"... not because it’s a sign of a corporation bending the knee to a would-be dictator, but because it’s a sign of the unbundling of the American public. Ensconced in our homes, watching our custom-tailored streaming feeds, we simply have fewer and fewer things in common.... And America needs a shared national story, a common understanding of
something, to hold together as a nation.... [A] lot of what we are doing is consuming tailored content, curated for us by a personal algorithm. In some ways, the Colbert show was a symptom of that shift. The sharp leftward lurch that consumed American media companies was driven by social media algorithms that rewarded left-wing political hot takes with high engagement. Media companies followed those rewards precisely because they were no longer catering to a truly mass audience but to niche fandoms. Having come of age in the long shadow of truly mass media, many of the people in those institutions might have thought they were moving public opinion into the progressive future, but in fact it was fan service for a narrow demographic. Now the algorithms have changed, and so have young people, who rarely turn on their televisions today.... [W]e have no obvious successor to the unifying force that late-night shows used to be. America might no longer want the 'Late Show.' But it needs some way to hear the same stories, laugh at the same jokes and gather around the collective water cooler to talk about what they mean."
Writes Megan McArdle, quoted in
"Why the ‘Late Show’ cancellation worries me about the American public/The loss of Stephen Colbert’s show is another sign of how we are losing our shared ties" (WaPo).
Everybody laughed at the same joke that was that kiss cam couple. That was "a common understanding of something," holding us "together as a nation."
TV has died, but the stories get out, through TikTok and other media. More things have an opportunity to go big, and the dispersion is fast. What was television, really, by contrast?
Posts
118 comments:
what is it about the Post water cooler, that creates the opposite of logic,
I don't want to share a single fucking tie to the Washington Post or Megan McCardle. This is PRECISELY what I voted for.
Fuck every single one of these people. They are dead to me.
Oh no, the New York media isn't even the most relevant voice in a national conversation anymore. If only liberals didn't have such an allergy to "populists."
When Jane Galt is out in the street, we will see badly needed equilibrium between the corporat media and everyone else.
It couldn't be the bullshit lies that were being fed to us? Must be a problem with the algorithms.
What’s to laugh about, McArdle? Who wants to break bread with these contemptible people?!
‘ABSOLUTELY INSANE
The Biden Admin setup a hotline so that unaccompanied minors could call if they had trouble with the strangers they were being placed with
65,000 calls to this hotline WENT UNANSWERED
“So you’re telling this committee that the Biden administration, while they were letting all of these unaccompanied minors into the country—and as we’ve talked about today, they weren’t keeping track of them—they issued these kids a hotline that they could call if they had trouble with the sponsor family they were placed with, and you’re saying that 65,000 calls to this hotline, designated to protect these kids, went unanswered. Is that what you’re telling this committee?”
Her response: “Yes, sir.”
Democrats are literally evil. How could they possibly win another election EVER again??‘
https://x.com/WallStreetApes/status/1947768689832694102
Yes, good points, AA. That kisscam thing is cruel. That couple was in the public stocks, new-style. Rough!
But I thought I favored a little return to Victorian shaming? Now I dunno. The enthusiasm for their shaming was a little much.
As for Megan McArdle? Sucks to be you, phony. [picking up tomato]
So, the United States lacks common media experiences that bring us together, Colbert chose to appeal to a narrow audience, and Colbert got cancelled. How did his cancellation indicate a problem for American democracy? Based on the premise, it sounds like the show was the problem, not the cancellation.
The problem is lies and corruption and the people who are alright with it. I don't want a shared culture that accepts that.
And all the reasons they hate me are based in lies, and terrible lies at that. How do I sing Kumbaya with that?
Where are the apologies for the lies, even the accepted ones that we all know are lies at this point. I don't see a solution to the stubborn refusal to accept truth and admit you blew it over and over. I know that's hard to do, but there is no other way.
Note to Megan - water cooler?
really?
Megan says: "not because it’s a sign of a corporation bending the knee to a would-be dictator,"
Really? Trump was elected. Trump is keeping his promises.
that's not a dictatorship, Megan.
