Left-wing television personality and failed politician Stephen Colbert aired his final show on Thursday. Unemployed millennials and members of the media were hardest hit. Salon called the finale "pitch perfect ... a hilarious moving coda." Reporters at the New York Times made a video in which they gushed groveling gushy gush about the cultural significance of Stephen Colbert:
Others penned fawning eulogies to the show and how Colbert "helped us survive the Bush years." A Boston Globe columnist wrote that the "brilliant comedian" offered respite from the scourge of the Tea Baggers, but was also a source of disappointment for millenials who realized that watching a show on television was not as politically transformative as voting in elections:
But the rise of Colbert reflects a distinct and disturbing cultural trend: our own regression from citizens capable of reforming our broken institutions to passive consumers who choose to regard civic decay as a source of entertainment.
Consider the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear that Colbert and Jon Stewart cooked up back in 2010, which was held the weekend before the midterm elections.
It was, by any objective measure, the largest event of that election cycle. It drew more than 200,000 people to the National Mall, with millions more watching from home — the vast majority of them progressives.
And yet the "rally" was little more than a variety show intended to celebrate the spirit of civility. There was no call to action, no agenda, not even an exhortation to vote. Three days later, Tea Party candidates stormed into the House of Representatives, ushering in an era of perpetual gridlock.
The blame for this lies not with Colbert, but with those of us who somehow expected that watching an earnest variety show would vanquish a sustained, lavishly funded, and highly coordinated electoral effort.
The show's mostly white audience has yet to reckon with the problematic symbolism of the almost entirely white entourage who joined Colbert on stage to sing farewell, a scene Salon described as "absolutely epic." It was epically white.
So many white people.
