Stephen Colbert’s character on Comedy Central’s The Colbert Report was funny and interesting. The real-life Stephen Colbert, or whatever iteration of Colbert it is on CBS’s The Late Show, is neither. And more than anything, that’s why his show is now canceled.
The very corny narrative that the dying news media like to tell is that CBS’s parent company canned Colbert, whose last show airs Thursday night, in deference to President Trump and as a way to secure a business merger that the network’s parent company needed approval from the administration for. CNN actress Jake Tapper literally hosted an entire documentary pushing that line. (How humiliating that Colbert’s tenure as the star of what used to be a revered institution is so unremarkable that the best it earned him was an online CNN special featuring … Jake Tapper.)
