Vinson Cunningham: This is Critics At Large, a podcast from The New Yorker. I'm Vincent Cunningham. Naomi Fry: I'm Alex Schwartz. And I'm Nomi Fry. Each week on this show, we make sense of what's happening in the culture right now and how we got here. Hi everyone. Hello. Hello. How's everyone feeling? You know, we just gotta keep on keeping on. Vinson Cunningham: There you go. Naomi Fry: One foot in front of the other. That's what I tell my myself that's on this Alex Schwartz: Monday morning. That's what I tell myself every day. Yeah. And Vinson Cunningham: every minute the midsummer slog. Alex Schwartz: I've been in the middle of one deadline, one rolling deadline for the last, I would say six weeks. I could not tell you what day it is. It's a miracle. I know what month it is. Yeah. Vinson Cunningham: Yeah. Well Naomi Fry: that's the life. Alex Schwartz: That's Naomi Fry: the life. Well, Alex, you're talking about day in, day out, you know who also does, has been doing. For many years, day in, day out. Mr. Steven Colbert. Oh yes. Vinson Cunningham: Oh yeah. Naomi Fry: Yeah. When did you guys become aware of Steven Colbert? What was your first encounter with the man? Vinson Cunningham: I think the sort of simultaneous moment during which he was on the Amy Sedaris vehicle, strangers with K. And also 'cause I, I learned that he, he did this at the same time and I guess this makes sense because like he kind of like sprung into my life. This is Naomi Fry: the late nineties, right? Um, Vinson Cunningham: yeah, he was also. First a correspondent, and then sort of a more and more prominent presence on the Daily Show with Kilborn and then with John Stewart. Naomi Fry: Alex, what about you? Alex Schwartz: For me, it was a little later than that, probably in that 2003, 2004 zone when the internet and watching things on it were increasingly a part of life, especially for a high school student who was outraged about the war in Iraq and the general idiotic politics, um, of the United States of America at the time. Mm-hmm. Suddenly, there was this vehicle, the Daily show that expressed that in this really funny and youthful way, and there was this. One particular guy on it who just embodied as a joke, everything that we thought was going wrong, and that was Stephen Colbert and, and it was huge, Naomi Fry: right? Absolutely. So, Stephen Colbert, uh, currently the host of The Late Show, CBS's Late Night Talk show has been on our minds lately. Two weeks ago, he announced on Air the Paramount CBS's Parent Company was canceling. The late show, and this was only a few days after he called Paramount settlement with the Trump administration quote, a big fat bribe. Paramount is claiming that the cancellation is a financial decision. The show was apparently losing about $40 million a year, which I have to say sounds like a lot, but it does say something about the state of late night. The fact that, you know, the show is canceled, whether the decision really was economic or political or, or both. So today we're gonna be talking about the late night show as a genre and also about Stephen Colbert, more particularly as a political comedian, uh, and a satires. And we're gonna look back. At what late night was doing for audiences before everyone's media consumption became so siloed. We're also going to look back to Colbert's work on The Daily Show, the Colbert Report, and even my favorite strangers with K. Shout out, Mr. Noble. Late Night is an old form that yes has been losing viewers, but it still endures for now. Colbert himself will be fine. But is this cancellation a one-off or is this the first late night cancellation of many yet to come? So the question I have for us today is, what does late night offer us now? That's today on critics at large late nights Last laugh. ________________ So you guys, this is not the first time we're talking on the show about media institutions in decline, uh, or in potential decline, at least to be, to be kinder. We've talked about Saturday Night Live. You know, it's the 50th anniversary, or we talked about sesame. Not long ago. And the changes that it has undergone over the last several decades, and this Colbert news, feels like it might be another instance of, of, of a similar story, um, though potentially maybe with an even darker edge to it. I wanna start off just by asking you guys, what's your relationship historically to late night television? Are you a fan? Like is this something that has touched your life? Vinson Cunningham: And I feel that my relationship to late night television is very similar to my relationship to Saturday Night Live, which is that at a certain point in my life, I was very intensely interested in it. Yeah. And I have retained a certain fondness and always kind of check in with it. It's, it, it kind of retains a certain glamor for me. Mm-hmm. I don't know. Being the host of a late night television show, it seems like it's a man in a Naomi Fry: suit. It's a man in a sharp suit behind a desk, behind a coffee desk talking to a famous person. Vinson Cunningham: Yeah. And I have always loved the, the mix of sort of old school put togetherness, a man in a suit. Mm-hmm. Yeah. But then also the variety of it. Okay. There's a band over there. Sure. There are gonna be some sketches, there might be some man in the street. Uh, celebrities gonna come by this idea. There might be an Naomi Fry: iguana that'll like try to bite the host or Right, or Vinson Cunningham: an insult dog named Triumph. There, all kinds of different things are happening. There's a studio audience there and it kind of is one of the building blocks to me. Of what I would call American entertainment. Oh, totally. It's