Stephen Colbert is doing tremendously well on CBS's The Late Show in the Era of Trumpian Excess, and this week's Sunday Long Read is the comic and late night host's interview with NY Times writer David Marchese.
Even though it has been a few years since Stephen Colbert stepped out of the blowhard conservative-pundit role that he played for nearly a decade on “The Colbert Report” and into the role of, well, himself, as host of “The Late Show” on CBS, the 55-year-old’s popularity only continues to grow. His show, already No. 1 in late night, took over the top spot among viewers ages 18 to 49 earlier this year, a demographic that had long been owned by Jimmy Fallon and “The Tonight Show.” As it turns out, what Colbert and his show offer — an “explicative deconstruction of the day’s news,” as he puts it — is exactly what many people want. “It’s so confusing today,” said Colbert, who is also an executive producer on Showtime’s animated comedy “Our Cartoon President.” “And that confusion leads to anxiety, and the anxiety makes the audience want the jokes.” Which, Colbert added, is “the same reason we want to do them.”
“The Late Show” is doing very well, and there are obvious explanations you could point to: You’ve had a few years to learn how to do the job. You’re benefiting from a Trump bump. But what’s your own hunch about why the show is resonating?
By the spring of 2016, we had figured out how I want to do a monologue: We never do setup, punch, setup, punch. Instead, it’s always, I’m going to tell back to you what happened today. When the presidential campaign came around in 2016, that helped focus us on the things that we most enjoyed, which is the news of the day. But you say “doing very well,” and I know you mean numerically.1 This is a long preamble to the real answer to your question: It’s almost as if the president is trying to cast a spell to confuse people so they cannot know the true nature of reality, and what we do is pick apart the way in which the [expletive] was sold to you. I think that’s why it’s going well. Our job is to identify the [expletive], and there’s never been more.
I remember Jon Stewart2 saying, when he was on “The Late Show,” that he was glad he wasn’t digging in the turd mines anymore. Is it ever dispiriting to spend so much time engaging with bad news?
The metaphor that I use is that there’s this pool of radioactive sludge, which is the daily news. My job is to be lowered like carbon rods into that radioactive sludge and absorb the radiation of the insanity that happened today. Then they take me out and put me in front of the camera, and I irradiate it back at the audience at a much lower, nonlethal rad level. That’s kind of the job. It’s a transformation of the poison into something entertaining. Do I feel poisoned by doing that? Yeah, a little bit. But I get to go do the jokes. I need the audience as much as some of them say they need the show. If the show really works and it feels organic, then the poison’s drained out of me.
The suggestion there is that comedy or satire can relieve people’s tension or anxiety about the world. But as far as I can tell, no one is feeling any less tense or anxious. Do you really think the show actually performs a stress-relieving function?
Momentarily. You know, my doctor has informed me that if I could drink less during the week, that would be good. Because that would be one of the things I would want to do when I go home: have myself an old-fashioned that could stun a buffalo. It’s relaxing at first, but your blood pressure actually goes up again the next day because you drank four ounces of Maker’s Mark the night before.
If we take that as a metaphor, where do you fit in it?
I’m the alcohol. I might be the alcohol. I don’t know what the next day is like for anybody. If the show goes well, maybe the audience sleeps a bit better. And maybe that’s all the show should be. I have said this before, but I know that when you’re laughing, you’re not afraid.
Is that true, though? Isn’t nervous laughter a laughter that comes from fear?
Nervous laughter is not the same thing as laughing, in my opinion. I would say nervous laughter is evidence that I’m right, because that is your body autonomically trying to relieve tension. If someone can do that for you from the outside, it relieves that tension and fear, and you are momentarily not afraid. If you’re not afraid, you can think, and we have to think our way out of this one.
It's good stuff, and yeah, Colbert is just as indispensable as he was a decade or fifteen years ago now.
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