By Jeffrey Blehar
Tuesday, July 29, 2025
A week and a half ago, Stephen Colbert, the host of CBS’s
The Late Show, announced his own cancellation as well as that of the show
as a brand. Days later, in response to the media’s natural desire to make it
about the Trump administration and Paramount Global’s impending merger with
Skydance, he descended into predictable vulgarity: “Go f*** yourself,” Colbert announced to Trump on his show.
And if you thought the use of the f-bomb was a hack move — so tiresomely
pedestrian in its attempt to substitute shock value and rudeness for actual
comedy — then you’d have loved how his confrère Jon Stewart followed up a day
later on The Daily Show: with a gospel chorus singing the same line, all premised on the idea that Trump
was silencing his critics.
It wasn’t just aggressively unfunny — though it was
surely that — it also was misdirected in its criticism. As anybody paying
attention understands by now, The Late Show was canceled because it no
longer made economic sense. Year after year, it was losing an enormous amount
of money. The ratings were dropping, viewers were aging, and the entire idea of
“late night” as a genre of marquee television entertainment is becoming
outmoded in our permanently online world. (Also, Colbert isn’t funny — but the
point here is that the show’s failure was overdetermined.) Yes, Trump — forever
the troll — grabbed the spotlight by proudly announcing that he hoped he was
the reason Colbert got canceled, but that only gave all the usual suspects an
excuse to grind their standard axes. In reality, it was about the money.
And the proof of that is South Park, which just
opened its 27th season on Comedy Central. In the first episode, the show takes
a giant, steamily defamatory dump all over Donald Trump and its
own paymasters. Creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone savage the corporate bosses
at Paramount (which owns both CBS and Comedy Central) for selling out to
Trump’s demands. The episode ends with cartoon Trump revealing tiny genitalia
as he climbs into bed with Satan himself (who sadly seems to have moved on from
old flame
Saddam Hussein, despite being reunited with him back in 2006).
I wish I could say that I found the episode hilarious,
but on a level of comedic execution, it simply didn’t take me there. (Believe
me, it’s not because I shudder to see Trump or Paramount criticized. It’s just
that the jokes needed tightening.) But the market reality is what really hits
me. South Park’s creators can say or do what they want because they
make money for Paramount. They are worth the investment. Keep in mind,
Parker and Stone just signed a deal with Paramount for the rights to South
Park reportedly worth $1 billion. They have true “f*** you” money,
and that’s been the case for years. On the one hand, that makes their
backbiting a bit less courageous than it otherwise might seem, but on the other
hand, it is proof that, in Colbert’s case, censorship is not the issue at all:
Colbert got canceled because he simply wasn’t worth it.
Roy Cooper Is Running, but Is He in It to Win It?
Back in the beginning of July, when North Carolina
Senator Thom Tillis announced his retirement, I noted that (1) Tillis had
probably chosen the right moment to depart, given his unpopularity with both
his statewide Republican voter base and President Trump, and (2) the seat would
be difficult for the GOP to hold in the 2026 midterm, particularly if former
Democratic Governor Roy Cooper decided to throw his hat in the ring.
Interestingly enough, I received some pushback after
publishing that column from people familiar with North Carolina politics. They
said that Cooper, after eight years as governor and a year on the shelf, had
privately been evincing real reluctance to run. Though the logic of a Cooper
run in a key seat seemed unavoidable to me, the uniformity of the accounts from
various sources made me take notice.
Well, if there was any truth to them — and I believe
there was — then all you can say is that apparently, somebody in Democratic
politics had a long and persuasive chat with Cooper, because on Monday morning
he announced that he would
indeed be running for Tillis’s vacant seat. I expect the November 2026 race
between Cooper and Trump-endorsed RNC Chairman Michael Whatley to be the most expensive contest in the
country, a titanic slugfest that narrowly favors the Democrats.
To be fair, it’s pointless to draw conclusions nearly a
year and a half out from the election. A lot can yet happen, and I’m interested
to see how the race unfolds given Cooper’s whispered reluctance to get in.
Perhaps we are about to witness a replay of Tommy Thompson’s fate, as a popular
former governor fails to outrun his own overfamiliar political persona and
the natural partisan lean of his state in a federal race.
But the reason I think Cooper will have the edge is
mostly down to the likely composition of the 2026 midterm electorate. When I
was a younger man — all the way through 2014, really — it was a political
commonplace that Republicans had a significant structural advantage in midterm
elections (regardless of the broader political winds blowing) because their
base of educated middle-class suburbanites tended to be reliable voters. The
picture has now changed. In the Trump era we have witnessed a realignment, with
Democrats becoming the party of the educated middle class (particularly women)
while Republicans carry Trump’s working-class brand. And many of Trump’s voters
notoriously turn out only when the man himself is on the ticket, not during the
midterms when his allies are.
