All Episodes
Previous Next
July 19, 2025 - Lionel Nation
13:01
RIP Colbert and WOKE Late Night Crap: Who's Next?
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
Hey, I'm going to play with you the parlor game.
We're going to talk about Stephen Colbert.
We're going to talk about what happened.
Is it the end of him?
Is it the end of woke?
Is it the end of late night?
Is it about money?
Is it about the lawsuit?
You know, what happened?
You're going to hear um teen post-mortems and all kinds of people telling you what really happened.
Well, one more is not going to kill you.
Let me tell you what I think happened in my own inimitable way.
First of all, bottom line is, it's over.
It's over.
He's over the late night, the format, it's over.
In my generation, we remembered there was a time of, the glorious time of late night, late night men something was Jack Parr and Steve Allen and Johnny Carson.
It was an entertainment.
It was interesting.
It was a version of kind of Ed Sullivan meets an opinion format, if that makes any sense.
It was different.
It wasn't just the usual.
It wasn't just the usual, here's Topo Gejo or the amazing Barboni in the dog act.
It was something a little different.
It was attitudinal and it was unique and it was fresh and it was just good.
Maybe I'm romanticizing.
Maybe I'm just looking back at everything during my particular period where I thought it was better.
I don't know.
It could be.
But it was, that's what we were.
That was late night and it made sense and it was good.
And I don't know why it was good, but it was good.
You watch Johnny Carson.
Now, Johnny Carson was the king.
If you're younger and you don't understand this, it was appointment TV.
Everybody watched Johnny Carson.
This is before VCRs.
This is before you watched it.
It was 1130 to 1 and then later on it was 1230.
But there was a time when you watched the whole thing.
It was late night.
And that's what it was.
It really was late night.
And everybody watched at that time.
It was appointment TV and it was a ceremony.
It was the tabernacle.
It was this ecclesiastical public watching.
I don't want to read too much into it, but that's how big it was.
Okay.
Later on, later on with 70s, not so much the 60s, but political talk, you know, and the Smothers Brothers and laughing to an extent.
Things got a little bit more political, but not, they didn't hit you over the head and they didn't insult you.
They didn't hate you.
People would talk about Vietnam and the Smothers Brothers.
My God, it was so tame by today's standards, but if you watched it, then it was the biggest thing anybody's ever seen.
They actually dared to suggest that maybe the Vietnam War was wrong.
It was genius.
Okay.
Something changed and I don't know when.
TDS, Trump derangement syndrome, COVID, social media woke and this thing called, this is number two, mean, mean, not funny, not nice, not clever, not Will Rogers, not Johnny Carson.
Johnny Carson never ever attacked.
You really weren't sure about Johnny Carson's politics.
You weren't even really sure about Walter Cronkite's politics.
I mean, that Ted Offensive little commentary he made during World War, during the Vietnam War, pretty much ended the Vietnam War.
It was a different time.
It was a completely different time, a different time, a different everything then.
So, make a long story short, it was a different everything.
But mean came in, and the meanest of the mean of the mean, the snarkiest, nastiest, the bitchiest, the most cat fightiest, weird, and Stephen Colbert was weird.
I'm just going to say one thing and one thing only.
Listen to what I'm saying.
Did you ever see him dance?
That's all I got to say.
Did you ever see him dance?
Eh?
Ooh.
Peter Allen meets Paul Lynn meets whatever meets David Guest.
I'll leave it at that.
Okay.
Snow waters run deep, baby.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Anyway, he was the meanest.
Probably the worst event of all, the singular, not Jump the Shark, which goes back to happy days, but the singular moment of losing their mind came most probably from the vaccine event when they did this montage, this kind of a Busby Berkeley tribute to vaccines.
And he was doing that Peter Allen dance.
I'm just saying, watch him dance.
Dear God.
Like nothing I've ever seen.
It was over.
And it continued.
Kimmel was second in terms of more strident, but less mean.
Okay, so we have different vectors.
Trump.
And by the way, Trump, Trump brought it on.
Trump himself was this new candidate.
He was a mean dude himself.
Trump is no lightweight.
He's no shrinking violet himself.
He brought some nastiness to the game, which is fine as far as I'm concerned.
That happened.
Colbert goes up because they have to keep topping themselves.
And whom do they select to be the writers?
20-year-olds, 21-year-olds, young people, mean people, people born, raised, maybe not 20-year-old, but raised on the internet, raised on trolling, raised on sitting around in slippers and slides and pajamas and ordering a grub hub and watching Netflix and trolling and being nasty and hiding and just making fun of.
Look at today's roast.
Look at the Comedy Central roast that we see today.
Dear God, it's the most horrible thing anybody's ever seen.
Look at them compared to Dean Martin.
Don Rickles was a guy who was really, they say was so, I mean, he was absolutely vicious, but there was something that he had where you didn't take it seriously.