like Looney Tunes and late night TV are kind of these pillars of what I think we mean in America. We talk about. Entertainment. So I actually have always taken it pretty seriously, and I've always wondered what's up with these hosts and what's going on next? Uh, so I'm a fan. Naomi Fry: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. I'm a fan. Alex, what about you? I, I think I recall you saying that it's not necessarily your genre. Alex Schwartz: Late night television is for me a vision of adulthood that I still have. Like I can still step into myself as maybe a 6-year-old or a 7-year-old who, who kind of stumbles out of the bedroom and hears the laughs on the TV where your parents are watching and you think that's what it will mean to be grown up. I too will watch television. First of all, when I want, second of all, late at night when I will be awake, there's a sophistication what's going on on the screen. That's so true. At the midnight hour, and I retained that particular vision of late night because as someone, once I was able to stay up late. Yeah, that's not really what I did with my late nights. I did not tune in and yet. I do identify it as this key part of the adult American media landscape. Naomi Fry: Yeah, I think that's so true, Alex. Like your linking of the late night genre to a vision of, of adulthood, there is something about the interaction on late night when it's good. Vinson Cunningham: Mm-hmm. When Naomi Fry: it's interesting that retains the slight frison of like. Sex danger. Yeah. Something unexpected. Rather the wink that something's unspoken. Something's unspoken. Mm-hmm. Nudge, nudge, wink, wink. You know, something that as a child, as you said Alex, you might sense but not totally understand, but when you are on the other side Yeah. You will feel. A part of, you know, a member of like, again, separating the men from the boys or the girls from the women, you know? Yeah. Um. Do you think the genre is still doing for culture? What it used to do? Yes. In the culture? Yes. Yes. Oh, oh, okay. Oh, Alex Schwartz: I absolutely don't. Sorry. I just needed, I just wanted to get everybody's attention. Yeah. I was like, really? I was like, you know what? Yeah. I just, I just felt like I wanted eyes on me for a second. Wow. That was, was a. Curve ball. I know. Such as the kind you might expect on late night. Every so nice. Yes. Naomi Fry: See, this is the adult unexpectedness I was referring to. And you can get Alex Schwartz: it at any hour of the day from a podcast. And that's the point entirely. No, it's not doing the same thing. My God. You'd have to be crazy to think it was. You have to be. You'd have to be totally under a rock. Look, two words for you. Johnny Carson. Mm-hmm. Followed by a colon and a single word monoculture. Ah, yes. You know Johnny Carson, who was. The host of The Tonight Show for 30 years, 1962 to 1992. Do you guys know what his audience high was? What was it? How Vinson Cunningham: many tens of millions? Alex Schwartz: It was 12 million people. Jesus. Yeah. That's a lot of people. Yeah. Who were tuning in to watch what would go on with Johnny Carson. That is a collective experience that has not been there since the nineties. Like, you know, I do think we have a declinist narrative about. What our media culture is. And in many ways it's justified. But that decline started in 1992 when Carson went off the air and suddenly there was Letterman and there was Leno, and there was a viewership that was fragmented. And then I think also, and this is like, I'm so curious what you guys think about this, just the, a kind of style of humor, like, hmm. You know, Carson is fascinating to me because you can't really tell the story of American entertainment and leave him out. He's so, Vinson Cunningham: mm-hmm. Alex Schwartz: Um, definitional, not just to the form of late night, but to comedy. And I was going down, not exactly rabbit hole, but I was looking at some old Carson clips. Vinson Cunningham: Mm. Alex Schwartz: It's fascinating. Like the kind of straight man congeniality, I mean, straight man in the comedic sense, not, not the sexual sense. Mm-hmm. Although that too, although that too, yeah, sure. But like the kind of, you know. Like I watched a great clip of him playing across from Robin Williams the first time that Robin Williams was on the show. Mm-hmm. Do you wanna show us? Sure. This clip, so this is 1981. Okay. And Robin Williams is on Mork and Mindy. And he's getting to be more and more well known and like he's, I mean, the phenomenon of this man is, cannot be replicated still a, a Coke addict this Naomi Fry: period, Alex Schwartz: I believe. Yes. And they talk about that on the show. Oh, okay. So Robin Williams is coming out and he's kneeling to, Johnny. ROBIN WILLIAMS TONIGHT SHOW CLIP So they're riffing, the ranting, they're going, they're going back and forth. Robin Williams is making a joke about basically, um, you know, kind of paying homage to Johnny Carson and also treating him a little bit like a televangelist. Mm-hmm. Like he will be saved by him and they go back and forth on this. What's interesting to me about this clip is that Carson is able to both like, play along when he needs to. He can do persona, he can do voices, he can do that stuff, but he also is getting out of the way to let Robin Williams do his thing. Yeah. And he is. A showman in that he's showing other people, like he's, he's providing the platform for other people. Right. Which of course, again, is a sword that can cut both ways. Naomi Fry: Yeah. Um, but he himself is sort of a cipher. Right. Which is an interesting thing and not necessarily the role of the late