A couple of days ago, Stephen Colbert let loose on a series of Trump insults on the Late Show after Trump weakly insulted Face the Nation’s John Dickerson during an interview over the weekend. The results were damn near magical. However, Colbert felt the need to address it last night in light of a #FireColbert campaign and charges of homophobia.
In his opening monologue yesterday, he said:
“[I]f you saw my monologue on Monday, you know that I was a little upset at Donald Trump for insulting a friend of mine. So at the end of that monologue I had a few choice insults for the president in return.
“I don’t regret that. He, I believe, can take care of himself. I have jokes; he has the launch codes. So, it’s a fair fight.
“So while I would do it again, I would change a few words that were cruder than they needed to be. Now, I’m not going to repeat the phrase. I just want to say, for the record: life is short, and anyone who expresses their love for another person, in their own way, is, to me, an American hero. And I think we can all agree on that. I hope even the president and I can agree on that. Nothing else – but, that.”
This was, of course, in reference to concerns about the homophobic tenor of comments like “In fact, the only thing your mouth is good for is being Vladimir Putin’s c*ck holster.”
Now, we always have to be vigilant about homophobia, no matter where it comes from, and you’d better believe that there are examples of it on both sides of the political aisle and everywhere in between. And so, it’s understandable that people would take issue with Colbert using gay sex as the punchline of a joke.
However, what I found really interesting is that what seemed to be a majority of the cries of homophobia and shares of the #FireColbert hashtag online were from Trump supporters who, while “rallying behind” the LGBTQIA community, were actually more concerned that these things were said about Trump. Meanwhile, they don’t seem to care much about LGBTQIA rights at any other time. But they come out of the woodwork when you insinuate that their beloved Trump might be gay! Almost as if … they were afraid that people might “get the wrong idea” about him! Almost as if … they were afraid … of gayness …
Sounds pretty much exactly like homophobia. Then again, knowingly playing into that homophobia in order to make them angry in the first place is, in and of itself, a homophobic action.
For whatever it’s worth, I laughed when I heard the joke, and I know that plenty of LGBTQIA folks in my social media feeds were laughing, too. The reason is because the gay sex part isn’t the part that’s supposed to make you laugh. It’s the Vladimir Putin part. If someone said, solely for purposes of illustration, that all some dude’s mouth was good for was being Chris Evans’ “c*ck holster,” I mean, that just sounds like a dope-ass weekend.
But the saying goes that “politics makes strange bedfellows,” and we currently have a President who is bedfellows with a foreign dictator he’s reportedly being controlled by. And so the joke is that Trump is soooo in Putin’s corner, so damn near romantically, that he’s willing to do anything, including blow the guy. It’s that these two people have a severely inappropriate relationship. Was Colbert’s joke a crude way of putting that? Absolutely.* Homophobic? I’m not so sure.
What do you think? The TMS staff was chatting about this yesterday and wondering if there was any legitimate criticism about the homophobic element of this that didn’t come from an extremely biased source. What have you seen out there, and what do you yourselves think? Tell us in the comments below!
*I fully acknowledge that my Chris Evans joke was equally crude. Apologies in advance. I couldn’t help myself.
(via Deadline Hollywood, image: CBS/screencap)
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