On Sunday's Face the Nation, host John Dickerson reviewed the year 2016 with CBS Late Show host Stephen Colbert. The comedian admitted they planned their live election-night Showtime special but "prepared nothing...on purpose" for an obvious Trump victory, since Team Colbert thought that was highly unlikely, and "if it happens, we're going to be doing a show for a group of people who have been hauled into a Chilean soccer stadium to watch people executed. "
At least he knows his target audience are liberals. Colbert was so unhappy with the Trump win he declared on the live Showtime event that "This one is a nail-biter and a passport-grabber. It feels like we are trying to avoid the apocalypse and half the country is voting for the asteroid."
But weeks later, Colbert is back to playing a character on TV -- not the stupid, book-spurning pseudoconservative of his salad days at Comedy Central, but a harshly divisive comedian pretending to be against playing on political "teams," a man lecturing that "political divisiveness is a vice." First, he declared that the result made him realize that the nation is more than politics, it's people having relationships. Then he lamented being divisive:
STEPHEN COLBERT: Dividing into teams is great if your team wins. But if your team loses, it allows you to do two things. One is question why you lost. And, B, why did you choose to be on a team, because the team itself is an illusion.
And so that was a -- that was something that I came to me at the end of the election special that we did. We did a live Showtime special and I had nothing to say, I didn`t think, at the end of the show.
JOHN DICKERSON: At what point of the night is it when you feel like I have nothing to say? What's happened? Do you know the outcome?
COLBERT: As I knew the outcome, I knew that I would have to throw out everything I had planned, because we had four possible outcomes. One is that we knew that Mrs. Clinton would win. We would not know. It looked like Trump was going to win, but we wouldn't know until the morning. And then there was he's going to win and we know he's going to win.
And that was the one that we prepared nothing for, which -- on purpose. I said, 'Look, what's the purpose? Don`t prepare anything because everything goes out the window.' It's the least likely path it says -- say all of the number-crunchers, and I believe in numbers. And if it happens, we're going to be doing a show for a group of people who have been hauled into a Chilean soccer stadium to watch people executed. People are going to be very depressed. [Trump's election, like an execution? So much for civility.]
So anyway, at the very end of it, one of the things that occurred to me to say was that it makes me question picking sides, because if you look at this like a -- a sport, if you look at it like as a battle against your neighbor, you'll choose anything as a knife against the other side. And that itself is a -- what's the opposite of a virtue?
DICKERSON: A vice?
COLBERT: Yes, that`s right. That`s a vice, political divisiveness is a vice. But like a lot of vices, super-seductive.
DICKERSON: Sure.
COLBERT: And so you indulge in it until it bites you and then you go oh, darn -- oh, darn, the wages of sin is death. And it makes you question having indulged in the vice. And I think that political divisiveness is a vice, picking sides is a vice rather than picking ideas.
Does anyone truly believe that Colbert -- who already identified his fans as lockstep liberals -- is going to avoid "picking sides" under President Trump? This spin is bizarre, considering Colbert's career. It's like he lamented divisive comedy after he ripped George W. Bush at the White House correspondents' dinner ten years ago. No one should take him seriously when it comes to offering a homily on civil conversation.