It was like kidding on the, it was like it was okay.
It was kidding on the level, sorta.
To make a long story very, very, very short, there was something that then happened which I found even more so.
This meanness, this trolling.
And then, I don't know where I left off, two, three, came the proliferation of this streaming.
You want to watch somebody who's funny?
I've got how about 10,000 versions of this on YouTube and Rumble and this and BitChute and Poop Shoot and a video.
Just name it.
Regular paywall, regular, everywhere you go.
You have more of a selection.
Who the hell is waiting for 1130 or whatever it is at night?
Who?
Late night became anachronistic.
It was a walking museum piece because it was unnecessary.
And by the end of the day, when you were overwhelmed, when you were saturated, when you were imbued, when you were just absolutely just beaten to death with everybody from Tucker Carlson to this, Dwight, to Candace Owens, to Alex Jones, I'm going to listen to who?
This Peter Allen doppelganger?
Mr. Snark?
No.
Next vector, next factor.
Sherry Redstone wants to dump this and she's got this lawsuit.
She says, I don't need this.
Plus, we don't have the money anymore.
The days of the big buddy, the days of Letterman, it's over.
You know, the show Friends, over.
Seinfeld, over.
They don't pay money like that.
It's a different world.
It doesn't pay.
It doesn't make sense.
The overhead, the writers, this, hell, just the Ed Sullivan show itself, the theater.
They're going to start buying more property around that on 54th.
Anyway, anyway.
That's that.
The best example of late night genius, which I still don't know why it ended, was Jon Stewart.
Jon Stewart was perfection.
Jon Stewart, the balance of the writing, the message, the lack of stridency, the lack of vitriol and anger.
It was like nothing anybody's ever seen.
He was just terrific.
He was great.
He was wonderful.
He was good.
It was perfect.
He gave Samantha B and Steve Carell and Colbert and everybody.
These people just became the alumni of his show.
And then he, for reasons I'll never understand, walks away from it at the height of his career before Trump.
Before Trump.
Before Trump.
You've been waiting your life for this every night.
The story of Trump.
What does he do?
He always runs a petting zoo in Jersey.
He's like, what the hell are you doing before Trump?
Jesus God, it's bizarre.
It doesn't make any sense.
He walks away and then that Trevor Noah or Trevor Howard, whoever the hell it is, that awful, awful, dark, dank, vacuous, vapid, black hole of comedy.
That's what it was.
He walked away from it.
Ladies and gentlemen, he walked away from it.
And it just was waiting to die.
The limb was necrotic.
The leg turned black.
Toes started to fall off.
And it was time to amputate.
It was a variety of vectors, a variety of factors, a variety of different issues concatenating together in one moment of singularity.
It was like nothing anybody has ever seen.
It was that critical.
So he's gone.
That vicious, bitchy little twit is gone.
He even said, rumor has it, even said to take him.
He wanted a salary cut.
He wanted, and they said, no, be gone.
It's done.
It's over.
Disco, vaudeville, dwarf tossing.
Some things just run their course.
Say goodnight to daylight.
Say goodnight to a nighttime or nighttime TV to late night, excuse me.
Say goodnight.
It's over with.
Why?
Because you're watching this.
You've got more channels, more selections.
You've got more variety.
And not only that, and this is important.
I was mentioning this before.
This notion of comedy.
Look at the roasts of things today.
Look at who's who.
Look at what people think is funny.
Watch these horrible, I don't know what you want to call it, these comedy central versions.
Look at Shane Gillis.
Now listen, Shane Gillis, I'm not trying to say, listen, I'm not going to suggest or argue about who's funny and who's not.
I'm not going to do that.
If you find somebody that's up to you, and your funny might be not for me and vice versa.
But this is a guy who's being heralded kind of as the, just watch the end of the trajectory during his ESPN recent hit.
Ooh, ooh, off the rails.
Kind of not there.
Beforehand was great.
Listen, there's a lot of good people out there.
Chappelle is great.
Probably better than ever.
I think Louis C.K. is better.
I think there are other people who are really, really great, who really knew the craft of what they did.
I mean, they're really good.
I'm not taking it away from anything from these people.
But there's a different, there's a mood where you don't have to be funny.
You just have to have an attitude.
And attitude is dangerous because attitude has no rules.
Attitude has no boundaries.
Attitude is very dangerous.
So Colbert is dead.
Late night is dead.
This leftist woke stupid comedy agenda is dead.
It's all dead.
It's all over.
Do I make myself clear?
Good.
I thought so.
Now do me a favor, my friends.
Please like this video.
Subscribe to the channel.
80-something percent of the people who watch my videos don't ever subscribe.
I don't know why.
So do what I say.
And also answer some questions I have for you at the end.
▲
Export Selection