We just suffered 4 years of the most awful corrupt regime,
and we were scorned and cancelled if we dared to think his handlers stole the election... in after hours, cover of darkness, days and days... broken water pipes, behind the Soviet curtains statistically impossible math count project.
colbert is an utterly artificial construct, it 'wears the skin' of an actual show
Carson and Leno got it. David Letterman, Jack Paar, and Joan Rivers sorta got it. It takes a special understanding of Americans for an entertainment personality to be welcome into your home every night. I grew up in the Eastern Time Zone, but I went to college in the Central. Carson came on at 10:30 in the Central--hooray!
The Jimmies and Colbert----no.
McArdle gets close but not close enough. The left has followed two tacks. The Colbert cancellation means the prog effort to impose a new narrative and ram it down our throats has failed, for now. The #Resistance by the public and DJT did the job. But the left also deliberately undermined any alternative unifying narrative--using the 1619 project, critical race theory, etc.--apart from the shared denunciation of raaccist Amerikkka.
"But it needs some way to hear the same stories, laugh at the same jokes and gather around the collective water cooler to talk about what they mean."
A good war would bring us together.
More and more people are hungry for sharp political wit that aligns with their shared principles. .. and they want to laugh and feel like they are not alone in the democratic-left's Schitt-built Soviet BS false-reality.
Gutfeld, baby. and suck it.
I don't know. Didn't everybody talk about "Game of Thrones"? Well, the rest of us did anyway.
McArdle is insipid … and she just doesn't know what she doesn't know.
It's amazing that she continues to live in a bubble. Wake up little Susie, wake up!
Do you ever wonder how CBS hires 200 people to support the colbert show? 200 people! That's insane.
Was CBS on the USAID gravy train? Makes one wonder.
Megan proves the problem isn't just Colbert.
Social media algorithms rewarded leftwing hot takes with high engagement? In what universe did that happen? CBS lived in its own bubble and thought Colbert would command a mass audience. If they'd really been paying attention to the public, they'd have gone a different route.
Have viewing habits really changed that much since "Seinfeld" and "Miami Vice"? People would watch a 21st century equivalent. They just know that the old broadcast networks aren't the ones to provide it.
Colbert was never a shared tie for me with anyone. My wife watches Gutfeld! almost every night, and so times I join her. If Megan wants shared ties with Normies she can start watching that show.
"But it needs some way to hear the same stories, laugh at the same jokes and gather around the collective water cooler to talk about what they mean."
The problem is that the Left and Right are miles apart. If the Left can't agree to keep men out of women's sports and locker rooms, what can we agree on. And, of course, there was Biden that the Fake News told us that he was perfectly fine and it was okay to let 10m illegals into the country.
The Late Night shows are all one-sided; like NPR. But unlike NPR, the TV networks have to show a profit. And that's why Colbert was cancelled. He can do his own webcast like Don Lemon, Tucker Carlson and Bill O'Reilly.
Colbert was the opposite of a shared national story. It was bitter, arrogant propaganda thinly disguised as entertainment. Megan is likely more upset another leftie outlet to win hearts and minds has failed.
…I’d be all for a shared national story on television but lefties wouldn’t watch unless it’s an ad for what they need now or an opportunity to shit on people they don’t like…
The rise of the podcasts and the blogs has destroyed the influence of the Legacy Media. Or own Ann Althouse is way more interesting and newsy than the NYT.
I was on podcast called, "The Heart of Rural America." The woman who does it is a ranch wife in SD and her name is Amanda Radke. She's a real professional and I suspect she makes good money with her advertisers. She's 100x better than the CNN or MSNBC reporters.
She covers what the Legacy media doesn't cover and she can project nationally for a tiny sum of money. She doesn't need to be on the CBS Radio Network.
Hahahahahaha.... oh LOL and a half.... so the Colbert show was fighting the 'dictator' or 'king' or whatever...
What bullshit.
The democratic/dictatorial duality of majority/minority rule.
[W]e have no obvious successor to the unifying force that late-night shows used to be. America might no longer want the 'Late Show.'
The Late Show has never been a unifying force for anything but a bunch of clapping seals.
Nick Bahe is a Nebraska football and Creighton basketball podcaster in Omaha. He used to do a daily sports talk show in Omaha. He said he makes way more money in less time as a podcaster as compared to an AM radio guy.
