The Final Late Show Triumph

There are Hints of More to Come

Bruce Springsteen said it best one night earlier, on the penultimate episode of the long-running CBS program, the Late Show:

“I am here in support tonight for Stephen, because you are the first guy in America who’s lost his show because we have a president who can’t take a joke; and because Larry and David Ellison feel they need to kiss his ass to get what they want. Stephen, these are small-minded people: they have no idea what the freedoms of this beautiful country are supposed to be about.”

Remember, the next time someone in a goofy red hat complains about “the mainstream media,” that the deadly virus that is MAGA is buying up too much of it. They now run the Washington Post, they have conquered CBS and Paramount with their sights on Sky Dance Studios, they are intimidating CNN, and the list goes on. The threat is that much of what people will be able to see, read, or hear that is called “News” could be subjected to government control of the kind that has existed in the Soviet Union and other countries with despotic regimes. FOX “News,” along with other American imitations of TASS and der Volkischer Beobachter, have always reminded their audience that, as Andy Rooney once quipped about the U.S.S.R., There is no bad news in America - except, of course, for “fake news” by “terrible people” - as in, “you’re a terrible person.” But do not despair! In the name of “Freedom,” our beloved Dear Leader and his rich friends are doing all they can to save us all from hearing, reading, or seeing any bad news. And, because some of the finest investigative reporting comes to us, these days, through the monologues of comedians, they are the first against the wall as the revolution comes. Now that Sixty Minutes cannot even stand up to the Party, we need comedy writers to do the job that Sixty Minutes did back in the day. And what a day it was. At one time the scariest sentence that made shady dealers wet their pants was “Mike Wallace is here.” Today it is a question: “Did you watch John Oliver last night?”

This final broadcast of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert has taken place in the same week in which Donald trump announced his criminal plan to pay his own team of violent terrorists by creating a slush fund of 1.776 billion dollars. The convicted insurrectionists are the same thugs and rioters that he pardoned, all of whom were justly convicted by proper employment of the Rule of Law. The “gas lighting” of this godless regime is Orwellian by any standard. “War is peace.”

But to some degree the joke is on them. The name of the final episode, the title of a song by The Beatles in 1967, was Hello Goodbye. Stephen Colbert, in many ways a man after my own heart, enjoyed the special thrill of singing a Beatles classic along with Paul McCartney. Also, on stage for that song was Louis Cato and the Big Joy Machine, Jon Batiste, and Elvis Costello, all singing the counterpoint lines to the refrain that had been sung in 1967 by John Lennon and George Harrison (and the drummer did a good job playing the part that was created by Ringo Starr). The closing was upbeat, and there is no celebrity in the world more qualified to be “the last guest” on the program, obviously, than Sir Paul McCartney. Also, by ending the show with the song Hello Goodbye they were sending a not-so-subtle message: Stephen Colbert will not be silenced. The United States is in peril of losing all of its freedoms that have been protected by the reciprocal protection of democracy and the Rule of Law. But we have enough of it remaining that we can still resist. I believe that, with enough resistance by people who love their country and who are paying attention, this dark and evil time will pass, and the whole Trump-MAGA nightmare will be flushed down the great big commode of history - a toilet concerning which we hear much about “the right side.” I suppose that the only wrong side is to be in it.

I am not worried about Stephen Colbert. He is more famous than ever. Obi-Wan Kenobe said it best: “If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine.” I have every hope that when Trump and the Party are overthrown by the Rule of Law with the reciprocal protection of Democracy (you can all quote that phrase. I am trying to make it famous) that Stephen Colbert will be telling jokes about them to an audience even larger than before. Remember this: Donald Trump’s biggest enemy is Donald Trump. In this, as in so many other things, he has overplayed his hand. He will have reached the cesspool while Stephen Colbert is still getting laughs from millions upon millions of people.

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Reported just now in Parade

Just one day after Stephen Colbertwrapped his last episode of The Late Show after 11 years on air, he was already back on television in a surprising place: public access cable television! The longtime Comedy Central late-night host said his goodbyes to the network and fans of his show on May 21 after 11 seasons, and just one day later, he was spotted on Monroe Community Media's Only in Monroe, a public access program he guest hosted in 2015. "It's been an excruciating 23 hours without being on TV, so I am grateful to be able to be here on Monroe Community Media before they also get acquired by Paramount," he joked on the non-profit program.