night host later on. Alex Schwartz: Totally. I mean, after him you get David Letterman, And Letterman of course was the, like, you know, little bit of a snarky, a little bit of an edge. Mm-hmm. The mentee of Carson, I mean, Vincent, were you watching like Letterman and Leno in that era? I did Vinson Cunningham: watch my earliest, uh, late night. Experiences were the so-called late night wars. Mm-hmm. When there was this overt competition between Letterman and Leno, basically over the fact that both of them wanted to succeed Johnny. Mm-hmm. And Leno was chosen to do that. Letterman goes to CBS. There's a lot of sort of on air sniping, not only at each other but at the executives that sort of are there corporate overlords in both cases. And it's interesting to see like. These different archetypes. Right. Johnny and uh, Letterman were similar in that They kind of loved showbiz and also had a twinkle in the eye that said it's also bullshit. Right? Whereas if you think about Leno. The classic Leno thing is not really behind the desk. It's him up doing these like corny jokes, doing the, doing the monologue. But in all cases though, it was this kind of, to answer your earlier question, Naomi, like what's different about it to me is today perhaps a, a base sincerity. People that are very grounded in the world and are concerned, whether it's about politics or otherwise, these guys were more like, there was a kind of friendly nihilism. Alex Schwartz: Totally. Vinson Cunningham: Um, that's like, isn't it fun to be kind of nothing? Alex Schwartz: Yeah. Yeah. It's really interesting. I mean, I was, I was reading an article that our colleague Emily Nussbaum wrote on Letterman when he retired in 2015 and she was, she was taking us back to a time before my memory in the eighties. She was describing how. How fresh Letterman felt then. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Um, and she has this line that I thought was great, where she says his manner suggested that TV could puncture the culture rather than prop it up. Absolutely. Mm-hmm. And of course, the prop it up is what Carson did, and then you get this puncturing, which to me is very much like a preface or presaging of all the media culture that follows. Naomi Fry: Yeah. Although possibly in a different way. Right. I mean, what happens after. The late night wars. Right. We have Alex, the the period you were talking about right? With the daily show. The Colbert report, the Bush era version of late night, and we should say that the Daily Show and the Colbert report after it are on cable rather than the network. Late night shows we've been talking about. I mean, it was suddenly overtly political in ways which we'd never experienced. In American entertainment. Mm-hmm. And American late night, I think. Right? Vinson Cunningham: Well, yeah, I think that's right. If we talk about this moment in late night Naomi Fry: mm-hmm. Vinson Cunningham: The grandfather of it has to be John Stewart. Mm. Yes. And to continue this, uh, this image of puncturing. I would say that the timeline starts at nine 11, which mm-hmm. Um, was a great puncturing of a kind of nihilistic surface of American entertainment writ large. Right? Um, suddenly everybody's thrust back into history, and if you remember that moment, everything was about how do you start again? How do we tell jokes again? How do we watch baseball again? How do we do things again that seem justified by the relative kind of pacific surface of our lives in a way that isn't disrespectful to like the absolute shredding of our worldview? And Craig Kilborn had preceded him, but when Stewart took over the Daily Show and I think is motivated by, um, the sudden. Sort of hyper reality of the moment the wars are going on. Iraq, Afghanistan, Bush is sort of this obvious symbol of a certain kind of decline and morally and geopolitically. And he engages with it day by day. And I think there is a large group of the culture that is, I, it takes real solace in that people talked about getting their news from the daily show. Mm-hmm. Um, and this is one of the classic. Purposes of comedy, I guess having their confusion, their sort of disorientation within the world confirmed, but also kind of maybe salved by someone who is acknowledging the same realities. Stewart was funny 'cause he was, he was making the subtext, the text. Let's talk about. The great fear of the moment, whereas Johnny was kind of skating over the fear of the moment. Naomi Fry: Oh, definitely. It's a completely different beast. Alex Schwartz: Yeah. They're two different things. I mean, it's, it's interesting to me that we are. Able to really kind of like seamlessly slide from Johnny Carson to John Stewart because they are working in two different modes in two different categories. And I think this is where the Colbert of it all maybe comes in because in Colbert you have someone who starts in one mode, which is the explicitly satirical mm-hmm. Who then crosses over afterwards into the much broader, made for a wide audience. Mm-hmm. Late night category, I mean, wall. John Stewart came on the air and started doing the Daily Show. It's not like that just suddenly became late night television. Late night television very much continued. It was still going on. Yeah, absolutely. Letterman still on the air. Conan, who is a key figure who straddle sides con both sides. Naomi Fry: Can't, we can't forget Conan. He's certainly not my Vinson Cunningham: favorite. Naomi Fry: How would you characterize him of Vincent and the kind of matrix that we put out between Leno and Letterman and Vinson Cunningham: he's Gen X, he's post He everything is kind of, he's the David Foster Wallace