Having expressed a fair bit of schadenfreude over the cancellation of Stephen Colbert’s late-night TV show, the Media Research Center returned to more typical comedy-cop antics when Colbert returned after an August break. Chief MRC comedy cop Alex Christy huffed in a Sept. 3 post:
If you are a normal person, you might have missed that over the Labor Day weekend, left-wing portions of the internet were running wild with rumors that President Trump had died. Of course, these rumors were false, but on Tuesday, CBS’s Stephen Colbert still had to stop The Late Show audience from booing that fact.
Colbert began what would’ve been his set-up, “When I came back in the office, I was shocked to learn that this weekend, the biggest story was frenzied social media rumors speculating whether Donald Trump had died.”
As the audience cheered, Colbert continued, “For the record, Donald Trump is very much alive. Okay? And—”
Colbert then had to stop to rebuke the audience, which was now booing, “No. We like our presidents alive.”
This is why viewing a comedy show as a cathartic experience to vent anger and frustration is destined to end in failure. Eventually someone was going to take it too far and say the quiet part out loud.
[…]If Colbert viewed his show as a comedy show first and not a nightly therapy session where liberals come to process their feelings and cope with their problems, he could’ve been spared the embarrassment of having to rebuke his own audience for booing the Trump hadn’t actually died.
The next day, Christy played pedantic fact-checker:
CBS’s Stephen Colbert had an unconvincing rebuttal on Wednesday to President Trump’s recent Truth Social posts that portrayed Chicago as a crime-ridden and dangerous city. Colbert’s three-part response involved telling Trump “[bleep] you,” repeating some false statistics, and saying Chicago can’t be that bad because The Late Show traveled there in the summer of 2024 and came back alive.
Breaking out his Trump voice, Colbert ranted, “Yesterday, Trump also posted, ‘Chicago is the worst and most dangerous city in the world, by far.’ Worst and most dangerous? Two words: [Bleep] you. You know what? You know what?… Trump slandered on, ‘Chicago is the murder capital of the world!’”
Colbert then sought to do some fact-checking, “Fun fact: No. According to the FBI, 22 major cities have higher rates of murder than Chicago.”
Fun fact: no. Colbert was citing a Newsweek article headlined “Full List of Major Cities With Higher Murder Rates Than Chicago.” However, the list Newsweek provided was “of cities with more than 100,000 residents that have higher crime rates than Chicago, per the FBI report.”
In other words, Trump was talking about murder rates, and Newsweek, despite its headline and article, was talking about crime in general. When it comes to murder rates, Chicago, according to Newsweek itself, is a top 10 city. On a per capita basis, it was ranked 8th last year.
For a Sept. 5 post, Christy whined that Colbert doesn’t hate public broadcasting as much as he and his employer do:
CBS’s Stephen Colbert welcomed NPR CEO Katherine Maher to Thursday’s taping of The Late Show for a grieving session on the latter being defunded. According to Maher, the fate of democracy depends on NPR, and only people who seek to divide and pit Americans against each other could possibly support defunding it.
Colbert put the ball on the tee for Maher by repeating the idea that public broadcasting is of vital importance for local news, “And while it’s possible now to, like, use streaming wherever you are and basically get another radio station, one of the things, as I understand it, is that with the decline of local newspapers and local news, these NPR stations are critical sources for people to know about their own community.”
[…]She concluded by claiming, “When we do that right, you can fundamentally disagree with something someone says, but you can’t deny their empathy or humanity, and that is such a powerful tool. So, if you’re seeking to create some sort of advantage in societies that are fractured and splintered, taking away this tool that allows us to see one another as fellow citizens, fellow Americans, it’s a really powerful advantage.”
This is why Maher lost the defunding battle. She talks about bringing people together, but all NPR’s programming does is drive them apart. Maybe that’s just the nature of politics, but if so, NPR can do that on its own dime.
Christy grumbled in a Sept. 10 post:
On Tuesday, CBS’s The Late Show with Stephen Colbert became the latest stop on Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s book tour, but the eponymous host got more than he bargained for when his straw man portrayal of a recent decision involving ICE was so bad, even the dissenting liberal justice had to correct him on it.
[…]Later, during the interview, Colbert repeated himself, “Let’s talk about the decision yesterday. Yesterday, the Court ruled from that emergency docket that ICE can round up, in this case it was people of Hispanic heritage or who spoke Spanish in the case of Los Angeles and the California ICE arrests or detainments, but really anyone for any reason.”
Sotomayor tried to interrupt, “Well, no. In fairness—”
Colbert wasn’t having it, “I’m not a lawyer, but I’m going to push back here because in this case they’re saying those are the circumstances, but isn’t the upshot of that if they are looking for reasonable suspicion, which is a much lower bar than probable cause, they could make up new rationales for a different group of people who they feel are associated with some crime that has to be prevented.”
For a second time, Sotomayor tried to push back, “Now, let me stop you. In fairness to the majority, and by the way, I didn’t agree with them and—”
[…]Colbert then shifted from misrepresenting the majority opinion to mocking the idea the change made any difference, “So, people with low-wage jobs have fewer protections.”
Sotomayor did not wish to push the issue, “Well, that’s what they said. Let’s not go any further. Okay. That’s what they said. And they’re working at jobs where illegal aliens typically work. That’s the claim, all right? Now, I explain and read my dissent, please, you should.”
Much of the rest of September was taken up with Charlie Kirk’s death and Jimmy Kimmel’s brief suspension. We’ve noted that Christy lashed out at both Colbert and Kimmel for highlighting a study that the Trump administration deleted from government websites because it didn’t conform to the correct narratives on ideologically motivated violence, dubiously trying to defend the censorship. Christy also grumbled that Colbert and Kimmel appeared on each other’s shows to complain about the right-wing cancel culture they’ve experienced.