Nothing like a little defiance

Letterman, Colbert dump - literally - on CBS

King Charles III didn’t specifically mention this particular trait in his recent chat with Congress - might have been an oversight or simply assumed everybody knew this already. But as a country, as a people, you’d probably have to say somewhere in our American DNA are the seeds of defiance.

As documentarian Ken Burns went to some great, often fascinating lengths to point out in his recent American Revolution series, the odds weren’t great for us to take on Great Britain. Had George Washington been the manager of a major-league baseball team, he wouldn’t have made it past the All-Star break.

David Letterman was all too delighted to bring Stephen Colbert to the scene of the crime.

But still, we won. Why? Defiance. We didn’t have to win. We just had to not lose - and stay defiant. Eventually, it was too much trouble for Great Britain and they gave up.

Growing up in Indiana, once suggesting in his brief life as a weatherman to prepare his audience for hail “the size of canned hams,” David Letterman carried defiance with him all the way to California, then to New York City and a transformative TV show that, if it didn’t exactly flip the bird to NBC, then CBS, it spoke to an audience who savored those nightly shows of defiance.

Nobody delighted more in upsetting the social order, the “right way” to do things for a laugh, a thrill, just because he could. Trying to visit his new bosses at General Electric and getting tossed from the building. Taking over the drive-up window at a Taco Bell or sending Rupert Gee into a McDonald’s with super-annoying Dave-instructions in his ear or launching Biff Henderson out to the streets of New York with a bullhorn. Poking, jolting, often unsettling his guests like his famous “duels” with Charles Grodin or “National Treasure” Cher, Letterman conscientiously broke whatever rules we’d assumed there were for Late Night TV and we loved every minute of it. And so did he.

So it was wonderfully appropriate and coming full circle for Letterman to join the soon-to-be-ousted Stephen Colbert at The Ed Sullivan Theater Thursday night and bring him up to the roof, where Letterman had thrown everything from watermelons to light bulbs to TV sets and enact a little bit of revenge on the network for their dismissal of Colbert from the show he inherited from Letterman some years ago.

After a stunning, rousing ovation from an overflow audience in the theater he got the network to renovate many years ago, Letterman happily chatted with Colbert for a bit, then, like a confused senior citizen, got up from his seat on the blue couch, turned his back to the audience, walked over the edge of one of the couches and asked Colbert about whose property these chairs were?

Before you could say Paul Shaffer, there were a few black-shirted muscle men who appeared on the stage, Letterman handing them a few dollars and they carried off the couches and Colbert’s own chair. To the shock and delight of the Sullivan Theater audience, Letterman and Colbert each then took a seat in the audience as they went to a commercial.

They weren’t done. When they returned, Letterman and Colbert went backstage and next, we saw them up on the roof. We knew what would happen next. Colbert happened to casually mention that he’d been told the previous tenant had been throwing things off the roof and he was asked not to follow suit. Hahaha.

Down on the sidewalk was a giant CBS logo and the muscle men launched the couches. The second of which scored a direct hit, fracturing the CBS eye, sending dozens of small colored plastic balls all over the street. Then came Colbert’s host chair, several watermelons, even a wedding cake as the two Late Show hosts laughed and luxuriated in that glorious moment of network defiance.

The 79-year-old, full gray-bearded, spindly Letterman never looked happier, nor did Colbert, who clearly does not want to end his show, and seems to feel as though the corporation, maybe even the government - he’s been a ferocious critic - is behind all this.

That was perhaps why Letterman shook his hand and said, somberly “Thank you for everything you’ve done for our country.”

Colbert responded “Feelings mutual, Dave. Anything you’d like to say to the audience before we go.”

Letterman said, “Well, not necessarily to the audience but to the folks at CBS, in the words of the great Ed Murrow, ‘Good night and good luck, mother…..”

Just one last bit of Letterman defiance, as tasty as the frosting on that wedding cake that just went over the side.

Author John Nogowski, whose haircut today made him look a lot less Washingtonian, has written several books, including the forthcoming “Neil Young: A Descriptive, Critical Discography and Filmography, 1968-2025,” three editions of a similar previous book on Bob Dylan, two books on baseball “Diamond Duels” and “Last Time Out,” a book on his teaching experience with Mark Twain’s “Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn” and other work. He’s currently at work on a book on Bruce Springsteen and regularly writes a free Substack, now in its third year. He regularly contributes to the Hartford Courant and resides in Thomasville, Georgia. His books are all available on Amazon.