of late night tv. So you were saying like there is a, well, I think genre distinction here. Totally. Which I think is totally right. Alex Schwartz: Yeah. I think there's a genre distinction, you know, in late, late night television. There is, of course, politics does enter into it because the hosts are commenting on the news of the day. Mm-hmm. Um, it's not like they're completely oblivious. No, of course. But in the Johnny Carson mode, it's neutral. And in the Leno mode it's neutral. I think maybe the self-conception for the late night host is as to use that old chestnut, an equal opportunity offender. Mm-hmm. Like, okay, Democrats do something dumb. We're going after that. The Republicans do something dumb. We're going after that. And I think what was going on in the post nine 11 years is that. Um, I don't know if, if the Youngs coming up today. I mean, we live in such a nihilistic dark time, so like you can imagine it, but the kind of sudden inundation of stupidity was, it was a tsunami of stupidity that suddenly came from what had not been assumed to be a society in decline. Let's just put it that way. It was a surprise. We were on the beach and the stupid just boop came in like a wave. So when you could take advantage of that, like a John Stewart. Mm-hmm. And, um. Make hay of it then Yeah, of course you could siphon off a piece of that audience that otherwise might have gone to a Letterman type guy. Right. Suddenly that stuff, the Letterman stuff, which had been super edgy to the Gen Xers in the eighties, whoa. That became very square. There is a reason why John Stewart was what I was watching, right. And not, um, the Letterman stuff. There is one other thing I wanted to say, which I find really interesting. the Leno versus Letterman stuff? Really? Before my, my cultural lived experience, Conan not at all before my lived experience, that was huge. Conan, who's promised Leno slot, the coveted 1130 slot Yeah. Is told that he's gonna get to inherit that slot that Leno agrees. In five years, Leno will retire for the Tonight Show. Doesn't go so well. Naomi Fry: What happens for those of us who, who don't recall Alex Schwartz: the network? NBC moves Leno to an earlier slot to open for Conan? Yes. Bad news, Leno's bombing. No one's liking it. Conan's not doing well, no one's doing well, and the network we're next and says, okay, whoops. Like, we're actually going to put Leno back in. And basically if you were watching or even just marginally aware. Mm-hmm. Which is, let's be honest, the category I was in of what was going on at the time, it was, what is this? Les m It was a storming the barricade situation. Naomi Fry: Team cocoa. A Alex Schwartz: team cocoa. It was, you know, my people will not be denied. Give us bread, give us water, give us cocoa. How can you do this to us? How can you take this man who symbolizes us, you know, and guillotine him? We will not stand for it. And what I find so interesting about this is the identification with a late night host. Naomi Fry: Yeah. Alex Schwartz: That this is our guy. He speaks to us and he speaks for us. Right. He is not just an entertainer, he is our entertainer. And when you get rid of him, you get rid of us. And it's touching to me now to think of the digital world rising up in support of this old medium. Vinson Cunningham: Mm-hmm. Alex Schwartz: But they did. And I think it has to do with a particular reality of late night when it works well. Which is that it is an art form and it is an art form of identification to some degree. So that host needs to be the avatar for a bunch of viewers. You feel like he's your guy, he's your guy, and you're going all the way. And that is not an accident. That is a performance skill. Mm-hmm. That the best late night hosts have. Naomi Fry: Stephen Colbert has been a fixture on the late night schedule for over two decades in a minute, how his comedic stylings have evolved to meet the culture. This is critics at large from the New Yorker. :: MIDROLL 1 :: Naomi Fry: Okay you guys, so we've been talking about late night, and what I want us to do now is to turn more particularly to the figure of Stephen Colbert to discuss what's been going on with him right now. But before we. Attack the current landscape and his role in it. Can someone maybe give us a brief overview of his career and who is he, you know, kind of like greatest hits of Colbert? Alex Schwartz: Who even is Naomi Fry: he? Who is he and how dare he? Alex Schwartz: Well, you guys are the strangers with Candy Watchers. Naomi Fry: I can start from that start. So, okay, for those of you unfamiliar and oh God, you really, really need to familiarize yourself if you're not, uh, comedy Central. Show from the late nineties strangers with Kandy, where Amy Sedaris plays Jerry Blank. A 46-year-old former kind of seventies runaway junkie who has gone straight and is returning to high school to ninth grade. Uh, I'm just thinking about, it makes me laugh. Um, because she dropped out of high school Uhhuh when she like, became a teenage, like prostitute runaway, you know, in like 1975. And. There are two teachers, uh, Mr. Noblet, who is played by Stephen Colbert and Mr. Jellinek, who's played by Paul Dinello, who were also, um, involved in, in making the show and writing a show. And, uh, the whole thing hinges on the fact that. The show is like an afterschool special gone wrong and the role of Colbert is to be this teacher who's supposed to teach Jerry all of these lessons but is completely hateful and bitter and like despises her. CLIP - STRANGERS WITH CANDY Actually a very like weird extreme nihilistic show. Vinson Cunningham: Mm-hmm. Naomi Fry: Extremely funny. So that