How Stephen Colbert's defiant honesty helped me navigate the madness of 2020

COVID restrictions have been enforced, relaxed, then reinforced, Trump threatened a coup in a number of new, upsetting ways, and Joe Biden had to keep winning the election not just once, but again and again. . . Add on top of this my endless — and perhaps more trivial — battle to extricate myself from my phone and laptop and you may begin to wonder: Haven't we been here before? Is there even a lesson to any of this madness?

Relentlessly spinning in this revolving year of depressing callbacks and recurring bits, I attempted to steady myself by finding someone — anyone — who seemed to have a clue as to what was going on. But rather than cling to a more natural choice, like, say, a criminal narcissist, strongman politician, or "real lawyer," I turned to the uncertain guidance of a man who seemed to have dialed in on the depressing, comedic rhythms of the year in his own way: Stephen Colbert.

At the beginning of the COVID days in March or April or so, Colbert changed the name of his show from "The Late Show" to "A Late Show," appearing from his basement noticeably just as disheveled and confused as many of us were at the time. I was a fresh viewer of the show then, but the name change was noticeable and instantly grabbed my attention. There was a simple comic honesty in the humble move that I think is hard to overestimate, especially when much of the entertainment media at that time was so curated, projecting a tone deaf, and at times nauseating sense of self-importance.

Instead of taking this route, Stephen let us into the operation of the show through the many asides to his wife and, eventually when he switched locations to an office above the Ed Sullivan Theater, small production crew about the unexpected length of a certain intro, a slip-up in his speaking, his untamed hair (which, really isn't that long by most standards other than his own), or the funniness/unfunniness of a bit. And while he did occasionally comment on his disappointment about not having an audience, he didn't seem anxious to get back in front of a camera like many of his peers. Rather, he seemed careful to balance the dramatic and comedic in what has been an unquestionably devastating year.

But he seems to have managed it extremely well in the end, empathizing with and mirroring the swinging emotions of an invisible audience.

https://www.salon.com/2020/12/28/stephen-colbert-a-late-show-2020/