I suspect if Megan McArdle ever looked at the number of viewers various social media personalities get; she would be so foolish as to claim we don't have a shared interest.
My wife and I watch British murder mysteries and historical dramas on BritBox, Acorn, Prime and Netflix. Rarely does a network show pique our interest (too little depth or character development). We're really tired of having to look at entertainment through the lens of politics, so the late night show hosts lost us as patrons years ago. Our early-20s daughter watches DropOut and YouTube channels for her screen entertainment. Colbert and the rest of these "hosts" should feel lucky they are still getting paid since their industry is clearly ebbing.
it’s a sign of the unbundling of the American public.
It's the Democratic Party and their fervent supporters who have unbundled themselves -- from reality.
There’s a notable clip from this show (circa 2018, I think it was) where Colbert is chatting with actress Claire Danes about the “Homeland” series and the talk turned to the IC in the USA, how it operates and Danes started in on the close ties/bedmates situation between America’s IC and the media. Colbert nervously jumped in and he couldn’t have tried any harder to change the subject matter of the discussion.
It would be amusing if it wasn’t so horrific and anti-American.
I have never watched Colbert, I don't like to lectured by stupid people. My children dont watch him either. He is too old and not funny according to them. I don't know anyone who watches him. I remember when Johnny Carson was on, my parents watched him and their friends watched him. They talked about who Carson had on. That united America, Colbert isn't even close to that. No one talks about him, and I don't hear about him unless he says something stupid.
Way back, McArdle was worth reading. But somewhere along the way, she was captured by the left. By defending Colbert she demonstrates that in spades. Like someone said above, she is dead to me.
Iman - good grief. The left are one big loyalist Soviet mob web.
You are correct - it's not funny.
I live in hivemind prog-ville. People have Stewart-Colbert for president bumper stickers. tho - not as many as in years past.
Boomerang or progressive (e.g. monotonically disappearing) effect?
“ [W]e have no obvious successor to the unifying force that late-night shows used to be. America might no longer want the 'Late Show.' But it needs some way to hear the same stories, laugh at the same jokes and gather around the collective water cooler to talk about what they mean."
Megan has obviously never learned to appreciate diversity. And it’s been years since I’ve seen a water cooler, but I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t want to drink from a collective one.
"And America needs a shared national story, a common understanding of something, to hold together as a nation.... "
The left pushed "The 1619 Project" pretty hard as a national story but that didn't do much uniting. I wonder why not.
The Sorta Kinda Conservative Case™ for Colbert Clapter
Lazarus: Funny you should mention Game of Thrones, because that’s where I trace the phrase “bend the knee” back to, and now it seems to have permeated discourse. Of course, it’s self-explanatory enough to be understood by people who never saw GOT. The originally Australian term “no worries” has become ubiquitous without the aid of an HBO series, though.
Peachy earlier is correct. How in the blazes do you need that staff for a show? I helped run a 28 acre farm/history site with 8 staff members. And we had 8 sheep, 2 horses, 2 oxen, and geese.
What decade is McArdle living in when she bemoans the cancellation of Colbert’s show as a sign that we are “losing our shared ties?” Carson’s show had an audience of 11 million while Colbert’s show’s audience is down to 1.9 million. Not a lot of shared ties in Colbert’s remaining audience. Colbert deliberately insulted more than half of his potential audience to please the other half. That might have kept him on the air this long, but it was a doomed business model from Day One. Of course, unless Colbert is a fool, he walks away with a substantial fortune while CBS is stuck with a reported $40 million loss just for this year.
like a scorpion he is still hanging on to that 40 million dollar paycheck
Oh - thank you so much for telling us we should be concerned.
We love being shamed, mocked, lectured to, scolded, warned, made to feel fear! Thanks, Megan.
'we have secretly replaced colbert episodes with that of craig ferguson, see if they can tell the difference'
The cancelation being a sign of losing shared ties reninds me of the guy who has a lot of affairs and after his wife divorces him goes on to bemoan the lack of commitment by her.
