Soon after Stephen Colbert landed "The Late Show" he welcomed tycoon Donald Trump as a guest and did something shocking — he apologized.
"I said a few things about you over the years that, that are, you know, in polite company, perhaps, are unforgivable," Colbert said, in 2015.
"Accepted," said Trump, smiling.
That encounter was light years from what happened after Trump celebrated the recent CBS decision to cancel "The Late Show."
On social media, the president said Colbert's "talent was even less than his ratings."
Colbert fired back in his monologue: "Would an untalented man be able to compose the following satirical witticism? Go f*** yourself."
While Colbert retains a faithful congregation, some fans who loved his sly blend of satire and progressive Catholicism mourn his decision to preach to only half of America, said media scholar Terry Lindvall, author of "God Mocks: A History of Religious Satire from the Hebrew Prophets to Stephen Colbert," published in 2015.
"He made you laugh and think," said Lindvall, reached by telephone. "When he turned on the rage, he turned mean. He turned bitter. He acted like he was a prophet, not a jester." Sadly, Lindvall added, the Trump era turned Colbert into "a liberal fundamentalist. … He drank the Kool-Aid."
The goal, in "God Mocks," was to offer a "bumpy tour through Rome, Jerusalem and Lilliput," arriving at Comedy Central. Lindvall praised Colbert's early work on "The Colbert Report," in which he pretended to be a blow-hard conservative pundit, creating an upside-down persona who could mock secular progressives and atheists, as well as thinkers on the right. Conservative guests, especially Catholics, were often treated with respect.
That was satire, wrote Lindvall, recognizing "a moral discrepancy between what is proclaimed and what is practiced. … The biblical satirist shares in the blame and shame of his defendants.
