Spring cleaning with Stephen Colbert


 Image from https://www.youtube.com/@ColbertLateShow


Spring cleaning with Stephen Colbert

May 20, 2026

by Jen Davies, nerd


It's Spring Cleaning season, so I've been rearranging my basement and tidying my house. Winter jacket goes to the back of the closet, spring jackets come forward... putting winter boots away so sandals are easier to reach. My back hurts from all the bending and lifting. All those signs of spring.

And throughout, I'm sad because I don't know how I'm going to consume my US news after this week. Stephen Colbert has "pre-chewed" the US news for me since back on the Daily Show in the late 1990s I guess? And then on his own show, the Colbert Report. And then he took over the Late Show from Dave Letterman over a decade ago. At times, the news from the USA has been so hard to process directly: the violence (shootings, hatred), the wars and violence abroad, and lack of action on essential social issues (poverty, addiction). 

Having all that tough news pre-processed, and also with some humour added to take some of the sting out of it, has helped me a great deal throughout my adult life, in keeping up with our neighbours to the south. Something about the way Stephen understands these things resonates with me, probably because he seems to be such a kind, caring human. These things hurt him too, but he has the skill of looking at them and talking about them in ways that let them hurt less. Many comedians have that gift.

I'm going to miss his coaching through the hard stuff in the world.

Fortunately he isn't the kind of person to sit on the couch for very long, so we'll see him doing creative things again (like a LOTR movie). But likely it won't be a daily broadcast. 

I wish you all the best, Stephen! Thanks for being a filter for all those years.


#stephencolbert


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Dying isn't the hardest thing: Hunting for Ben Solo’s road to redemption in Adam Driver’s filmography and Steven Soderbergh’s narratives

Image
     Photo from https://screenrant.com/adam-driver-hunt-for-ben-solo-star-wars-movie-still-happen-deadpool/   Dying isn't the hardest thing: Hunting for Ben Solo’s road to redemption in Adam Driver’s filmography and Steven Soderbergh’s narratives by Jen Davies, nerd Oct 27, 2025 I'm a devoted Star Wars movies fan IRL, and I have been since my dad started showing me taped-from-TV versions of the original movies, maybe when I was a bit young (Ep6 was only a few years old when I was 5 or 6). Coincidentally I watched Ep7-8-9 together for the first time this past August, and raged as I did in 2019 at the sheer waste of the amazing villain Kylo Ren when he is turned into a plot device at the end - and wept again at the joy of the 4 minutes of Ben Solo that we got, the most alive plot device I've ever seen. He was brought to life only through body language and a single word of dialogue, and then he was ended without any opportunity to redeem his rediscovered self (more wast...
Read more

Role-modelling through entertainment to save lives: Why Superman (2025) felt so good, and why making films like The Hunt for Ben Solo matters

Image
Art by altocello for https://sites.google.com/view/thehuntforbensolo Role-modelling through entertainment to save lives: Why Superman (2025) felt so good, and why making films like The Hunt for Ben Solo matters by Jen Davies, nerd Nov 26, 2025 Trigger warning: Suicide and mental health concerns. Spoiler alert: Plot points of the Superman (2025) film, and possibly The Man of Steel / Snyderverse. Star Wars sequels plot points. Note: I will likely use terms and fail to define them because I’m integrating a lot of ideas here from diverse contexts, for example, emotional dysregulation (which refers to being a state of unmanaged high emotion) - not something we usually talk about in literary/film analysis. At my home we are reaching the end of Movember, and I’m so glad because my spouse’s moustache is out of control. Every year for at least the last 7+ years, he has shaved his face at Halloween and proceeded to fundraise on behalf of the campaign by growing a thing on his face...
Read more

What there is to appreciate about Tron: Ares, and a nod to Harlan Ellison's I, Robot Screenplay

Image
  What there is to appreciate about Tron: Ares , and a nod to Harlan Ellison's I, Robot Screenplay by Jen Davies, nerd Oct 30, 2025 Note: Full of spoilers. Folks are not satisfied with Tron: Ares . I went into it with my brain shut off and enjoyed it, however I understand all the criticisms. Let me point out a few things you might enjoy, if you're on the fence about seeing it. If you haven't read the script for I, Robot by Harlan Ellison, never made as a film but available in novel format, please read it. It is unrelated to any movie that has been made. It's fantastic, based on the many short stories about Robbie the Robot by Isaac Asimov. It's a complex story. The simplified thread that ties the stories together, as Ellison told it, is a human woman (Susan Calvin) who receives help from robots throughout her life which all turn out to be Robbie. As I recall, her first encounter with Robbie is in a factory that her father manages. Susan is a child and she stumbles...
Read more