Colbert had years to build common ground. He chose otherwise and was part of the coterie of hosts who turned late night from variously entertaining light weight ways of detoxing from the day into yet more of the same political posturing that happens everywhere else. He killed the genre but want sto put the blame elsewhere, and the people who care are the pundits who were giving them more screen time and bad quips to link.
Colbert got cancelled because his show costs far more than it earns. End of story. Democracy is not imperiled by requiring a thuggish comic to show a profit.
If your audience is an average of 68 years old, and you are spending $100 million to do it, you needed cancelled a long time ago. What kind of business is that? How does any person responsible for that performance not get fired and never hired again? That sounds like government-level performance.
she used to be more sensible until the atlantic and the post bought her out,
What decade is McArdle living in
She apparently missed the invention of cable television, which is one more reason Carson had a bigger audience and was the start of people’s viewing habits becoming more diverse.
Am I supposed to share the values that would do this on possibly one of the the biggest stories in American history:
"CNN covered Gabbard’s remarks for about three minutes before “CNN News Central” co-host Brianna Kielar and guest co-host Jim Sciutto cut away while Gabbard was speaking."
https://dailycaller.com/2025/07/23/cnn-cuts-away-to-meticulously-fact-check-as-tulsi-gabbard-reveals-new-russiagate-evidence/
The Left, "I hate your fucking guts!"
Also the Left, "Why are we losing our shared ties?"
Here's a clue, Megan: It's not us who brought this on. It's you.
it’s a sign of the unbundling of the American public.
But... that was the point of the whole American leftist project! Diversity is our strength!
I hate hearing her like this. Asymmetrical Information was a go-to for me back in the day, asking with Protein Wisdom, neoneocon (who, like so many of us who initially embraced that project, has since disavowed it), and of course Althouse. McArdle's commentariat rivaled this one.
And then, The Atlantic. Or was it first The Economist? In any case, how did our host put it earlier today? Her thinking evolved?
Peachy said-"Was CBS on the USAID gravy train? Makes one wonder."
That , IMO, is the spot. CBS was happy to lose money on that show, and has done so for years, because they hate Trump. But I'm willing to bet that they were taking millions from that USAID gravey train.
Now that money is drying up, and I imagine the other losers on late night will follow a similar fate.
*along.
My proofreading is sucking right now; we're putting our house on the market in a week and I am very very tired of being on my knees scrubbing baseboards and so forth.
Bagoh - 5:04 --thanks for that.
CNN and all the other Alphabet "newz" (Soviet) were on board pushing the Russia Russia Russia Hoax - Trump is a Russian Asset Concoction. They are backing away slowly - but we have the receipts. So of course they cut away. What Sleaze.
All while Hillary was not examined at all for her secret Russian Uranium One windfall. Private Servers are helpful for stuff like that.
Re: watching late night live tv or any current tv shows.
Other than perhaps a news channel when there has been a local disaster....I can't remember the last time, we watched "live' television or any of the current TV shows. It used to be that everyone watched the same shows at the same time, because you had no choice. Smothers Brothers. Rawhide. Johnny Carson etc... in the past. Game of Thrones and others that I have no idea what they are today.
Now that we can stream so many things. Some people download current shows. We can watch what we want...WHEN we want. Binge watch. Stop in the middle of a show. Pause. Scroll back. Netflix, Acorn, Amazon and a whole host of other channels on Roku.
I see no reason to ever watch live TV or subscribe to a provider like Dish. Current shows, and movies are crap. It is more entertaining to watch a show that was made to entertain and not to propagandize. Give me Miss Marple or Poirot any day over most of the "modern" spew.
We get better and more current information from the internet, through Blogs like this one and multitudes of other sources. Current and also able to get multiple viewpoints, instead of being spoon fed by one ideology or the other..
The Left, "I hate your fucking guts!"
If that's all it was, I could live with it. But it's not.
If you think gas ovens are bad, you can get an electric model. If you think EVs are needed to save the planet, you're free to buy one. If you think single family homes cause sprawl, you can live in an apartment in the city. If you think eating meat causes Global Warming, you're welcome to eat grass or bugs.
And nobody on the right is going to try to stop you.
But that's not good enough for the left. They insist that what they believe, everybody must believe.
