When Stephen Colbert was trying to walk back the homophobic joke he made about President Donald Trump having a sexual relationship with Vladimir Putin, he ruefully suggested that on further consideration he might have used less crude language. Then he quipped that Trump has the launch codes and Colbert has jokes, so it is a fair fight. Trump is not going to nuke Colbert literally, but the talentless would-be comedian is going to find out that the president has another weapon in his arsenal, the FCC. The bureaucracy that handles radio and television is going to investigate whether Colbert employed obscenity on an over the air broadcast show, which is still, unlike cable or live stream TV, illegal.
Colbert is getting support from an unlikely source in the form of Mike Huckabee, former governor of Arkansas, former presidential candidate, and a minister and social conservative.
Huckabee, just like everyone else these days, took to Twitter to express his views. “Calls for FCC to punish Colbert are misguided-don't let gov't decide when speech is ok-let YOU decide by not viewing/buying. #1stAmendment.”
The FCC may ultimately disagree with Huckabee, but he illustrates an interesting difference between how the right and the left deal with offensive content. When someone like Rush Limbaugh says something outrageous on the radio, say when he called Sandra Fluke a prostitute, the left-wing attack machine springs into action and calls for advertisers to withdraw and for the offending broadcaster to be fired.
When someone like Stephen Colbert is offensive, the right, like Huckabee, take the old and, in some quarters, obsolete notion of opposing what someone says but defending to the death their right to say it. Huckabee is not the only righty to come to Colbert’s defense, but he is one of the most high-profile figures.
Huckabee also suggested that if there is a solution to Colbert’s misbehavior, not to mention his tendency to be unfunny, it resides in the marketplace.
If enough people do not watch “The Late Show” and refuse to buy products of companies that advertise on the program. To be sure, organized boycotts have a noxious odor on their own, but on the other hand, Colbert is only entertaining to a niche audience, enough for the Comedy Channel but perhaps not enough for a program like “The Late Show.”
In other words, one should refuse to watch Stephen Colbert not because he is occasionally obscene and offensive, but rather because he is not very entertaining or funny. Colbert should be replaced by someone who can keep an audience amused without causing them to throw up. Now if only Craig Ferguson can be enticed back to late night.
