(LifeSiteNews) — Prominent television figure Jay Leno is speaking out about the cancellation of left-wing talk show host Stephen Colbert, identifying the shift of late-night TV to partisan politics as the heart of the problem.
Colbert, a popular Comedy Central personality, was chosen to take over The Late Show from original host David Letterman in 2015. But CBS announced this month it would be ending the show entirely, calling it a “purely a financial decision against a challenging backdrop in late night. It is not related in any way to the show’s performance, content or other matters happening at [parent company] Paramount.”
The New York Times reports that the show “cost more than $100 million a year to produce” while “racking up losses of tens of millions of dollars a year, and the gap was growing fast.” Yet many liberals and Democrats insisted Colbert was “silenced” for challenging President Donald Trump (with whom Paramount recently settled a costly defamation suit). That theory, however, soon took a hit when Paramount’s recently-renewed animated show South Park used its season premiere to air a crude, vulgar, hyperbolic mockery of the president.
Colbert, a self-identified Catholic, strongly supports homosexual “marriage” and abortion in violation of Catholic teaching, promoted a Netflix series that sexualized children, and has mocked Jesus. LGBT activist priest James Martin, SJ, was at one point the “official chaplain” of Colbert’s show.
The 75-year-old Leno, who succeeded TV legend Johnny Carson as host of The Tonight Show in 1992 and retired in 2014, offered his thoughts on the situation during a recent interview with David Trulio, president and CEO of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation, Fox News reports.
“I like to think that people come to a comedy show to kind of get away from the things, you know, the pressures of life, whatever it might be,” he said. “And I love political humor, don’t get me wrong, but it’s just what happens when people wind up cozying too much to one side or the other.”
“I don’t think anybody wants to hear a lecture,” the comedian noted, adding that he didn’t understand “why you would alienate one particular group.”
However, Leno, who has funded pro-abortion groups and also supports homosexual “marriage,” has himself faced backlash from Catholics for mocking the Catholic faith, including blaspheming the Holy Eucharist.
Colbert’s fall appears to be part of a broader rejection of anything perceived as overly fixated on “wokeness.” Following the 2024 election, polling by the pro-Democrat firm Blueprint found that the statement “Kamala Harris is focused more on cultural issues like transgender issues rather than helping the middle class” was the third-biggest reason for why overall voters chose not to vote for her, and the number one reason why swing voters rejected her and voted for Trump instead.
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