I often wonder if I would have survived puberty if Johnny Carson hadn't been on TV every weeknight. I was such a loser as a teenager but he made me feel like I might belong someday. I was living in Charleston SC when Colbert got his show and he was living in Charleston at the time. I watched it once and thought surely my friends in Charleston are not this stupid. Alas, some of them were.
1) What is this "American Democracy" that she talks about? As far as I can tell, its just words trotted out by Establishment figures and means nothing.
2) Why would the cancellation of the colbert show be a sign of the unbundelling of the American public? The colbert show ITSELF was a sign of the unbundelling.
"We" weren't laughing at the colbert shows. A small percentage of the public that hated Trump and was over the age of 60 was. It was a narrowcast show to be watched by old boomers who were too lazy to change the channel, and so leftwing they'd laugh at vulgar crap - as long it hated on those Goddamn Republicans.
"Fuck Trump" - wahhahahaha. Applause. Woo boy, that was so funny!
No one ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American Public. And goes double for liberal/left Americans.
Leaving that aside, Magen loves the days when we had 3 Networks and 1 PBS station and we had to watch whatever crap 20 Network executives decided we should watch.
Oh for the days of "Welcome back Kotter" and Chico and the Man. Now that was entertainment.
Thank God those days are over!
Althouse: "TV has died, but the stories get out, through TikTok and other media. More things have an opportunity to go big, and the dispersion is fast. What was television, really, by contrast? "
This is a huge question and I am boggled. Also sad about McArdle - she is intelligent and in the beginning she was worth reading. Since joining the lefties, its almost as if they removed part of her brain. OTOH, if you read her writing only for the "unifying" aspect, its not a bad question, but she is asking from a very crooked or twisted perspective. Colbert was "unifying"? What planet?
"Dust Bunny Queen said...
Re: watching late night live tv or any current tv shows.
Other than perhaps a news channel when there has been a local disaster....I can't remember the last time, we watched "live' television or any of the current TV shows. It used to be that everyone watched the same shows at the same time, because you had no choice. Smothers Brothers. Rawhide. Johnny Carson etc... in the past.
Prime Time watching has become Anytime. And, of course, 3 or 4 choices a night as to what to watch, as opposed to a million choices now anytime you want, day or night.
I am watching Poirot season 1, #1 on Prime. as I check the net. I can watch it all day and all night if I want.
Now that we have the internet you can watch the Sunday talk shows and just laugh. Its all either just leftwing junk and biased nonsense, or its people telling you stale talking points you've already heard. Worthless! But back "in the day" that's all we had. We had to cheer on a dweeb like George Will because he was the only conservative on TV, and we had take Sam Donaldson and Kookie Roberts seriously for the same reason.
The first liberation was cable Tv, then we got VCRs/DVDs, and finally we got the internet. Some don't like the freedom. They want big Brother to choose for us, so we can have something in common. Even though we hate it.
Danno said...
Way back, McArdle was worth reading. But somewhere along the way, she was captured by the left. By defending Colbert she demonstrates that in spades. Like someone said above, she is dead to me.
Captured = took globalist oligarch money for pushing oligarch propaganda.
McArdle is just lamenting the fact that given options consumers prefer journalists like Taibbi to her and people prefer Gutfield to Colbert.
McArdle is mad that people are able to escape her masters because in the long term that means she is worthless to them as well as to society.
Used to be if a show was losing money, it was canceled. No questions asked, no drama.
