I Love the Smell of Schadenfreude in the Morning: Gun Hater Stephen Colbert’s Ratings Have Collapsed

Stephen Colbert still has a late night show, but not for much longer. The cancelled, not-so-funnyman who hates guns, gun owners and the right to armed self-defense has suffered a precipitous ratings collapse in recent months years. What caused viewers to flee? Could it be his relentless alienation of over half of America with his insufferable woke scolding posing as comedy?

The Park Place has the grim news many of us view with a certain Schadenfreude delight:

The Stephen Colbert ratings freefall has reached an undeniable breaking point. As The Late Show with Stephen Colbert approaches its already-announced cancellation, the program is now posting record-low January numbers, marking one of the steepest late-night declines in recent television history.

According to Nielsen data reported this week, Colbert’s show is averaging roughly 285,000 viewers in the crucial 25–54 demographic, putting it on track for its worst January performance ever in the category that advertisers actually care about. With just months left before the curtain closes for good, the ratings trajectory suggests viewers have been checking out long before CBS formally pulled the plug.

Stephen Colbert Ratings Hit Historic Lows in Key Demo

While total viewership erosion has been gradual over the past several years, the collapse in the 25–54 demo tells the real story. Late-night television lives or dies by that number, and Colbert’s January performance places him firmly near the bottom of the competitive pack.

For gun owners, Colbert’s pending unemployment could not be more richly deserved.  He’s a pampered coastal nag with nothing but burning contempt for the majority of Americans who believe the Second Amendment and the right of self-defense aren’t punchlines of craptastic jokes.

For instance, the monologue after an attempted assassination of President Trump.  Colbert, ever the cheap-shot opportunist, couldn’t resist climbing onto his moral high horse. Leaning into the camera with that practiced, cock-sure smirk, he addressed the nation’s gun owners directly: “If you have even the vaguest idea that you might shoot someone, sell your gun and buy a flute. Maybe your kids will come to visit then.”

The studio audience tittered, albeit nervously, right on cue. Colbert beamed, convinced he’d just dropped the mic on America’s backward flyover rubes and deplorables. To him, it was clever satire. Gun owners were just one bad mood away from mass murder. Their rifles the reason their own children avoided Thanksgiving dinner.

Nevermind that the vast majority of the 600-plus million civilian-owned firearms in America are possessed by law-abiding citizens who hunt, defend their homes, and teach their kids responsibility. Nevermind the veterans who carried rifles in Fallujah so Colbert could safely mock them from a climate-controlled soundstage. Just ignore the millions of times each year that guns thwart violent crime.  Those aren’t punch lines.  Those are real people, not those elitists insulated from crime courtesy of bodyguards and gated communities.

In Colbert’s pathetic little world, every pickup truck with a gun rack is a rolling threat to democracy, and the solution was always the same: more gun control schemes…red-flag laws ripe for abuse, scary-looking gun bans that magically exempt Hollywood bodyguards, politicians, and the politically connected, along with universal background checks that would eventually become national registries.

Rural America didn’t laugh at Colbert’s “buy a flute” brand of “humor.” Veterans didn’t either. Single moms who kept a pistol in the nightstand for the ex who wouldn’t stay gone were stonefaced. They all just stopped watching, even occasionally.

Who would have thought that condescension isn’t entertaining — let alone funny — when it’s aimed at over half the country? Colbert and his handlers apparently did, but that’s what happens when you spend your days navel-gazing in an echo chamber.

Colbert is a die-hard believer in strict gun control laws, if not an outright ban. Short of a “come to Jesus” experience, he will never retreat from attacking gun owners, mocking them, and supporting ever more gun rights restrictions.  The Late Show, once part of Americana, has turned into something unrecognizable. And people have tuned out.

Maybe Colbert can learn to code or practice upselling “supersized” French fries once his excruciating show has aired for the last time. CNN and MSNOW already have full stables of “comedians” masquerading as journalists and don’t seem to have any openings. At least for now.