It’s possible this latest Stephen Colbert-CBS dustup might just be a ‘work’

One thing going under the radar with the latest Stephen Colbert-CBS dustup is Colbert telling us that “every word” of the script for his Monday night monologue calling out the network for nixing his interview with U.S. Senate candidate James Talarico was “approved by CBS’s lawyers, who for the record approve every script that goes on the air.”

First thought upon learning that: should we be looking at this as a generated controversy?

I hate to be that guy, but we’re talking about Colbert again, when for a while now, Jimmy Kimmel was the late-night darling for those of us in the anti-Trump set, for standing up to the Trumpers and the FCC when they tried to silence him over his critical comments regarding Charlie Kirk in the wake of the shooting that claimed the MAGA provocateur’s life last fall.

Where we are with this latest Colbert vs. CBS internal feud:

• the host booked Talarico, who is in a contested primary with Jasmine Crockett for the Democratic nomination to run for Senate in Texas, for an interview for the Monday show.
• the CBS lawyers said, no dice, in terms of airing the interview on the TV show, because the FCC is telling us they will enforce the “equal time” rule that has been sidelined for decades.
• Colbert ratted out the network on the air on his Monday show.
• the network issued a statement saying it had made clear to Colbert that the interview couldn’t run on his TV show, and otherwise didn’t know what he was talking about, in terms of objections.
• then Colbert came back to us on Tuesday with, yeah, but your lawyers approved what I said last night, so, anyway.

“In fact,” Colbert said, by way of offering clarification, on his Tuesday show, “between the monologue I did last night and before I did the second act talking about this issue, I had to go backstage. I got called backstage to get more notes from these lawyers, something that had never ever happened before, and they told us the language they wanted me to use to describe that equal time exception. And I used that language. So, I don’t know what this is about.”

This is something somebody behind the scenes learned from the world of professional wrestling, where a back-and-forth like this is referred to as a “work” – meaning, we’re all “working” together to make people think we’re at odds with each other, banking that the ensuing controversy will put butts in seats, and thus, dollars in all of our pockets.

How else do we explain the lawyers approving the script for Colbert to blast the network on the air on Monday, and for that matter, again on Tuesday?

The whole thing – the monologues, the corporate statements, this is a pro wrestling feud writ large.

I’ll admit here, I was up at 11:35 p.m. Monday night, turned on “Jimmy Kimmel Live,” saw that it was a repeat, and decided to retire for the night, not even checking what was going on with Colbert, but then, on Tuesday, wanting to hear what Colbert had to say about the Talarico controversy, yep, I was tuned in.

Didn’t even check Kimmel this time to see what he was up to.

I’ve been around the block enough to know how this works, and I still let them get me.

Golf clap.

Seriously, good job.

Or should I say, good “work.”