Unsolicited Advice

I was really hoping Colbert would have a little more time before he had to write his first I Can't Make This Funny monologue, but it was not to be. Friday's opener, before the headlines, was Colbert being upset straight to camera about the most recent shooting incident. My first thought was: Oh my God, Dad is so  disappointed  in us. I think that's what Mr. Rogers would have looked like, if he ever got angry on camera. Which is disconcerting, because I've heard Colbert swear pretty creatively. He once capped off an argument over something biblical by crowing, "I teach  Sunday school, motherfucker!", a sentence that just gets funnier and funnier the more you think about it. The monologue is structured unusually. Traditionally, the arc on one of these things goes, 'I'm fucking upset by this, and I know I'm supposed to be funny now, but it's not going to happen until I get this out. What happened was horrible, and somebody needs to figure o...

I have now seen Colbert vs Trump. I have also seen a lot of complaining about Colbert vs Trump, mainly about how Colbert did not personally beat Trump to death with his stylish new Late Show  coffee mug and then mount his head on a pike staff outside the Ed Sullivan Theater as a warning to others. There are really two separate complaints out of people who say Colbert's Trump interview was too nice: That Colbert didn't say mean enough things, and that Colbert didn't say things meanly enough. Content vs tone. I do not think I have previously seen Colbert-the-human-being angry on camera. Everyone's seen Colbert-the-character angry and raving on his eponymous show, and a few times Colbert-the-writer-for- The-Colbert-Report  has gotten pissed enough that his pundit rant went borderline OOC. Probably the most infamous instance of that was the piece called "Jesus Is A Liberal Democrat", where he tore into Bill O'Reilly for claiming that Jesus said it was A-OK...

Maybe I'm just having an incredibly cranky-making week, but I am starting to get ticked at the slew of articles with headlines that talk about 'the problem with Stephen Colbert'. I keep reading them, and inevitably it turns out that the problem the author is having is actually with CBS -- they are pissed that the network didn't hire a woman. Getting women into positions of prominence in comedy may well be a problem, but it has nothing to do with Colbert per se . They would have that problem with literally anyone in the role who did not fit their favorite list of criteria. This is what I'm talking about with 'the perfect is the enemy of the good'. They think CBS's choice of host is unacceptable because he's not a she, even though Colbert arguably ticks most if not all of the other boxes they care about. I'm not kidding here. I'm not defending the guy just because, 'hey, dude makes me laugh, he can do no wrong'. I decided I liked him ...