was the first time. I encountered Stephen Colbert, so completely not in the mold in any way of a kind of like smooth, late night host, but in fact, as a kind of spiky, pretty alternative comedian. Vinson Cunningham: I think that's really important, what you just said. Naomi Fry: Oh, okay. Vinson Cunningham: Because Naomi Fry: I'm like, oh, Vinson Cunningham: much of what you say is important, but I just like, he started out, even, look, he went to Northwestern thinking he was gonna be a dramatic actor and got caught up as people do when they go to Chicago in the world of improv and sketch comedy. Yeah. So he was in that. World of improv and sketch of the second city, the annoyance, et cetera. Um, and if you look at the current crop of late night hosts, mm mm Seth Meyers, Jimmy Fallon, sketch performers. Mm. Um, if the previous eras. Kind of archetypes were standups, which we think of as people who tour the entire country, sort of becoming weather vanes for public opinion and sort of reflecting that. Um, or the radio host who is kind of a genial cipher, um, even Conan. Was a, was a sketch sort of TV writer with the sort of Yeah. Famously Naomi Fry: wrote the, um, the monorail episode of The Simpsons. Right. One of the best episodes ever. Vinson Cunningham: But if you think of the sketch performer as an archetype, all of a sudden it's not somebody who you'd find in Las Vegas, which is to me seems to be the corollary of the late night, uh, sort of host's vibe. Totally. All It's somebody, it's, it's somebody who grows up in community in urban enclaves. Mm. With, with a certain political orientation. Mm-hmm. If you think about. Colbert comes up from strangers with candy. He's, he's a very pointedly, satirical performer on the Daily Show. Mm-hmm. Um, bringing his biography along with him. He's comes from a Catholic family. He's a practicing Catholic. He used to do this bit on, on the Daily Show called This Week In God Giving these like pointed sort of spins on the evangelical culture in, in America. That was kind of rising at the time. Um, and then he starts to don this character. Mm-hmm. Um. The Stephen Colbert of the Colbert Report, this faux intelligent ignoramus who is, whose bigotry is part of the deal and found this really smart way on, um, his own show again before he sort of joins the real late night game on CBS to sort of speak through a character that shows his contempt for the current culture, but also make. Kind of sincere volleys of connection with his guests. Sort of. It's a Naomi Fry: weird type of performance art. I mean, yeah. It was kind of amazing. It's kind of crazy to think about more than kind Alex Schwartz: of amazing. It was amazing. Naomi Fry: Yeah. Yeah. Ugh. Do we wanna talk about truthiness? Alex Schwartz: Yes. The thing I wanna say about Colbert from, from the Colbert Report era. Is that he was a critic in a lot of ways, and that was a very interesting form to take on in this otherwise totally comedic performance. So truthiness, right? As you've said, Nomi, he introduced a segment called The Word, the first episode of the show, I believe. Well, there you have it. Just brand spanking new. Yeah, she she'll listening. Yeah. Let us, Naomi Fry: let us listen into the clip. TRUTHINESS CLIP Okay, this strikes me. As like insanely appreciate. Alex Schwartz: Yeah. I think it, on the one hand it is, and on the other hand I do think there's a bit of a, because again, times are so bad, I think there is a bit of a forgetting about how bad they felt then too. Yeah. Like that was also the reality then. It's both preci, but it's also just, it's is what was happening. I'm not trying to quibble with the fact that it's preaching. It is. I just would put a slightly different spin on it, which is to say that it was diagnosing an ill in the culture that has become more and more extreme. Oh, absolutely. And it just, and it got it. And it diagnosed it and it gave an emotional outlet to viewers. Vinson Cunningham: And you know, the other thing about that, the other thing that, that performance reflects, he's a critic not only of politics, but of media. Mm. Which is that he's res responding to the rise of cable news and that kind of host. Naomi Fry: Absolutely. Yes. So you're thinking about, Vinson Cunningham: uh, bill O'Reilly, thinking about Sean Hannity. Mm-hmm. Later on in the oughts, I guess we get Rachel Maddow, et cetera. Um, that kind of performance, which is again this kind of. Amazingly direct address and a kind of startling. Demented sincerity, um, makes its way via Stephen Colbert and this performance into what it means to be a late night host Alex Schwartz: Yeah. So that's like, that's what makes it interesting to me that Colbert then went to this mainstream, right? Mm-hmm. Like he decided to, in 2015, to jump into the mainstream. Naomi Fry: Right? he is this figure, yeah. Suddenly of the kind of mainstream. Conventional, you know, late night host. He is Carson. He is Leno. He is Letterman. He is that guy. So what happened then? Like how does one transition from playing the satirical character to becoming like America's father Vinson Cunningham: suddenly, you know, well it, first of all, that that motion is still a reflection that. Even as late as 2014, you know, the, the now halian, late Obama era or whatever. Um, this relatively healthy, I guess. Yeah. Yes. Um, it still was like the only way to get bigger as an entertainer is to be, to take on a late night show. It, we would've been like, what Stephen Colbert starting a podcast is he broke, you know, there was still this ideal of upward motion in the Hollywood firmament. Totally. If you look at the early reviews, one of, uh, which was from