Stephen Colbert’s recent announcement that he has been terminated from hosting The Late Show on CBS has been met with confusion and anger by millions of his fans. The press announcement indicated that the cancellation, effective in May 2026, was the result solely of financial losses for the top-rated series.
But there remains a larger fear that a contributing factor was to punish Colbert’s sharp political jokes that frequently slung arrows at the Trump administration, versions one and two. Put simply, both removing Colbert and eliminating The Late Show entirely after he departs may have a more lasting impact on other comedians now on air or in the future.
Sixty-two years ago, there was a famous edgy comedian who was assaulted onstage in Los Angeles. Lenny Bruce was placed in handcuffs, thrown into a police van and arraigned at the precinct station with fingerprints and a mug shot. Bruce was charged with violating California’s obscenity law and would continue to be arrested there on the same charges that year and in 1964.
Although not convicted in these incidents, Bruce realized that the harassment would not end, so he took his act, which included bits such as “Infidelity,” “Guys are Carnal,” and “To Come Is a Preposition” to New York City. But he had no better luck there. Undercover investigators from the NYPD were waiting for him to perform at the Café Au Go Go in Greenwich Village, and he was hauled off for violating New York Penal Code 1104, which barred “obscene, indecent, immoral, and impure drama, play, exhibition, and entertainment … which would lead to the corruption of the morals of youth and others.”
After a grand jury indictment, Bruce was brought to trial and convicted. The court found his jokes “appealed to prurient interest,” were “patently offensive to the average person in the community,” and lacked “redeeming social value.” He was sentenced to four months of incarceration in a workhouse, a penalty that remained on the books even after he died of a morphine overdose before the case reached a New York appellate court.
It was not until 2003 that Gov. George Pataki issued Lenny Bruce a posthumous pardon – the first one ever in the state’s history. Pataki characterized it as “a declaration of New York’s commitment to upholding the First Amendment.”
That brings us to what Colbert’s CBS terminations may produce – a new wave of self-censorship among comedians who find it to be the most practical route to avoid a pink slip. They will not need to have a formal explanation that they have been removed because, in the eyes of some, their jokes lacked “redeeming social value.” It will be easier to tone things down to leave the klieg lights burning.
Is this the shape of things to come? Instinctively, regardless of political leanings, we all know that a world without the sharp edges of comedy is not the world we want to live in.
Stuart N. Brotman is the former president and CEO of The Museum of Television & Radio (now The Paley Center for Media). He is a Distinguished Senior Fellow at The Media Institute and is the author of The First Amendment Lives On. This article appeared in TVNewsCheck.