I expected to get choked up during the final
Colbert Report that aired last night, but perhaps in his commitment to
truthiness he knew that squeezing water from viewer’s eyes would be a cheap manipulation. Wait a minute, didn’t he model himself after uber-wind baggy and hyperbolic Bill O’Reilly? I could’ve handled the drama, man.
I’m not sure what I expected for the final sendoff. At first it seemed like a straight-forward
Report, complete with The Word and Cheating Death, but then he began singing with Randy Newman at the piano and slowly but surely all his favorite guests from the past began to fill the stage. I must say that seeing Jeff Tweedy singing next to Christiane Amanpour was delightfully outre, but overall the bit had nothing on his fantastic last-minute F-you to the flaky Daft Punk that featured Henry Kissinger getting funky and Bryan Cranston on disco roller skates. Maybe no one involved really wanted to admit that it was really over. Stephen did get a bit verklempt at the very end, and I predicted that he would. He’s just a freakin’ mensch. Remember when his mother died and he cried on the air? How can one man be so goddamn funny, so smart, and also so sensitive? Good god.
