<
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2026/may/20/late-night-tv-says-goodbye-to-stephen-colbert>
"Hugh Jackman sang a parody of Neil Diamond’s
Sweet Caroline. Bette Midler
performed a satirical rewrite of
Wind Beneath My Wings. John Lithgow wrote
and recited a poem entitled
The Mighty Colbert. Jake Tapper hand-delivered a
painting of Colbert as Gollum from
The Lord of the Rings. And Jimmy Fallon
offered a pointed take on Frank Sinatra’s
My Way: “And now the end is near /
And so you face the final curtain / But Trump, he made it clear / He wants you
gone / Of that we’re certain.”
A roll call of celebrities have made pilgrimage to the Ed Sullivan Theatre in
New York in recent months to join a long goodbye to CBS’s
The Late Show With
Stephen Colbert, honouring a voice that will be sorely missed from the
national conversation when the lights go dark on 21 May.
Colbert, 62, has provided a nightly antidote for millions of viewers feeling
discombobulated at the end of another day in Donald Trump’s dystopia. He cut
through the malign chaos to reassure them that no, it was not them going mad
but the world around them. And he offered a contrast in character: where Trump
is vainglorious, Colbert is irreverent; where Trump is narcissistic, Colbert
exudes empathy; where Trump is indecent, Colbert manifests decency to the core.
When CBS announced last July that the
Late Show would be cancelled, ending a
33-year television institution hosted first by David Letterman then Colbert,
many found the timing suspicious. The move came just three days after Colbert
used his monologue to ruthlessly mock a $16m legal settlement between CBS’s
parent company Paramount and Trump – and just a week before Paramount’s $8bn
merger with Skydance was approved by federal regulators.
CBS claimed it was “purely a financial decision against a challenging backdrop
in late night”. Letterman, for one, isn’t buying it. “I’m just going to go on
record as saying: They’re lying,” he told the
New York Times earlier this
month. “They’re lying weasels.”"
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
