Alexandra Petri
By Alexandra Petri
Say one thing about Stephen Colbert: He certainly knew how to draw a crowd.
That much was evident in the Thursday finale of his show, when the most bizarre and wonderful assortment of people turned out to sing “We’ll Meet Again” — Randy Newman, Big Bird, George Lucas (!), Alan Alda, Arianna Huffington, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Bill Clinton (tweeting remotely), Jon Stewart (of course).
I didn’t realise what a big generational end-of-an-era moment this would feel like. But I should have. “The Colbert Report” was always a show for millennials. That was clear the second we stepped onto the Mall in 2010 for the Stewart-Colbert rally. There were only two things that my friends felt merited a bus trek down to Washington: President Obama’s 2009 inauguration and the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear.
You don’t realise what a fixture something is until it’s singing to you one last time. Colbert, with “The Word” and “Better Know a District” and his traditional presidential campaign, had been there for the past nine years — long enough for us to grow up watching him. In 2010, 80 percent of his viewers were in the coveted 18-to-49 demographic. With Obama’s election, I remember hearing concerns about whether Stewart and Colbert, so long in the role of class clowns, could successfully move to a position more akin to teacher’s pet. But in the years since, “The Colbert Report” did some of its most incisive work. Colbert’s take on campaign-finance reform and super PAC coordination was some of the best stuff of the 2012 election.
A PRRI/Brookings survey in 2014 found that “The Daily Show” was more trusted than MSNBC. But we weren’t actually getting our news from “The Colbert Report” and “The Daily Show.” Comedy Central, which conducted a survey on millennials’ political habits, noted that “When it comes to political comedy/satires, Millennials don’t watch to get informed; they watch because they are informed.” We got our news elsewhere, then tuned in to laugh about it.
Now where do we turn? There’s always Stewart, in his role as Media Critic in Chief, and John Oliver, continuing in the If-We-Can-Make-This-Funny-We-Can-Make-This-Interesting footsteps. Yet it was always interesting to see the Colbert twist, and the model he pioneered still feels vital.
Larry Wilmore’s upcoming “Nightly Show” has promise, but why not a woman next? We’ve had a parody Bill O’Reilly — what about a parody provocatrix in the mould of Ann Coulter? Whatever its form, we need something. Colbert is gone, but his “Report” is something I’m not ready to do without.
WP-BLOOMBERG
By Alexandra Petri
Say one thing about Stephen Colbert: He certainly knew how to draw a crowd.
That much was evident in the Thursday finale of his show, when the most bizarre and wonderful assortment of people turned out to sing “We’ll Meet Again” — Randy Newman, Big Bird, George Lucas (!), Alan Alda, Arianna Huffington, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Bill Clinton (tweeting remotely), Jon Stewart (of course).
I didn’t realise what a big generational end-of-an-era moment this would feel like. But I should have. “The Colbert Report” was always a show for millennials. That was clear the second we stepped onto the Mall in 2010 for the Stewart-Colbert rally. There were only two things that my friends felt merited a bus trek down to Washington: President Obama’s 2009 inauguration and the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear.
You don’t realise what a fixture something is until it’s singing to you one last time. Colbert, with “The Word” and “Better Know a District” and his traditional presidential campaign, had been there for the past nine years — long enough for us to grow up watching him. In 2010, 80 percent of his viewers were in the coveted 18-to-49 demographic. With Obama’s election, I remember hearing concerns about whether Stewart and Colbert, so long in the role of class clowns, could successfully move to a position more akin to teacher’s pet. But in the years since, “The Colbert Report” did some of its most incisive work. Colbert’s take on campaign-finance reform and super PAC coordination was some of the best stuff of the 2012 election.
A PRRI/Brookings survey in 2014 found that “The Daily Show” was more trusted than MSNBC. But we weren’t actually getting our news from “The Colbert Report” and “The Daily Show.” Comedy Central, which conducted a survey on millennials’ political habits, noted that “When it comes to political comedy/satires, Millennials don’t watch to get informed; they watch because they are informed.” We got our news elsewhere, then tuned in to laugh about it.
Now where do we turn? There’s always Stewart, in his role as Media Critic in Chief, and John Oliver, continuing in the If-We-Can-Make-This-Funny-We-Can-Make-This-Interesting footsteps. Yet it was always interesting to see the Colbert twist, and the model he pioneered still feels vital.
Larry Wilmore’s upcoming “Nightly Show” has promise, but why not a woman next? We’ve had a parody Bill O’Reilly — what about a parody provocatrix in the mould of Ann Coulter? Whatever its form, we need something. Colbert is gone, but his “Report” is something I’m not ready to do without.
WP-BLOOMBERG
