Dear Stephen,

Dear Stephen Colbert,

We hope this letter finds you well — or at least moderately caffeinated and not crying in a stairwell over Donald Trump’s latest constitutional taxidermy. We’re writing as grateful viewers, deeply concerned citizens, and humble devotees of late-night resilience.

Let’s begin with the truth: you need a vacation. A real one.

You’ve held this republic together with nothing but tailored suits and monologues sharper than Antonin Scalia’s dissenting opinions. You’ve laughed when it hurt. You’ve cried on-air with the grace of a man who’s lost too much and still showed up. You’ve comforted millions while this country casually nose-dives into Gilead with a flag on the hood and a Bible in the glove box.

You’ve done everything a talk show host — and frankly, a moral compass — can be expected to do.

Which is why it’s time to let someone else take the desk for a while.

Someone who can handle chaos with chaos. Someone whose spiritual alignment is less “empathy-driven catharsis” and more “dictatorial satire dipped in cologne and screaming about bears.” Someone who used to host a show called The Colbert Report.

That’s right. We’re talking about Stephen Colbert.

No — not you.

The other one.

Now, we realize this may sound confusing. You share the same name. The same face. Even the same gift for weaponized irony. But for reasons that remain legally and metaphysically unclear, neither of you seems aware the other exists.

Still, the records are there. There was, once, a different Stephen Colbert. He hosted a nightly news show on Comedy Central under a giant animatronic eagle. He shouted into the void with the passion of a man who believed America could be saved — not with compassion, but with a firm handshake, a red tie, and a suspiciously strong jawline. He was bold. He was brash. He declared war on bears. He had a segment called The Word that routinely broke the space-time continuum. He debated himself. He ran for President — of South Carolina. He testified before Congress in character, because he could.

And then one day, he was gone.

No farewell. No retirement. No public dispute. Just silence. As if CBS quietly buried him under Studio 57 during a 2015 rebranding exercise and promised never to speak of it again. We don’t know what happened. Maybe he was a threat to advertisers. Maybe he was too powerful. Maybe he screamed one too many times about Lincoln being overrated. The point is — he vanished.

Please don't get us wrong. We adore you. You are warm. Generous. Smart. You’re the kind of man who can make Anderson Cooper cry and then pivot directly into a sea shanty with Michael Bublé. You brought The Late Show back from the brink and turned it into the last functioning lighthouse in the late-night archipelago. You have done everything right.

But the world has changed.

Project 2025 is real. Libraries are being gutted. Women’s rights are held together with post-it notes. Half the country thinks fascism is just an edgier brand of freedom. And through it all, the loudest voices on television belong to game show hosts and AI-generated Joe Rogan podcasts.

We need Stephen Colbert.

Not you. Him.

The one who got banned from Wikipedia after telling his viewers to claim the African elephant population had tripled — and they did. The one who raised over a million dollars through a Super PAC just to show America how legally insane Super PACs are. The one who made members of Congress visibly sweat through interviews they were told would be “light political comedy.” The one who coined “truthiness” and gave it to a generation that now can’t tell the difference between reality and a Tucker Carlson monologue.

He even once renamed the Gulf of Mexico “The Gulf of America” to troll British Petroleum, raise money for oil spill relief, and patriotically rebrand saltwater. It was satire in 2010 — it’s policy in 2025. The joke became reality, and not one person in this administration has admitted they got the idea from a Comedy Central rerun.

Let that Stephen Colbert guest-host The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.

One week. That’s all we ask. Give him the desk. Let him revive The Word. Let him update ThreatDown. Let him scream about wind turbines and gay penguins and the very real threat of “facts.” Let him debate himself again. Let him stare into the camera with terrifying certainty and say the stupidest thing imaginable — because underneath it all, he knew exactly what he was doing.

And while he does that? You, Stephen — our Stephen — you go rest. Go off-grid. Touch moss. Drink something brown. Sleep so long the writers have to send a search party. You deserve seven days without wondering what Elon Musk just did to the First Amendment.

We need both of you.

But we only get one at a time.

So please, make it count.

Bring him back.

Let Stephen Colbert guest-host The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.

For truth.

For truthiness.

For elephants.

Yours in patriotic confusion,
Closer to the Edge
closertotheedge.net
Investigative truth-seekers, Colbert historians, and people who absolutely still remember Tek Jansen

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