After nine-plus years, “The Colbert Report” goes off the air after tonight’s show. This is a big loss for websites that have relied on the show for free content. It’s also a bummer for people who like way-harder-than-it-looks skewering of modern media.
“The Colbert Report” Was Brilliant From the First Episode. Here’s Proof.
It’s the truth! Or something like that.
Peter Kafka covered media and technology, and their intersection, at Vox. Many of his stories can be found in his Kafka on Media newsletter, and he also hosts the Recode Media podcast.
Here’s a reminder of just how smart, funny and prescient Colbert was from the jump: A clip from the show’s first episode, where he explained the concept of “Truthiness.”
Back in 2005, this was a dart aimed directly at George W. Bush and his enablers, who derided people in the “reality-based community.” But today it’s commonplace to think of Truthiness as a concept that flows through most of media. It doesn’t matter if the thing you saw on Facebook (which barely existed at the time this aired) or Twitter (which didn’t exist at all) is actually true — just that you saw it and engaged with it for a minute before you moved on to something else.
Anyway. Here’s your content!
This article originally appeared on Recode.net.
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