our much beloved colleague Emily Nesbaum, friend of the pod, the first year or so, was not so good for that Colbert show because I think, again, as a performer, his gift was a kind of critical or responsive orientation toward culture, not just kind of sitting atop it and, and having fun with it. So it takes him until. The rise of Donald Trump to really find his footing, his footing behind that desk because he had a target, right? And so Trump become, as he became for Kimmel and Meyers and others. I mean, I think this is a, not a, not totally unique to Colbert, but he became the, the grounding upon which the sort of urgent. Underpinning of this show could kind of rest. Naomi Fry: Everybody got the Trump bump, you know, whether it was conventional media, whether it was the Times, you know, yeah. Uh, the kind of news media and whether it was, as you say, late night at, at large, it's like suddenly there was something, I mean. As the country was going down the toilet, there was something to Yeah. As you say, to respond to. Yeah. Alex Schwartz: Yeah. It's interesting to me, Nomi, that I was not watching Colbert in this era. I was not watching the the Late show. Mm-hmm. Um, I just I didn't care about him sitting around talking to celebrities. I mean, that's a whole other aspect that we haven't even gotten into yet, really, of what it means to have a late show. It's, it's, it's interviews, it's conversations, and mm-hmm. Um, you know, these are major, major promotion vehicles. Absolutely less than they were, but certainly. They endure still? Yeah, absolutely. No, still, Naomi Fry: and I, I would actually argue that the desperation is Alex Schwartz: higher. But I do think that during that era, what tended to break through into the digital culture that I was part of, that I remain, you're a bit of a digital native Alex. It's myself part, I'm a bit of a digital native. It's just what happens when you're, you know, born at a certain time in history. Um. And, you know, that was the time when Carpool karaoke, the James Corden, um, bit would kind of, that would leak through the Vinson Cunningham: literal vehicle. Alex Schwartz: The literal, A literal vehicle. A literal vehicle, yes. Naomi Fry: Oh my God. What a, what a nightmare. Like what a, tell us Alex Schwartz: how you really feel though. Uh, Vinson Cunningham: you don't wanna hear James Cord harmonize with uh, no, Naomi Fry: no. Paul Alex Schwartz: McCartney? Naomi Fry: No. Absolutely. There was a sweet one where they Vinson Cunningham: did that. Naomi Fry: I mean, it's kinda, it's sweet, I guess, but it's like, this isn't, it's, it's certainly not comedy. It's might be entertainment, but even that is like the, the blandness and conventionality of the format Yeah. Has become such that really, Alex, I agree with you saying yeah I wasn't interested in, in really watching. Alex Schwartz: Well, if Colbert had a version of that and you know, let us know in the comments, it's news to me because I don't think that's what he was doing. Vinson Cunningham: Yeah, And I will say sticking up for Colbert, this what you mentioned before about sort of identifying, I kind of feel, I kind of a little bit feel like that about Colbert. I kind of, he's my favorite I think. And I will say definitely he was the best conversationalist. Can I play something for you guys? Yes. Real quick what he did. Was he could really go into things. He would talk about his faith. He would talk about grief a lot. I don't know if he has a very Joe Biden esque story. Yes. When he was a kid, his father and his two brothers died in a plane crash. He could really talk in a, in a kind of emotional direct way to people. But here's actually Dua Lipa asking him a question. Oh, okay. And it's a, it's a great moment of Something. DUA LIPA COLBERT CLIP Alex Schwartz: Oh my God. Vinson Cunningham: And, and, and he was like, that it, there are other clips of him, like trading lines of Shakespeare with Denzel Washington. It's not Johnny Carson just letting Robin Williams Right. Do the thing. And that kind of philosophical underpinning I do think connects to the way he also then dealt with politics. It, it came from a very sincere. Bedrock so that even when he was being his most silly and abstract, which he could get, mm-hmm. Um, there was some link there that has kind of almost nothing to do with Johnny Carson. Do you know what I mean? Alex Schwartz: You know, I'm so glad you showed us that clip. Um. And now I wish I had been watching more in the years when I wasn't. And it wa I wasn't, I wasn't not watching because I thought it was dumb or something. I just, I just was, you know, in my own media landscape looked different. And you know, I'm sorry, but just now hearing Stephen Colbert or Colbert as he reminds us, he's Irish as it used to be before for media purposes. It was fun to say Colbert quote poet Robert Hayden. I mean, your eyes filled with tears, Alex. Yes, in part because I felt also that he was defending the dignity of. America, you know? Mm-hmm. We are laughed at as idiots by the rest of the world and often we deserve it. It's just true, you know? But look, here is an entertainer going on his very popular, top rated, late night show and like giving wisdom when he is asked for it. Okay, I'll take that. I will stand a little bit taller. And I think that's what also, to go back to the earlier Vinson Cunningham: mm-hmm. Alex Schwartz: Colbert rapport persona. That was part of it. It had so much to do as an American. It had so much to do with, did you feel shame or did you feel pride? Those were like the two poles of experience. Yeah. Um, and the complexity, the reality of what it means to be any kind of