April 17, 2014, - 2:37 pm
Would Stephen Colbert Get CBS Late Night Gig If He Did This to Muslims?
If Stephen Colbert attacked Muslims the way he’s mocked Jews and Christians, do you think he’d have gotten the CBS late night gig? Think again. He’s rarely mocked Muslims, if ever. But he regularly attacks Jews and Christians. And here’s just a sample of something he does that Muslims would never tolerate, nor would CBS if it were about Muslims:
Every year, Comedy Central’s Stephen Colbert sets up a 1-888-OOPS-JEW hotline to give Jews an opportunity to apologize to him in the 10 days of repentance between Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur. Mr. Colbert mispronounces the Jewish holy days, blows the “dead ram” Shofar and brings out his atonement phone. “Oh children of Israel, once again I look forward to your apologies to me. To quote your Jewish Pope Moses—’revenge is a dish best served kosher,'” he says.
It is the kind of on-the-edge humor that has won Mr. Colbert a strong following among a younger generation of late-night viewers—a following that led CBS Corp. CBS -0.32% to his door in choosing a successor to their late-night star, David Letterman. But in airlifting Mr. Colbert from the almost-anything-goes world of cable to the confines of broadcast television, CBS Corp. is taking a risk.
Is that really “on-the-edge humor”? Or is it bigoted humor? “On-the-edge” humor would be if he dared to mock the religion of hijackers, Fort Hood massacreists, Times Square, Shoe, and Undie Bombers, and other assorted malefactors who want to destroy us and to whom we’ve cowered. That would be daring. Colbert’s tired retread about the holiest Jewish day of the year is not. It’s anti-Semitic–exactly the kind of “funny” that aging, out of touch, self-hating Jews like CBS chief Les Moonves love. It may be funny to some, but in fact, it’s anti-Jewish. And Colbert would never do it to Muslims. He simply doesn’t have the cojones. If he did do it to Muslims, CBS definitely wouldn’t hire him because there would be an outcry from all the usual alphabet soup of Muslim HAMAS supporting whiners, including CAIR, MPAC, and so on–such an outcry that even a moderate ABC Family pilot about Muslims who kidnap their relative to Saudi Arabia was immediately canceled. But bigotry against Jews and Christians by Colbert is acceptable. And it will be acceptable at CBS. I won’t be watching.
Moonves said of Colbert, “He’ll be the guy who does social commentary. This is going to feel very different from the Jimmys [NBC’s Fallon and ABC’s Kimmel].” By “social commentary,” he means liberal crap. But nobody watching late night TV wants to hear social commentary, and if they do, they turn to FOX News or MSNBC. If it feels different, it might be because nobody is watching. David Letterman already blew a big chunk of audience by resorting to bitter liberalism instead of entertaining humor, and I predict that Colbert will have similarly low ratings. He will have a bump initially from gawkers who want to see what he does. But, then, it will be boring. Because that’s what Colbert is without mocking conservatives: boring and unentertaining. He’s boring even with that.
In the week since it was announced that Colbert was getting the soon-to-be-vacated David Letterman gig, a number of conservatives have been up in arms. They say it’s “an attack on America’s heartland,” and other similar stuff. And, given that Colbert is a liberal whose “Colbert Report” is based on mocking conservatives as anachronistic idiots, it is an attack on the roughly 40% of Americans who are conservative. But that’s not what’s stupid about it.
What’s stupid about it is that Colbert is boring. He’s a one trick pony. And he’s not funny. Sarcasm only goes so far. Not very far. And that’s all he’s got. Colbert will not hold his own against the latenight Jimmys, Fallon and Kimmel in the coveted male 18-34 demographic. Colbert is only 49–just a few years the Jimmys’ senior, but he looks like he’s 59 and has the mannerisms of a 69-year-old. He’s not youthful, and he’s not hip. As a straight interviewer, he’ll be snoozeworthy.
And that’s another reason I won’t be watching.
It’s another reason you won’t be watching either.
Unless you ran out of sleeping pills.
Tags: David Letterman, Les Moonves, Leslie Moonves, Stephen Colbert, Stephen Colbert anti-Semitic, Stephen Colbert CBS, Stephen Colbert CBS gig, Stephen Colbert Jews, Stephen Colbert Late Night CBS, Stephen Colbert Latenight CBS, Stephen Colbert Yom Kippur
I could never stand Colbert or his crap show and have been boycotting Letterman for decades, now, so having this switch in hosts will just mean continuation of my avoidance of CBS late-night TV.
DS_ROCKS! on April 17, 2014 at 3:05 pm