MR WRONG: Dead channel
Indignity Vol. 6, No. 44
HEY BUT WAIT A SEC DEP'T.
Tom Scocca
The next chapter of The Stairs appears here at Indignity tomorrow (Friday), so now is the time to get caught up on THE STAIRS, Tom Scocca's serialized work of fiction!
COLUMN DEP’T.
MR WRONG: Stephen Colbert Knew Television Is Supposed to Be There for You
I AM SAD about Stephen Colbert getting kicked off of his television show by CBS. I didn’t watch The Late Show with Stephen Colbert all the time, but that’s not how late-night television is supposed to work. It’s supposed to be like a water spigot, just, like, there all the time, so you take it for granted, except that when you want it, there it is, and then you really appreciate it. I know Television doesn’t really get it for a lotta people anymore, on account of how the Internet has conditioned people to watch stuff in clips, whenever they want, and that’s fine, but there’s really something about over-the-air teevee that I am gonna miss when it goes extinct, you know?
Back in the day, people used to watch the Johnny Carson show, but they didn’t really watch it every night all the time, they turned it on at 11:30 p.m. and then a bunch of folks fell the fuck asleep halfway through the monologue, and they left the television set on until they woke up for a second when all of a sudden a commercial got really loud, and then they shut it off and went back to sleep, but they were watching the Johnny Carson show, like, in a lucid dream way or something.
That’s how I watch Saturday Night Live, I have a whole system, because usually I’m getting ready to go to bed around midnight on a Saturday, and so I set the timer on my TV to turn off at like 1:15 a.m., so I don’t feel pressured for it to turn off at 1 a.m. when the show ends, and I know that sounds weird, but you gotta respect yourself in terms of not stressing yourself out with a deadline to be asleep by or to be done watching teevee. I watch Saturday Night Live enough to know that my favorite part, the “news” segment called “Weekend Update,” comes on after the first number by the musical guest and a gout of commercials, at around 12:15 a.m., so I like to be either resolutely on the couch with a final drink and maybe a snack, or a hundred percent face washed, teeth brushed and planted in the sack before the news comes on. I can’t count the number of times I woke up Sunday morning realizing I fell asleep before I heard even three jokes on Weekend Update. That’s because teevee in this form—predictable, dependable—is a great Comfort! It is so comforting for me, I feel so happy and safe, reclining in my bed, safe in my castle, bathed in the glow of Television, that I drift off to a beautiful and untroubled journey in Slumberland.
I can’t talk about the willfully ignorant bullshit thing I saw on the New York fucking Times website about how they should cancel Saturday Night Live instead of the Colbert show, because I didn’t even read it, and it’s fucking bullshit, and again, I didn’t read it, and fuck that troll-ass piece. What is that Opinion gonna tell me? Saturday Night Live has been on for fucking half of a century! Fifty years! Yeah, cancel that shit. Cancel the news while you’re at it, that’s what CBS is going for, I guess?
They cancelled the Colbert show because they could, they found a thing to cancel and make it look like they had the Power to shut up a person who said things that don’t please the President of the United States of America, which is sort of correct, but it’s really just Business. I get it, the fucking assholes who bought CBS and Paramount and whatever did it to get on somebody’s good side and make the deal look good, and it costs a lotta money to put on a late-night show that has writers and production quality and a band and stuff, and other shows like the Seth Meyers one are trimming costs, getting rid of their band and stuff, I understand the Realities, but sometimes you need stuff on your network that communicates Quality, just saying.
I know it doesn’t mean a lot in terms of actually hurting the news slobs who run CBS, but I am removing all my CBS news apps from my smart TV and I am never gonna watch Paramount Plus—which I get as a bonus for having a Walmart account instead of using Amazon—again until something changes. Walmart also offers Peacock, so you can get that and watch 50 fucking years of Saturday Night Live!
CBS was part of late night TV for decades. They had The Late Show, and then The Late Late Show, with Craig Ferguson, which was a real high-water mark, and this is kinda off-topic, but they even had a show called The Early Show for the breakfast crowd. It projected the Unity and consideration of quality that an esteemed broadcasting company should possess, and I know I am talking about the same network that ran Kid Nation, oof.
Anyway, I watched the Colbert show the other night and former CBS news reporter John Dickerson was on, and I realized that all the people showing up on this last lap for Stephen Colbert seem like decent people! Weird Al, and Sally Field, and Don Cheadle, and Mark Hamill, and David Byrne, and Tiffany Haddish, and Chris Stapleton, and Michael Stipe, and John Kerry, and Maya Rudolph, like, it seems to me, people who care about other people and the world and trying to do good things. Colbert did a segment to show how they sold a buncha The Late Show with Stephen Colbert stuff on eBay and made $2.5M bucks and gave it to José Andrés, who goes around the world feeding people, like Jesus would want. Fuck CBS.
