My favorite TV show for a decade or so has been Stephen Colbert’s Late Show. Since CBS is dropping him and even the Late Show itself, I’m already in grieving mode. This has me thinking about popular culture vis-a-vis me.
We all get attached to aspects of popular culture. For example I have had an age-inappropriate crush on Taylor Swift since she was barely legal. When I heard she was going to marry that Kelce-interloper stud, and saw my fantasies twinkle out like Christmas tree lights in Lent, I was differently crushed.
This, though I never focused enough on her music enough to commit to memory one single song title of hers.
Contrast Beethoven. Beethoven is still a big crush of mine even though he’s dead. But I can hum to Ode To Joy and even know he didn’t write the lyrics.
Or, take the Beatles. I never had a crush on any Beatles but they were briefly, collectively, like Stephen Colbert to me. I found myself expecting them to be constant companions. They would be a big part of my life forever. Then they broke up and, like everyone else, I blamed Yoko Ono rather than CBS.
I never felt that way about Elvis. When Elvis left us all for Las Vegas I didn’t mourn. I didn’t care that he never came back. I think of Las Vegas as his fitting graveyard. What plays in Vegas can stay in Vegas, as far as I’m concerned.
Most of the rest of the music culture that has swirled around me has slipped off without clinging. I never bonded with the Rolling Stones, the Grateful Dead or the Mamas and the Papas. I clung to Jimi Hendrix and to Iron Butterfly just for my senior year in college. They were replaced in my graduate school years by Elton John and Parliament but only for a while.
Maybe classical music immunized me. Since the aforementioned Beethoven was still not totally dead to me, I didn’t attach as easily to the still truly living. It’s sort of like the plot of Carnival of Souls, if you know what I mean. I’d rather dance with the dead guy than some living creep.
Maybe that’s how ancestor worship gets its power. Worshipping dead people relieves us from the impulse to worship living people, which is good because living people are constantly dying off or relocating to Vegas, or deciding not to tour anymore and then breaking up. Or getting canceled by their network.
There will always be Beethoven, Sibelius and Johnny Carson. There will be reruns. The idols of the worshipped dead can be wheeled out and displayed, revitalized temporarily by priests and digital recordings.
Losing Stephen Colbert calls for a new Tiki to replace him. A Tiki which, animated by a priest, will ask me what my favorite sandwich is. Or it will ask, “Apples or oranges?” So I can answer, “No.” Or, “If you had just one song or piece of music to listen to for the rest of your life, what would it be?” That question will repeat itself in my head every day until the day I die. Every day I will think of a different answer. Today I’m thinking, In-A-Godda-Da-Vida, but I know that won’t last 24 hours.
Is this what post-modernism feels like? I ask subtextually.
Unlike most people, I can remember my birth clearly and distinctly, and I suspect all my future births will play out the same way. I will be sitting around bored in a dark damp space, and then I’ll obey an intense urge to struggle through a tunnel to a bright light. When I get there a smelly man will grab me by my ankles, raise me up and spank me, and ask me what song I would like to hear until I’m dead again. I will ask for Iron Butterfly, but almost immediately change my mind. Then I will wake up in a crib in a viewing room staring at a wall with an institutional analog clock, wondering where I went wrong.
I guess what I’m saying is, if I can get over losing Colbert, Trumpers can get over losing Trump. I mean, you know he’s not immortal, right?
It’s not the end of the world. Imagine him in Vegas. Await his inevitable replacement. Life will go on.
Read more of the May 6-12, 2026 issue.
Source link
