On Monday night, “The Late Show’s” Stephen Colbert addressed a serious question on the minds of many of his viewers: What was he going to say about CBS boss Les Moonves after Ronan Farrow’s latest exposé in the New Yorker revealed the network head sexually assaulted women and stifled their careers?
With his usual cool sense of humor, he joked about the situation. Then, he eloquently spoke out against his boss.
“Accountability is meaningless, unless it’s for everybody,” he said.
Colbert was candid about the man behind his show’s curtain. Moonves hired Colbert to take on the unenviable task of following David Letterman’s tenure. And as Colbert revealed in his monologue, Moonves kept him employed when ratings were down.
But in a business where loyalty is almost as prized as talent, Colbert said he insisted in talking about what few other CBS employees could. It was a risk to call out the man upstairs so publicly while he’s still running the show, and it sadly feels too rare.
This kind of public level of support for survivors and women should be the norm, not the exception. Instead, we’re more likely to hear about men returning to work, like Moonves, Chris Hardwick and Leonard Lopate, than whether they’re going to be charged with anything or even lose managerial privileges over employees they took advantage of. Media mogul Harvey Weinstein is proving to be the exception of how these cases are handled, not the rule.
Colbert’s monologue was met with applause and laughter at his self-effacing jokes, but the sincerity of his message was unmistakable.
If the institutions that once ran on misogyny won’t correct themselves, then it’s up to individuals — each one of us — to decide how we’ll work with or avoid those who have been accused of sexual harassment or assault.
We’ll have to decide if buying into these companies is worth the price of setting things back to the old status quo.