The MR. WRONG COLUMN is a general-interest column appearing weekly. No refunds. Write Wrong: wrongcolumn@gmail.com.
WEATHER REVIEWS
Manchester, Connecticut, to Springfield, Massachusetts, to New York City, May 17, 2026
★★★ The sweetness of the morning light around the hotel shades came with stickiness on the air outside. Small animals had been busily getting themselves roadkilled. An old Mustang rolled along, windows down, polished paint gleaming. It already was and would keep on being a day for getting out immaculate classic cars and motorcycles and high-performance cars with assertively saturated paint jobs and even an orange dune buggy. A mourning dove flew back and forth through the rafters of the college gym over basketball games playing out on two different axes, while the early chill in the space yielded to the climbing sun outside and the effects of so much exertion at once. In downtown Springfield, a flawless dark green Volkswagen Beetle rolled by, with a color-coordinated green-and-white cooler on the roof. Sun and shadow heightened the uncanny roundness of the trimmed trees on the parking lot of the Basketball Hall of Fame, even as breeze intermittently ruffled their surface. The air conditioning in the attached mall was so harsh that steak and eggs had to wait while a sweatshirt was fetched from the rental Mazda. Out on the highway the empty roads of early morning had turned into clogged afternoon traffic, colors faded out by glare and the interior reflection of the dashboard on the glass. Advancing windshields glittered nastily on the crawl through Stamford. The green Volkswagen reappeared, mired in the jam. No setting on the air conditioner was particularly comfortable. Far off to the left came a glimpse of white sails on a dusty blue expanse of water. The shade of the suburban gas station that the map software turned up was unexpectedly pleasant after all the slow, sun-blasted miles. The Hudson looked a little ashy but still sparkling in wide-open view beside the free-moving traffic on the parkway down the side of Manhattan.
New York City, May 18, 2026
★★★★ The air was summery and sludgy for the trip down the steps to the trash cans. The roar of the air conditioner in the bedroom was worse to put up with than the rising heat was, though, and once the sun had moved off the balcony, there was an indolent sort of comfort in sitting out and soaking in the warmth while the whitening dogwood flowers swayed and birds out of sight in the foliage chittered and peeped. Deeper in the afternoon, the light was sharper and the sky a clearer blue, the humidity left behind by the climbing temperature. Out in the street the wind was peppered with falling tree parts. The thick lawn in the park was scattered with wilted and abandoned plane tree leaves. A fledgling robin, stump-tailed and disheveled, landed on a park bench, squawked, and flew laboriously off. Hillside lawns were starred with clover. When the street out the window looked damp, the sky above was still bright; against it, silhouettes of people were hanging strung lights on their roof deck.
New York City, May 19, 2026
★★ There was no more relief available but the brute force of the air conditioners. Trying to sit very still out on the balcony in the shade only made sweat creep out slowly and evenly all over. A blown-out contrail, translucent and ribbed like the belly of a shed snakeskin, seemed to be sliding across the sky but really it was the bright and distinctly contoured cumulus clouds below it that were in motion. People were out in loose dresses, woven shirts that stood off the body, or shirtdresses that combined the two.
EASY LISTENING DEP'T.
Here is the Indignity Morning Podcast archive!
TOM SCOCCA
SANDWICH RECIPES DEP'T.
WE PRESENT INSTRUCTIONS for the assembly of a sandwich selected from Conservation Recipes, compiled by The Mobilized Women's Organizations of Berkeley, California, published in 1918 and available at archive.org for the delectation of all.
MOSAIC SANDWICHES
1 small onion.
1/2 cup minced celery.
2 tblsp. minced parsley.
Russian caviar.
2 minced green peppers.
3 hard boiled eggs.
Butter.
Mayonnaise.
Parmesan cheese.
Chopped stuffed olives.
White or whole wheat bread.
Anchovy paste.
Slice the bread very thin, cut into rounds about two inches in diameter and spread lightly with butter beaten to a cream. Separate the whites and yolks of the egg and put each separately through a potato ricer. Prepare the various other ingredients, keeping them in separate piles. Spread the buttered bread lightly with mayonnaise and then border the rounds with the parsley. With the fingers put inside of this a little border of egg yolk, then one of onion, one of egg white, and in the center the caviar. If desired a figure made from cold boiled beets may be pressed into this. Vary the mode of decoration so that the various sandwiches will be different. The center may be of cheese or chopped olives, but the onion must always be used with the caviar. These sandwiches are not covered, but are placed in the refrigerator until ready to serve. They may be used as the first course at a luncheon or dinner.
If you are inspired to prepare a sandwich inspired by our continued offerings, be sure to send along a description of your experience and a photo or three to us here: indignity@indignity.net.
SELF-SERVING SELF-PROMOTION DEP'T.