person, let alone an American person, you know, often got crowded out and Colbert was such an effective way to take the shame and make it into some kind of pride. You know? Yes, we're in the shit, but at least we have. An intelligent and funny way to analyze it. Yeah. And this is a different version of that, right? To me. Yeah. Um, but I'm glad to have discovered it. Naomi Fry: Yeah. In a minute. Colbert's late show might be the first major network, late Nicho to bite the dust. But let's be honest, it probably won't be the last. Where do late night and political comedy in general go from here? This is critics large from the New Yorker. Stick Around. :: MIDROLL 2 :: Naomi Fry: Okay. We've been talking about Stephen Colbert and kind of trying to lay out the beats of his career and the way he's developed as a performer, an out late night host, and now we are coming to the moment that we began with, which is Colbert, you know, being canceled, announcing this cancellation on air a mere three days, I believe, after basically saying that Paramount, paid off President Trump. CLIP - BIG FAT BRIBE And this, it has been alleged, uh, was in the service of Trump not blocking. Paramount's merger would Skydance, Alex Schwartz: which did then go through, Naomi Fry: which did then go through. Mm-hmm. And so the whole thing smells not great. Vinson Cunningham: Smells to high heaven. Naomi Fry: It smells to high heaven, my friends. So it's kind of unprecedented, I guess. Yeah. Um. Alex Schwartz: And certainly the bribe is the first instance I can think of where $16 million has been paid to a sitting president by a media company, um, because that president got pissy. Naomi Fry: Yeah. Alex Schwartz: I would call that unprecedented. Yes. Naomi Fry: Yes, yes. So Vincent, after the cancellation was, uh, announced after Colbert himself announced the cancellation on air, you wrote a piece. Vinson Cunningham: Yeah. Well, what I cared most about was the lasting, I think, strand of communication between host and audience. That Colbert's announcement sort of laid bare as it was reported. First of all, the show's being canceled in May. So next May, Naomi Fry: which he said, right? Yeah. Vinson Cunningham: Um, and they didn't want to announce the cancellation right now, but he said, Nope, I'm gonna announce it And so there was still a bit of that thrill, certainly a, an attenuated version of it, but it was there that this person could tell you some version of the truth. And that's what I was interested in. When you talk about a figure in the entertainment firm moment, being something like a critic, even to say that as to confirm a kind of shared reality, but more importantly, um, shared method. Of interpretation. Mm-hmm. And so If there are fewer, and I don't mean this as a defensive monoculture or whatever, but if there are fewer things on which we can agree, fewer voices that we think are kind of even genially, uncorrupted by, you know, whatever the Carson thing of like acknowledging, not acknowledging mm-hmm. Irony, whatever. Um, to me that confirms the sense that there's no ground to stand on. Alex Schwartz: So I think you're getting at something that has to do with trust and trust in a certain kind of voice. Mm-hmm. And trust. Look, it's so misplaced in so many people right now. Mm-hmm. Um, you know, the look and look into all the wrong people for the answers, whether they be in politics or in media. So what your piece made me think about was how someone like Colbert or any other late night host, is working with this idea of trust. You know? Mm-hmm. He has to have the trust of the audience in order to be able to do his job. And in some ways, like. Now that he's in this position where he can just say what he wants and what can happen. He's gonna be fired. He's already been fired. Like you can just tell us what he thinks. That trust, I don't think it went away, but like now he really has it, you know? Mm-hmm. For some of his viewers at least. Mm-hmm. Don't you think like I would. I Vinson Cunningham: would say so. Yeah. So. Alex Schwartz: That might make for a very interesting few months. Naomi Fry: But I wanna ask you, Alex and Vincent. You know this question of trust, obviously as you implied Alex happens in the context of like half the country trusts. You know, there are many more divisions than half and half. But let's say, you know, half the country trusts one side and despises the other side and the other half the opposite. Um, and. We, because we are liberals, would like Colbert to you. You know, like nothing to lose. Gonna speak truth to power. But there is a question and it has been argued, I think that the kind of political humor that was championed by people like Colbert or John Stewart contributed to that siloing and. Enacted a kind of like liberal smugness that made the other side, quote unquote dig their heels in. What do you think of that argument, that humor rather than kind of like somehow ameliorating or it is actually something that is hastening. The siloing. Alex Schwartz: Yeah. I mean, who cares? Honestly, like, oh my God, you know, oh, oh yes, John Stewart is the problem. You know, get that man. Like, I don't mean to be so sarcastic about it for sure. You know, you can talk about it and, but, but here's ultimately, like the power is not with the comedians, I think is, is. What I mean to say sadly, right? Like, did they exacerbate an already very divided political landscape? Maybe, but I don't think by, by all that much, I don't think, yeah. Um, having like a more kumbaya take, like let's all gather around the burning flames of the United States and like warm ourselves by them would be, would be any