Our Mirror is Dead: a Eulogy for Stephen Colbert [View all]

[Derek V]

(Edited from original version.)

The man, of course, will live on, taking over The Late Show from David Letterman next year. But the host of The Colbert Report no longer exists, and that is a tragedy for our country.

Jon Stewart of The Daily Show is, to be certain, a valuable national asset who, four nights a week, provides a valuable service to America. But Stewart is a gatherer and transmitter: He absorbs, in a very gifted way few others can match, the national zeitgeist, then coalesces it into a very coherent, very funny message, which is then broadcast to the nation. Jon Stewart tells us what's going on.

Not Colbert. Instead, through irony, satire and, yes, deliberate sarcasm. he showed us what we're doing as a people. For nearly a decade now, the cipher named Stephen Colbert, created by the artist named Stephen Colbert, has been our collective national mirror.

In Oliver Stone's Nixon, there's a scene late in the movie that I find myself reminded of: The Supreme Court has just ruled against him, and the House Panel has just voted Articles of Impeachment. The now-disgraced President, with a drink in his hand, gazes at the portrait of John Fitzgerald Kennedy, who bested him in electoral battle, and continues to do so in the hearts of most Americans. Speaking directy to the portrait of his handsome, beloved predecessor, Sir Anthony Hopkins, in the title role, delivers one of the most searing lines in the history of cinema:

"When they look at you," says the half-drunk President, "they see what they'd like to be. When they look at me, they see what they are."

It is precisely this kind of scathing self-reflection that The Colbert Report has been providing to this country lo these many years. TCR never once flinched from showing America to America. This service will be sorely missed.

Derek Vanderxxxxxx