I used to love Stephen Colbert. I thought he was the funniest man on late night television—maybe in all the world. I was a loyal watcher since he first started the Colbert Report on Comedy Central, and continued following him to his new late night show at CBS. About two years ago I stopped watching Colbert. Now I can’t stand him. He blames Trump and the Republicans for everything wrong in America today—and they do deserve some of the blame—but Colbert is not helping to fix any of those problems—he’s only making it worse.
I forget where I heard it, but someone said something to the extent of: The old saying in comedy is “it’s funny because it’s true,” but in the case of Colbert and his mentor Jon Stewart, “it’s true because it’s funny.” And that’s the thing: Colbert is funny—one of the quickest wits I’ve ever seen. When he talks about politics, he makes it humorous, which is why I was drawn to him in my college years, as are so many other young people. I was never interested in politics before then, but I have to credit Colbert for making me get interested because he made politics entertaining.
Up through high school, I had no political affiliation. When it was time to register to vote, I had no idea which party to choose—they all seemed the same to me. I wound up registering as a Republican because my grandmother said I should. Though when it came time to vote in my first presidential election (Bush vs. Kerry) I voted Democrat. That was around the time I first got interested in politics, through the Daily Show and Colbert Report. Colbert especially was my favorite. I have to credit (or blame) him for turning me into a liberal Democrat.
I liked and trusted Colbert because he was smart and funny, and he was critiquing the unfair biased right-wing media, so I assumed he was fair and unbiased. I did not know enough about political philosophy or economics at the time to know how wrong he was about so much. I didn’t see the bias, of taking the other side out of context, going to rallies and interviewing the craziest of extremists to represent them as the norm, misinterpreting everything Bush/McCain/Romney/Ryan/Trump/any Republican said in the worst light possible, always assuming racist and evil motives, and never giving anyone right-of-center the benefit of the doubt.
I followed Colbert all the way through the 2016 election, but when Trump won, after Colbert and everyone else in the media said he wouldn’t, I had to stop and reflect—reconsider what I thought were the facts because they didn’t line up with reality. When Colbert continued to lambast Trump and compare him to Hitler, say the sky is falling and this is the worst time in American history, I would look out the window and see things going pretty well. It’s only in these online media bubbles that there’s chaos, overreacting to everything Trump says and does.
Jonathan Haidt’s academic work around the evolutionary psychology of liberals and conservatives really put things into perspective. Neither side is “good” or “evil”. Both sides are needed, in balance, to maintain the yin/yang equilibrium of a functioning society. Much of the whole Democrat vs. Republican drama is pure tribalism. Trump plays into that tribalism, for sure, but so does Colbert. The country is being torn apart by this political tribal warfare, and Colbert is making it worse.
I used to think Colbert was one of the good guys, calling out the hypocrisy on the other side, but now I realize he is just as hypocritical in the opposite direction. He takes everything Trump and Republicans say in the worst light possible while excusing just about anything Democrats say or do. He never called out Obama for doing many of the same things he now calls out Trump for. Trump isn’t all that different in policy, it’s just his demeanor and rhetoric that’s new. It’s Trump’s character—the way he acts and speaks—that liberals like Colbert can’t stand. Refusing to be politically correct doesn’t make someone a racist, and liberals’ inability to understand that is what helped get Trump elected. Unfortunately his election didn’t teach them any lessons—they’ve only doubled-down on political correctness since.
The country is in desperate need of healing, bridging the two sides closer together, extinguishing the hatred and tribalism. People like Colbert, with national TV talk shows drawing millions of viewers, are in a prime position to be that voice that brings the country together. For better or worse, many people, especially young people, use Colbert as their political guideposts. The only political news they consume is the late night talk shows like him and the Daily Show and their alums such as Jon Oliver, Samantha Bee, Trevor Noah, Jordan Klepar, and Hassan Minaj. (That was my case for years. I’ve since studied history and economics and political philosophy and become a libertarian.) Colbert has the power to change the national conversation—calm everybody down and make peace across the aisle. Instead, he’s adding fuel to the fire and pushing the country further apart.
The truth is people love being tribal, separating into “us vs. them” and hating the other side. If Colbert actually did try to make peace and be fair to Republicans, his liberal base would turn on him in a flash. As foolish as he may be about economics and political philosophy, he’s no dummy—he must know this. In reality, Colbert is playing as much a character on his new show as he was on his old show. He used to be the “extreme over-the-top conservative pundit,” now he’s the “extreme over-the-top liberal pundit.” Sure, he is an actual liberal in real life and biased toward the left, but considering that he’s from the South and still a practicing Catholic, I doubt he buys in to all the leftist social justice warrior dogma. Yet he has no choice but to go along with it, otherwise his audience, comprised of many SJWs, would immediately assume he’s a racist Nazi and try to cancel him (as they do to anyone on the left who doesn’t fully buy in to the current leftist orthodoxy, whatever it may be, as it’s constantly changing).
Colbert has to continue to play a character and ham it up as the “woke late night social justice warrior.” As a rich straight white male Christian, he already has too many strikes against him, so he must go overboard to remain woke in the eyes of the left. This is why he has leftist heroes like AOC, Bernie, Ilhan Omar, and Elizabeth Warren on his show, giving them softball interviews. In an attempt to appear somewhat balanced, he’ll also have Republicans on his show, but of course he gives them hardball interviews. The one type of guest Colbert would never dare to have on his show is someone like Jonathan Haidt or Dave Rubin, trying to tone down the political tribalism and make bridges across the aisle (or someone who might actually call him out for propagating the tribalism, or being wrong about Trump and Russia, and so many of the other Trump conspiracy theories he promoted). I can’t recall Colbert ever having a libertarian on his show, which is why I took so long to become a libertarian—I didn’t know anything about libertarianism. Libertarians get no mainstream media attention—by design. The mainstream media, which is either left-wing or right-wing, want to make the public believe there are only two choices: red or blue, Republican or Democrat. That’s obviously in the best interest of Democrats and Republicans, but it also benefits the media. Painting one team as villains and the other as heroes is better for ratings.
Colbert pretends to be brave by calling out the president of the United States, when in fact that’s the safest and easiest thing to do in comedy. Everyone is criticizing Trump. The brave thing now is to call out the extreme left and extend an olive branch to the moderate right. So far, Colbert has been too much of a coward to do that. Tribalism is catnip for ratings. But if I could take the red pill, see reality, detribalize and change my political philosophy, hopefully Colbert can too. The future of the country may depend on it.
