Gore Vidal remarked during the George W. Bush years that comedians such as Jon Stewart had become leading political figures because the Left lacked powerful “alternative voices”. The idea that late-night clowns could represent American liberalism struck the great author as an absurdity. “What do they have to do with it?” he asked, before answering his own question: “Bad jokes.”

Stephen Colbert, who hosted his final episode of The Late Show on CBS last night, exemplifies this absurd tendency towards hagiography. Treating a mediocre comic like an inspiring political leader demonstrates the slow and humiliating death of establishment liberals. They inhabit a world in which prestige is their main currency, yet they often spend it on self-congratulation and promotion.

For years, the NPR-New York Times nexus has run fawning profiles of Colbert, reporting on his monologues as if they were the Gettysburg Address. Those same outlets are now covering his show’s cancellation as if it is the funeral of a beloved head of state. The New York Times declared it the end of a “cultural era”. Air Mail insisted that Colbert taught an undefined “us” how to be “civil”. Even the flagship Catholic magazine America joined the parade by calling the late-night host “one of today’s best Catholic evangelists”.

Enhancing the bizarre religious language surrounding Colbert’s exit, Los Angeles Times TV critic Mary McNamara said: “We will miss the divine and very human ministry of Stephen Colbert.” David Litt, a former Obama speechwriter, wrote a tribute more fitting for a saint’s beatification than an entertainer’s farewell, crediting Colbert with a “unique ability to be human”.

Reality is less kind to Colbert. From 2017 to 2025, his program’s ratings plummeted from 3.1 million viewers a night to roughly 1.3 million. Relatively few Americans cared about his attempts at humor, Catholic evangelism, or anti-Trump barbs. Perhaps, those who stopped watching had only a normal gift to be human.

Colbert is a strange man, with his Fifties real-estate ad appearance and stiff pomposity, but there isn’t anything wrong with his brand of entertainment for those who genuinely enjoy it. The main problem is that the idol-like worship far surpasses the actual value of his program. It is difficult to think of any Colbert joke, skit, or production that will survive in the collective memory two months — let alone two years — from now. Like his late-night friend and competitor Jimmy Kimmel, his jokes typically provoke more applause than laughter from a like-minded audience.

Last night’s finale followed the usual script, with Colbert making dull observations in response to the latest headlines, and an interview with Paul McCartney was heavy on canned lines and predictable topics. I’ll admit to dozing off during a skit that featured the host going through some kind of time-warp portal that ended in his singing a duet with Elvis Costello. The scripted nature of the program, similar in delivery and timing to high-school theater, together with overlong commercial breaks, acted as a reminder of why so few people, especially those below the age of 50, care about Colbert, no matter how hard the legacy press works to prop him up.

One person who deeply cared about Colbert was Donald Trump, who last night called the departing host a “total jerk”. More significantly, there is suspicion that the President played a role in the show’s cancellation. David Ellison, the CEO of Skydance Media, which now controls CBS, is a Trump ally. Similarly, the Trump-appointed chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Brendan Carr, was instrumental in Jimmy Kimmel’s short-lived suspension last year. Trump, by any measure, is Colbert and Kimmel’s best friend: whether he realizes it or not, with every attack he signal-boosts them, making them appear more influential and popular than their declining ratings and ad revenue might indicate.

The real political conclusion to draw from the glorification of Colbert is the impotence and obliviousness of the establishment liberalism he represents. While Republicans were working to take control of America’s governing apparatus, liberals were high-fiving over Colbert’s wisecracks. The joke is now firmly on them.