Opinion | As a late-night entertainer, Stephen Colbert abdicated

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There’s a quote by David Brinkley, the legendary TV news anchor and interlocutor, that’s taped to my printer. It goes, “Everyone is entitled to my opinion.” I’m sure it was spoken ironically, for a laugh, but there’s a certain dark truth to it as well. You spend enough time in media with the reins off, without an editor, surrounded by “yes” people, and you begin to think every thought you have is a diamond, that people are hanging on your every word.

Social media has blown up this phenomenon because on social, no matter how dumb, absurd, offensive, annoying or presumptuous you are, you will find reinforcement. A feedback loop develops, especially if you’re talking politics, America’s high-pitched religion. Everyone is entitled to my opinion!

Which brings us to the Stephen Colbert/CBS saga. What stands out to me about it is the sense that the Brinkley quote is now universal truth — an opinion, when it’s about politics, is not an opinion, it’s salvation, truth, justice, the word.

I’ll lay my cards on the table. I’m not a Colbert fan. I find him smug and pedantic. I thought his Comedy Central show was heavy handed and one-note, and even pre-Trump I found his “Late Show” grating. We like what we like; that’s entertainment.

But the drama du jour, whether CBS should continue to lose tens of millions of dollars so Colbert can present nightly jeremiads and Trump mockery — all with the express purpose of spreading the word — is another matter entirely. Colbert and Jimmy Kimmel and Seth Meyers have taken it upon themselves to turn established entertainment programming into political advocacy. Night after night, year after year, going on a decade now.

Are Trumpers watching? Clearly not, judging by the ratings of “Gutfeld!” on Fox News. Colbert, like conservative Charlie Kirk when he issued his attack on Minneapolis mayoral candidate Omar Fateh, is speaking to an audience of loyalists. The idea that either are changing hearts and minds is the height of self-delusion. Kirk knows he’s in an echo chamber, but I sense by the aggrieved reactions of John Oliver, Kimmel, Meyers et al. regarding Colbert that they don’t.

This trend is not unique to late-night TV. It is now endemic in journalism. Sportswriters, arts writers, news reporters all have their thumb on the scale, baking in a message explicitly or implicitly. And when you ask them to “stay in their lane,” because their credibility has been built on evaluating baseball drafts or covering police news conferences, they become indignant. On national TV it’s a messiah complex of sorts, while lower down the food chain just a baked-in self-righteousness that is so much a part of media these days.

And I haven’t even gotten to dismantling Dave Letterman’s brilliant legacy. Spilled milk, as it were.

Do I think CBS/Paramount is trying to shut Colbert up? Yes and no. When you’re trying to shut someone up, you don’t usually give them 10 more months to keep talking. But when you have a vindictive White House and a high-profile show built on antagonizing it — which is also losing an estimated $40 million a year — well, a business decision has side benefits.

Colbert is a political comic with a bent for ad hominem. He needs an hour like John Oliver’s weekly HBO show, and I’m sure he’ll find one, and be paid millions for it. But what of Colbert’s 200 or so employees — not just his writers, but career tradespeople and technicians — who are headed for the unemployment line? His lighting supervisor in the shuttered Ed Sullivan Theater may need retraining.

Not me. I will bid Colbert a genial good riddance next May.

One thing I’ve learned over decades in media is if you put the audience first, you’ll generally thrive. When you abuse its goodwill for parochial reasons, no matter how deeply righteous you tell yourself you are, your agenda is eventually laid bare and you lose trust, permanently.

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