better. Naomi Fry: Which brings us to a kind of the larger question, right, which I think we've been working towards throughout this episode, is that, is late night even a relevant art form anymore? I mean, Colbert is the first to be canceled and there's the whole Trump thing. But maybe in general, this is not something that is like. Long for this world, the late night format. Yeah. Yeah. And a lot of the hosts, the main host contracts are up in the next couple of years. Kimmel's. Vinson Cunningham: Yeah. Naomi Fry: Contract is up in 2026, I believe. Seth Meyers and, and Fallon is up in 2028. And so, you know, we might be approaching a moment or potentially post late night, post late night maybe. Who knows? Alex Schwartz: Yeah. Um, I, I think that's quite likely. I mean, as with many, as with many of the older media, haha. I say looking at, at the two of you, um, I guess the bigger question then is what is lost or gained with that? Um, one thing I'd imagine would be lost with the demise of late night is the same thing that's lost if, uh, magazines. Go totally belly up, which is a pipeline for younger people to, um, create, to learn, to get their sea legs, to get a voice. I mean, these writer writer's rooms and the technical aspects of the job are, are stocked, it's not just the guy in front, you know? That's right. It's all the people coming up through that. Uh, and inevitably that's a big loss. If, if those ways of, um, learning and doing. Go away with the Colbert cancellation Naomi Fry: but it's also the viewers, right? The many, many, you know, relatively young people who used to learn about the world in ways. Of interacting with entertainment and politics through late night shows. Alex Schwartz: Well, that's already gone. I mean, that's already going. It's, it's, this is, comes back to your piece, Vincent, like this idea that Colbert is the mouthpiece who can kind of articulate from what's going on, like from the halls of power directly to the audience. The problem posed by something as extreme as the Trump era is that if your job. Like late night hosting is an art, but it's also business. And so if your job is to get as many eyeballs on you as is humanly possible, what do you do? And it makes me think of somethingI saw recently, which is, um, the comedian Taylor Tomlinson, uh, who did a show called After Midnight. And it was also CBS and this show. I remember it being discussed, like the run up to it was, okay, first of all, a woman is hosting late night. Yes, it's at 12:30 AM but people will watch it the next day. People will watch in clips. That's the whole point. It's, it basically becomes what you watch with your breakfast. And a young woman, she is now in her early thirties. It's a very different kind of face, and the show has ended. So did it work? Like perhaps not. I think there was some talk that she was asked to renew and she didn't want to, whatever. But I wanted to play for you one of her last opening monologues, which happened a few weeks ago after the protests against ice arrests in Los Angeles. And here she articulates from the point of view of a late night host what the problem is with trying to mine reality for the job. TAYLOR TOMLINSON CLIP So she is articulating exactly what we're talking about, which is it's not easy to have fun with. Mm-hmm. The news, um, as it is. And if you are having fun with it, something may very well be wrong. Vinson Cunningham: Mm-hmm. And I do think that this problem, what to do. To be the liberal scold, to be the sort of Mr political or to go or be the kind of anti woke equal opportunity, uh, offender, which I think is a thing that has worn thin. or to go personal and sort of like telescope and leave the political outside of your purview. Um, it just seems that all of the options for comedy right now are unsatisfying. And I love comedy. I love standup. I love, uh, late night. I love all of these forms. I love sketch, but they all seem to be turning their wheels going nowhere. Mm-hmm. Precisely because of the problem that. Tomlinson articulates. Yeah. It's hard to, I mean, I feel this in my writing. It's like, you know, yeah. Why am I writing about Stephen Colbert? Even, Alex Schwartz: Yeah. It may, it may be that one reason for that. I think you're absolutely right. Um, and I think one reason for that is what comedy can do really well is kind of excavate hypocrisies and the stuff underneath the surface. This is why the Bush era was kind of perfect for it, because the Bush era pretended to be normal. Vinson Cunningham: Mm-hmm. It Alex Schwartz: pretended to be. Like normal politicians doing normal things. And what was going on was torture, warmongering, um, like dismantling of American education. Just great catastrophes, but they were maintaining a facade. Yeah. There is no facade right now. There is, it's Vinson Cunningham: mask off and, you know, and, and comedy exists often to sort of be the first responder to the problems in the culture. Mm-hmm. So one of the, you know, promises. Scant, but still of the moment with Colbert at least is to say, okay, show us something new now. Now you've got this freedom, right? And you maybe you're in a position to to, to do something else with the medium that shows us what could possibly be on the horizon. Naomi Fry: This has been Critics at Large. This week's episode was produced by Michelle O'Brien. Alex Barish is our consulting editor. Our executive producer is Steven Valentino. Conde Nast's Head of Global Audio is Chris Bannon. Alexis Quadra composed our theme music and we had engineering help today from James Yost with Mixing by Mike Kuman. You can find every episode of critics at large at New yorker.com/critics.