In a state where the parties are electorally very close,
with an unpopular incumbent vacating a seat, a popular former governor with
near-complete name recognition as a candidate, and during a midterm cycle where
the opposing party holds the presidency and is wielding its powers with
controversy, the stars have aligned perfectly for Democrats to snatch away a
Senate seat that otherwise might have been extremely difficult to pry from
Republican hands. But, that’s only in theory — we shall see how the campaign
develops over time. As the baseball cliché goes, “there’s a reason why they
play the games.”
Ichiro Suzuki, International Man of Mystery
While we’re discussing all things Cooper, it seems
fitting to note that it was a big weekend in Cooperstown, N.Y., as the Major
League Baseball Hall of Fame inducted its class of 2025. Receiving honors this year were
five true worthies, as opposed to some of the more controversial inductees of
years past. (Sorry, White Sox fans — Harold Baines was a charity pick and you
know it.) Starting pitcher CC Sabathia, closer Billy Wagner, and outfielder
Ichiro Suzuki all took their bows on Sunday, and all will add to the luster of
the Hall.
Sadly, Dick Allen and Dave Parker — also inducted — could
not be there to speak on their own behalf. Allen died five years ago of lung
cancer. (The fact that he did so while still outside the Hall frustrates
Chicago-area baseball fans nearly as much as Ron Santo’s similarly unfair
denial until after his death.) Meanwhile, the Cobra passed away only a month ago, at the age of 74,
from Parkinson’s disease. It is a shame he couldn’t be there to celebrate this
moment — but at least he knew about it before he left us.
For me in particular, it was a thrill to see the
legendary Ichiro Suzuki inducted. As the first Japanese player in the Hall of
Fame, Ichiro’s entry on a near-unanimous vote by the writers — he fell short by
one — is a historic milestone. And for once the moment actually feels earned,
as a reflection of baseball’s post–World War II footprint in the Far East and
proof — back in a time when this was very much in doubt — that the best
Japanese baseball talent could compete with Major League talent . . . and then
some.
Ichiro was one of the sports heroes of my young adulthood
— maybe the standout one for me personally — during a formative era when I went
from casual to serious baseball fan. During that stretch of time, when Peter
Angelos had alienated me from my childhood Orioles fandom and before the
Nationals came to Washington (these two matters are intimately related to one
another), I was actually an intense fan of the Seattle Mariners. (“The only
real Washington baseball team,” as I would joke.) Why? Because for a kid in the
mid-’90s without anybody to root for, they were where the excitement seemed to
be at. Griffey! Randy! Edgar! Buhner! (And A-Rod . . . sigh.) A few years later King Felix would roll into town.
But in 2001, Ichiro Suzuki’s “rookie” season was a phenomenon unlike any other I’d yet
experienced, one I followed all the way from Maryland via the limited means
then available to me: ESPN highlight reels, early internet searches, and box
scores. Of course, the reason I was so interested is that he wasn’t a rookie at
all. Here was this inscrutable, elfin man, already a hitting legend in his own
country, with a cloud of hype and skepticism trailing him.
Would his sprightly, contact-centered approach work in a
league of lumbering sluggers and 99mph fastballs? Prior to Ichiro, MLB teams
had experimented with pitchers from the Japanese major leagues, at times with
unfortunate results. (Few late ’90s baseball fans have forgotten Yankees owner
George Steinbrenner labeling pricey disappointment Hideki Irabu a “fat toad” in the New York tabloids.) But it was thought by
many back then that Asian position players simply couldn’t cut it on Major
League rosters. Ichiro had already racked up 1,278 hits in Nippon Professional
Baseball before signing with the Mariners, but many suspected that was merely a
reflection of the weakness of the competition in his country.
Ichiro put all that to rest forever in his first Major
League season, leading the American League in hits (242), batting average
(.350), and stolen bases (56) as he guided the Mariners to 116 wins, tying the
single-season record. He won both MVP and Rookie of the Year — even if the
latter was a bit of a cheat for a guy with nine seasons under his belt in
Japan. But what is truly remarkable about Ichiro is that, despite his late
start in America, he kept it up: He went on to amass a full 3,089 hits in the
Majors (despite a late-career coda as a utility player), for a professional
total of 4,367 overall. Pete Rose is still the hit king in my book, but Ichiro
— elegant, mysterious, quicksilver, fiercely competitive, an icon of baseball
style in his own way — will always be the hit king of my heart. Here’s to a
plaque well earned.
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