Stephen Colbert’s Smile

A tribute that’s mostly about me

Sometime in 2010, my wife got us tickets to a taping of The Colbert Report. She wore a Che Colbert t-shirt and carried a canvas shopping bag with his face on it and before the show he threw out wriststrong bracelets, which one of our friends a few seats down from us caught, and he took audience questions, for one of which he called on me. We adored him and I assumed that no one would ever tell him no and that for anyone he ever requested to guest, he could have had on his show. So I asked, “Has anyone ever declined being a guest?”

Without pause he said, “Salinger. And it’s too bad. I would have made that guy famous.”

JD Salinger had recently died, so it was a timely quip, and everyone laughed and he went on to record a show shot out of sequence from how it played because of the time constraints of that night’s guests.

The other thing of note that I remember, is that he had on athletes from the women’s speed skating team but failed to shake their hands for a sketch before they left, so the camera guy zoomed in as he shook hands with the emptiness and when the episode aired, it was seamless, you would have never known if you hadn’t been there when it was recorded that he was only play-pretend shaking hands.

Quick wit and good editing = good show.

And he went on to host the Late Show and we watched less regularly, but never missed a George Saunders interview; we watched monologues and celebrity interviews during lunch breaks, while making dinner, when jogging on the treadmill, and… and… now it’s done.

Have you ever fallen while jogging on a treadmill? It hurts. It hurts a lot and is compounded by the shocked responses of all the other exercisers who rush to help as you brush yourself off and stumble away saying, “it’s okay, I’m okay, we’re okay, don’t worry,” even though the only reason you don’t sit to rest is because you worry you won’t be able to get up if you do. Lately, my life has felt like falling on a treadmill. I have had every intention of doing good and then unexpectedly slipped and crashed and ended up bruised and embarrassed and wondering how and why and when will I quit aching?

Anyhow, I look forward to Stephen Colbert’s Lord of the Rings movie, I hope it’s good, and I concur with Letterman’s sentiment that, “they can take your show but they can’t take your voice,” and I thumbs-up Springsteen’s assessment that, “these are small-minded people who got no idea what the freedoms of this beautiful country are supposed to be about,” and I echo everyone paying tribute by quoting Sean Astin / JRR Tolkien:

“It’s like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness, and danger, they were. And sometimes you didn’t want to know the end, because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it’s only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines, it’ll shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you. That meant something. Even if you were too small to understand why. But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand. I know now. Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back only they didn’t. They kept going. Because they were holding on to something. (What are we holding on to, Sam?) That there’s some good in this world, Mr. Frodo…and it’s worth fighting for.”

How fitting then that when Colbert addressed his cancellation head on in his finale in a bit about a green black hole he said, “Guys, I think I get it now. It looks like it’s the end, and I wish it wasn’t, but that’s not for me to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that’s given us.”

It’s an attitude I used to have and one I hope I retain but it’s so ridiculously hard, especially when you don’t have a writers’ room or rich friends or the adoration of millions, but you know that none of that matters, that ultimately, all you need is the ability to stand back up after you fall and to be able to smile.

Mr. Stephen Colbert, thanks for getting back up and thanks for all the smiles.