put Colbert’s show out to pasture does come just weeks after Paramount Global, the parent company of CBS, agreed to settle a high-profile lawsuit brought by President Trump over an obviously doctored “60 Minutes” interview with Kamala Harris to attempt to make her look….. I’d like to say ‘good’ but that would be a stretch. Let’s say not as moronic.

The $16 million settlement – which Colbert called a “big fat bribe” – came amid a multibillion-dollar merger endeavour by Paramount Global with entertainment giant Skydance that will require approval by the Government’s Federal Communications Commission.

So maybe Trump did pull some strings. This is America, goddammit! I mean, why wouldn’t he given the endless political hits, one-liners, and below-the-belters he’s had to take over the last decade. Biden never even got so much as a flick on his skinny, white legs with a wet tea towel.

For me that nauseating dance routine hyping the jab during Covid is reason enough to snuff him out. Who can forget this vomitous travesty?

There are even more pricks in that scene than you can find at a trans woman convention.

Plus, you know, he was Jacinda Ardern’s little bitch during the Covid years, and seeing the back of him fills many of us non-virtue signallers with the warm glow of epicaricacy – turns out there is an English equivalent of that beautiful German word ‘schadenfreude’.

Ardern has appeared four times no less on his show, and every time he fawns and fusses over her and even came out to New Zealand to continue the fawning and fussing on her home ground. He acted like we were the quaintest little kingdom in the world, with Jacinda as our queen. How lucky were we?

Even there he still tries his relentless anti-Trump schtick on her. She, at least, restrains herself. Barely. It’s like it’s all a big inside joke for the cool people.

Anyway, he’s toast. By whatever mechanism that transpired it’s entirely possible that he just wasn’t cutting the comedic mustard anymore. This is not something he wants to consider.

Colbert would rather take his venom and spite and use it for the decent and noble cause of taking out Trump by whatever means. This is the man who miraculously survived an assassin’s bullet only a few months ago. Do the likes of Colbert and his ilk ever stop to consider their part in any of that? Do they ever think that their fellow Americans elected Trump whether they like it or not? Nope, they don’t.

His sacking is long overdue. I’d say thanks for all the laughs Stephen but, there weren’t any.