Charlie Kane

I watched Colbert a lot back in the day, before he traded the multidimensional satirist in the Colbert Report for the one-dimensional politician in the Late Show. It’s time for him to ditch the mouthpiece and return to what put him on the map in the first place: multilayered satire that offered a more honest, holistic, and stimulating critique of modern culture. Satire works when it confronts taboo subjects and pokes fun at taboo situations in ways that delight us and disrupt our expectations. It requires that we check our egos and proprieties at the door. Satire dies when it plays everything safe and takes the same angle to every conversation. The goal of satire is not ideological conformity. The goal is to expand the conversation by offering fresh perspectives and—heaven forbid!—sometimes upsetting the status quo. By embracing an agenda, engaging in political vendettas, and adopting the trite talk show format, Colbert has handicapped himself, choosing to be a one-trick pony that would rather glad-hand mediocre celebrities and left-leaning politicians, instead of holding a lens to society as broadly and brilliantly as he did in the Colbert Report. The cost is a dumber, shortchanged audience who has been deprived of one of America’s great satirists.