Vinson Cunningham
A critic covering television

Stephen Colbert had a pretty decent amount of time to plan the final broadcast of “The Late Show” last night. He got the news back in July, then shared it in turn with his audience, his face glistening with a still fresh coat of shock, betrayal, and wounded anger. He’d overplayed his hand with the biggies at CBS, calling them out for capitulating to Donald Trump, right in the middle of the network’s attempt to finalize a deal (now fatefully inked) with David Ellison’s Skydance Media—and he ended up with a cancelled show. I don’t think those ten months to plan helped him so much, though.

Here, at the end of the line—not just for his eleven-year tenure but for a long-lasting pillar of late-night network TV—Colbert seemed like he’d been asked to put a pretty face on a hastily arranged funeral. Lots of friends showed up, people like Ryan Reynolds and Bryan Cranston and Paul Rudd and the very funny Tim Meadows, all jokily vying to be the show’s official final guest. The other extant besuited desk dudes—Jon Stewart, Jimmy Kimmel, Jimmy Fallon, Seth Meyers, and John Oliver, the waning brotherhood for whom Colbert’s cancellation is not unlike a death in a very small, once great family—made a surrealist cameo about a greenish hole, some tear in the fabric of reality, that had opened up backstage at the Ed Sullivan Theatre, where the show has been filmed for many years.

Paul McCartney was there, telling stories about his old neighborhood and hawking an upcoming record. Colbert asked His Paulness if he’d ever met the Pope. Nope. “Oh, I have,” Colbert said, pretending to gloat. It was an awkward time, perhaps a fitting anticlimax for the beginning of the end of the late-night era. Colbert’s decision to make the show an only slightly more self-indulgent version of his usual fare felt like an acknowledgment that no spectacle he manufactured could hope to rival the spectacle of his firing, which revealed just how totally and readily the corporate media had bequeathed its dignity to Trump. Private greed and public decline: what nice twins!

Toward the end of the show, Colbert sang background for McCartney. Jon Batiste was there, too. They warbled out an effortfully energetic version of “Hello, Goodbye.” Celebrity—even the brightest, shiniest, and implicitly liberal variety—keeps losing its battles with the venal political powers that insist on giving us the blues. The song felt like one that might be performed on the deck of a quickly sinking ship.

For more: Read Colbert on one of his favorite New Yorker pieces ever.

“I’m not associated with him—he’s one of my very, very good friends,” Dana White, the U.F.C. president, says about Donald Trump, in a new interview with David Remnick. White also discusses his relationship with the podcaster Joe Rogan and his “awesome” night at the White House Correspondents’ dinner. Read or listen to the interview »

• How good is the U.S. World Cup squad, really? After a strong showing four years ago, things seemed to fall apart for the men’s national team. Now the Yanks, led by the international star Christian Pulisic, have to find their footing before playing co-host this summer.
• Tulsi Gabbard, the director of National Intelligence, has submitted a letter of resignation to President Trump. Last year, Kelefa Sanneh wrote about the former Democrat’s “unusually circuitous” career.
• Why is it so hard to be ordinary? Joshua Rothman’s latest column examines why society is “shaped by the relentless pursuit of excellence in every domain.”
• “I Love Boosters,” the new film by Boots Riley, is “an exuberantly inventive but overstretched comedy about the redistribution of luxury goods,” Richard Brody writes.
• The most-clicked story in yesterday’s newsletter was about a family’s desperate search for a young woman after the April 8th Israeli attack on Lebanon.

• A book: “The Family Man,” by James Lasdun, is an absorbing and vertiginous chronicle of the trial of Alex Murdaugh, a wealthy South Carolina man who was accused of murdering his wife and his son.
• A song: “Rusty Intro,” on Drake’s new album “Habibti,” is a tantalizing and artfully scrambled snippet driven by what sounds like an acoustic guitar.
• A movie: Curry Barker’s horror film “Obsession” makes dating seem even scarier than it already is in real life.

• Today’s Crossword Puzzle: Music genre for the Brass Action and Skankin’ Pickle—three letters.
• Shuffalo: Can you make a longer word with each new letter?
• Laugh Lines: Test your knowledge of classic New Yorker cartoons.

See more cartoons »

P.S. “To retrieve the memories and sensations of the past, Proust relied mainly on the taste of crumbly cakes moistened with lime-blossom tea. The rest of humanity relies on songs.” Revisit David Remnick’s Profile of Paul McCartney, who was the final guest on Colbert’s last show. ☕️

Jessie Li contributed to today’s edition. When you make a purchase using a link on this page, we may receive a commission. Thank you for supporting The New Yorker.