Maybe Colbert can be saved by his fans, ala Star Trek(wiki)
The enthusiasm of Star Trek's viewers surprised NBC.[32] The show was unusual in its serious discussion of contemporary societal issues in a futuristic context, unlike Lost in Space, which was more campy in nature.[47]
The network had already received 29,000 fan letters for the show during its first season, more than for any other except The Monkees.[25] When rumors spread in late 1967 that Star Trek was at risk of cancellation, Roddenberry secretly began and funded an effort by Bjo Trimble, her husband John, and other fans to persuade tens of thousands of viewers to write letters of support to save the program.[46][48]: 377–394 [49]
Using the 4,000 names on a mailing list for a science-fiction convention, the Trimbles asked fans to write to NBC and ask 10 others to also do so.[50]: 128 NBC received almost 116,000 letters for the show between December 1967 and March 1968, including more than 52,000 in February alone;[51][52][25] according to an NBC executive, the network received more than one million pieces of mail but only disclosed the 116,000 figure.[46]
Newspaper columnists encouraged readers to write letters to help save what one called "the best science-fiction show on the air".[53] More than 200 Caltech students marched to NBC's Burbank, California studio to support Star Trek in January 1968, carrying signs such as "Draft Spock" and "Vulcan Power".[54] Berkeley and MIT students organized similar protests in San Francisco and New York City.[53]
The letters supporting Star Trek, whose authors included New York State Governor Nelson Rockefeller,[55] were different in both quantity and quality from most mail that television networks receive:
The show, according to the 6,000 letters it draws a week (more than any other in television), is watched by scientists, museum curators, psychiatrists, doctors, university professors, and other highbrows. The Smithsonian Institution asked for a print of the show for its archives, the only show so honored.[53]
In addition:
Much of the mail came from doctors, scientists, teachers, and other professional people, and was for the most part literate–and written on good stationery. And if there is anything a network wants almost as much as a high Nielsen ratings, it is the prestige of a show that appeals to the upper middle class and high-brow audiences.
Megan McArdle Argle-Bargle.
"The sharp leftward lurch that consumed American media companies was driven by social media algorithms that rewarded left-wing political hot takes with high engagement."
I don't understand what she is saying. There's no further explanation in the full column.
Megan is a "tall drink of water". I just mean tall by that, but my wife hates the phrase.
I remember one funny bit by Colbert. It was when he had O'Reilly as a guest, and the stage was showered with rose petals as O'Reilly walked on. O'Reilly deserved to be sent up, but how many years can you live off of one joke?
For one brief shining moment Colbert had a reason to have a show.
When we have true Democratic Socialism, comedians will never get cancelled, no matter how much money they lose for the network, I mean The Party.
Colbert was a true comrade and Party man.
First Tenor at 411 - My wife and I do also. Just watched seasons 1` and 2 of Harry Wild on ACORN. Jane Seymour solving murder after murder, and set in Ireland.
Achilles said...
“McArdle is mad that people are able to escape her masters because in the long term that means she is worthless to them as well as to society.”
Slight twist to your point: McArdle is mad that people are able to escape her masters - and she isn’t.
Political Junkie said...
“Megan is a ‘tall drink of water’. I just mean tall by that, but my wife hates the phrase.”
Tall drink of MSM kool-aid.
"I don't understand what she is saying. There's no further explanation in the full column."
She's doing what some Althouse commenters do in other contexts. She's trying to give the Businessmen an out. In this case, its Leftwing TV Network execs. "They weren't leftwing, they were just trying to make money by following the social media algorithim".
Which is stupid in 10 ways to Sunday.
Every discussion of "Colbert was cancelled by CBS to please Trump" should be prefraced with "Without evidence, some claim..."
HEY MEGAN!
How did that defamation lawsuit against the WaPo by Nick Sandmann go for you???
Thank God for streaming. 50's and 60's TV lives on! Was Route 66 great TV or what? Well, glad network TV is done. Stick a fork in it.
Sadly, on my congressman's personal X account, he asked that we sign a petition to bring Colbert back. I thought that was a little odd.
It wasn't politics that got him fired. It was politics that kept propping him up for years despite losing shit tons of money for the network.
Of course, one of our national shared television experiences was Donald ("You're fired!") Trump on The Apprentice.
The left are mourning the loss of the propagandist.
Oh, no! Megan! anyway.
People were following the latest on Liz and Richard Burton well before social media, and making it part of their own personal lives. It was a fiction that they liked to be part of. Soap opera news just extended that to 24/7 engagement.
It's an entertainment choice, involving the audience as fiction but engaging nevertheless.
It's a business model.
The corresponding business model on the right was reporting with amusement the latest thing that the left had said. NR, and Rush Limbaugh.
Today there's no amusement and the right is just a mirror of the left, claiming to know what is important and here it is.
The left is mostly for women. The bemusement is for men, but that didn't survive Limbaugh, and even Limbaugh was going moralistic in the last 15 years. He started as a prankster.
How about this, if they don’t cancel it consider it a 40 million in kind contribution to the DNC? Why not do that for the last year it’s running?
Megan, is it really so hard to fathom why we have nothing in common any more? Have you considered the possibility that it's because Democrats have inexplicably gone batshit crazy in the last dozen or so years?
I can actually remember when my Democrat friends actually agreed that there were only 2 sexes, that we should have border controls, that dangerous criminals should get locked up instead of continuously released, and dozens of other similar common beliefs. And that it's OK if either of us disagrees with one another without forever banishing the other from our lives. What the holy hell happened?
I remember Carson. I liked his show but seldom watched it. The commercials were endless. I don't remember America ever being united in comity around the Carson show, but, as noted, I may have missed it because I didn't watch the show. Next time America unites in comity, I'd appreciate it if someone would inform me.. .....Nothing against Gutfeld, but he's not Limbaugh. Limbaugh was a cut above talented. He was something rare irreplaceable. When Trump gave him that Presidential Award and announced his presence at the SOTU speech, there wasn't a dry eye in the house. Democrats jumped to their feet to cheer this dying man to the echo. It was truly a moment of national comity. I should say that I'm getting older and my memory isn't that sharp anymore.
OMG.
"The View's Sunny Hostin Warns Colbert Cancellation Could Lead To The 'Dismantling Of Our Constitution'"
This is what passes for progressive intelligence.
McArdle is 25 years too late. We lost our common experiences a long time ago.
If you read the comments on the Post article, it's clear that the readers ers think it's all a grand conspiracy. Motivated reasoning. They know the answer before anyone asks the question.
Is anybody else noticing that every store is playing Coldplay songs right now?
Wake up, Megan. Abre los ojos. Do you really think the fracturing you describe was some kind of organic evolution that just happened to us? It was deliberate. It remains deliberate.
Colbert was not a shared tie. He was a divider. He was a wedge driver. He was a preacher of fear and contempt for the other. If anything, canceling Colbert is a step in the direction of recovery.
What are you going to do? Force people to watch him?
They are trying so very hard to make the cancellation of "the late show" about a threat to Free Speech. The reality is that Colbert is moderately funny, he is doing badly with the prime demographic of 25-54 year olds, and CBS wants to stop losing money.
What a lot of people don’t understand is that Colbert was almost financially successful until a year or two ago. Then his advertising revenue collapsed - very possibly because he and shows like his, were lie barking seals for Biden/Harris. $100 million a year to produce was ludicrous. It was just too bloated to cut back enough, fast enough, to survive. This is an era where the best news TV is streaming podcasts. Very low budget, even for a megastar like Joe Rogan.
" And America needs a shared national story," GIVE ME A BREAK. COLBERT is espousing a shared national story? The fox guy might be. Rogan might be, but the democrats only care about one thing, power.
Carson has endured, his everyman persona, made that possible, despite his lifestyle, Colbert will not last probably a decade,
I'm kind of disappointed that Megan McArdle went so heavily into conspiracy territory without any proof. There is no evidence that Trump had Colbert fired. Granted, Trump wanted that to happen, but Colbert worked for CBS, not Trump. Seriously, there's lots of things that Trump says that he wants than will never happen.
Colbert was fired because he had stopped being funny, his show was operating at a $40 million to $50 million loss each year and he said really bad things about his employer on a very public forum. I'll bet that CBS was looking for an excuse to get rid of him.
Plus, there's nothing stopping Colbert from taking his show elsewhere.
"And America needs a shared national story, a common understanding of something, to hold together as a nation.... "
Even if that story is a partisan lie? The Colbert show was actually dividing the nation, not trying to hold it together.
No way that McArdle watches presidential debates. She generally shies away from politics.
I watch football, March Madness, Scottie Scheffler, and NCIS episodes twice. Watching Gibbs the second time around, of course, is not network TV.
As for Late Night TV, it died with Johnny Carson. Colbert's best joke ever was explaining that his show only lost $24 million a year, not $40 million.
Limbaugh could think his way to a unique insight. He began the right-wing interest in Gramsci for instance, as a general observation on politics (the idea of social-intellectual hegemony as a separate political power), not just as pro-communist motivated reasoning. Gramscian analysis works no matter where the "hegemony" stands. Limbaugh got me to read a long dead Italian communist. These other guys, I dont think so.
Everyone in the "Arts" is a hard leftist yet few of them can produce compelling entertainment anymore. Especially true of non-fiction, like news and podcasting.
I'm kind of disappointed that Megan McArdle went so heavily into conspiracy territory without any proof.
It's a cycle. First they go NeverTrump then they see everything through a Trump-centric lens. In the end all they have is increasingly wilder conspiracy theories to try and make all the voices in their heads make sense.
She used to be one of the best center-right (Libertarianish?) journalists around when she was covering policing during the Clinton-Obama years. Debunking crazy talking points was her forte then.
Remember the good old days when everyone got their news from Walter Cronkhite, and the press never lied?
Well, glad network TV is done. Stick a fork in it.
It turns out "free" over the air TV is worth exactly what is paid for it. It used to be priceless.
I seem to remember McArdle in the early 2000s claiming that small houses are actually more expensive than big houses because "they cost more per square foot."
At one point I recall she also described modern farming as "staring at the back of a mule."
I don't put much stock in her judgement.
McArdle’s argument makes no sense. We no longer share a vision and media serves niche fandoms but cancelling one of the most obvious examples is somehow a bad thing? I think it’s thenfirst sign of a correction.
Take heart, America! The cancellation of Colbert will unite us like 9/11 did. By God, together, somehow we'll get through this!
What I've Learned, from the EXPERTS..
"democracy" is the correct spelling for "Democrat Party"
NEVER say: "what this means for the Democrat Party"..
ALWAYS say: "what this means for democracy"..
likewise,
NEVER talk about "saving the Democrat Party"..
or, "protecting the Democrat Party"..
ALWAYS talk about "saving democracy"..
or "protecting democracy"..
that's the protocol
McArdle's still stuck in her 20s and hasn't ever figured out that the world has changed since them thar Internets came around. Typical bubble dweller. Though many years ago I liked some stuff she wrote.
I remember when local news used to show clips from the late night shows, ostensibly for "Here's some funny stuff from last night!" but really just to air what they really think ("Bush/Trump/Whoever BAAAD!!") without actually saying it themselves.
I've been a fan of McArdle. But sometimes I struggle to understand her point. Yes, it's true that over the last two decades the shift from television to cable to streaming services means increasingly that the American public is divided into niche groups.
And yes the whole late show format is a relic of two decades ago.
The problem is that Colbert made it worse. He could have brought on guests with broader *shared* appeal. He could have told jokes with *shared* appeal. He stopped trying to reach 90% of the American public and instead decided to heap contempt on half. This guy openly hates Trump and (this part is arguable) hates those who like Trump. Colbert alianted half of his audience right out of the gate. Night after night year after year.
Meanwhile Greg Gutfield on Fox is doing great. And his show costs a fraction of what it costs to produce the Late Show.
McArdle has a point. Which applies very poorly to Colbert.
And America needs a shared national story, a common understanding of something, to hold together as a nation
Which we will never have so long as the Left remain the hate filled and censorious piles of shit that they are.
Either your "components of shared culture" are at least 50% right wing Trump supporters, or else you don't have "shared culture", you just have left wing assholes screaming at the rest of us.
The problem isn't Colbert's show being canceled. The problem is that a chapter desiring propagandist was ever given a show in the first place. Either make your "culture" welcoming to the 50% of us who voted for Trump, or FOAD.
Rick67 said...
I've been a fan of McArdle. But sometimes I struggle to understand her point.
Her point is that she's still completely screwed over by her TDS, and to the extent that she isn't she works in a place where she can't show it, or show any willingness to value those of us who aren't left wing lunatics.
She can't simply say "Colbert got fired because he's the Democrats' cock holster, be it Biden, Harris, Obama, or anyone else who comes along. And people dont' find that worth watching." So she has to babble the stupidity that she does
"America needs a shared national story, a common understanding of something, to hold together as a nation"
That went away with diversity. I've got nothing in common with the africans, Mexicans, and Indians that populate the blue zoo I used to live in.
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