While President Biden going on Jimmy Kimmel Live! may have taken up most of the headlines, CBS Late Show host Stephen Colbert welcomed Rep. Adam Schiff onto his Wednesday program to preview Thursday’s January 6 Committee hearings by lamenting that the committee had to hire “a fancy TV producer” to get people to care about the future of democracy.
Schiff highlighted the partisan nature of the whole undertaking by proclaiming that today is worse than the day with all the violence, “It’d be one thing if what started on January 6 or culminated on January 6, that violent attack had ended on the sixth. It didn't end. The effort to use the lie that resulted in that violence has continued. And if anything, our democracy is even more vulnerable today than it was on January 6.”
Another reason to believe that the whole thing is just a made-for-TV spectacle is the recent hire of former president of ABC News, James Goldston. A made-for-TV spectacle, however, is just what Colbert claims the country needs, “Now, you guys hired a fancy TV producer, a guy who used to work at ABC, to help with the broadcast. In what way is this fella helping you? And—and--, secondly, did you think you needed a fancy TV producer because the American people aren't interested in whether democracy survives?”
Schiff agreed that Goldston’s hire was needed to get people to care, “look, this is a very different era than Watergate. I wish we were back in the day when the American public would sit for hours and hours at a time and watch hearings of national consequence, and they would be presented, you know, by major networks, rather than, you know, the talking heads on Fox News. But we're in a different world now, where most people get their information from social media, where we have to be able to tell the story in an engaging way, tell it in a limited period of time.”
Speaking of short attention spans, the committee itself appears to have one as it struggles to stay in its lane.
This segment was sponsored by Panera Bread.
Here is a transcript of the June 8 show:
CBS The Late Show with Stephen Colbert
6/8/2022
11:56 PM ET
ADAM SCHIFF: We want the public to understand how close we came to losing our democracy. And most important, the fact that we are not out of the woods. It’d be one thing if what started on January 6 or culminated on January 6, that violent attack had ended on the sixth. It didn't end. The effort to use the lie that resulted in that violence has continued. And if anything, our democracy is even more vulnerable today than it was on January 6.
STEPHEN COLBERT: Now, you guys hired a fancy TV producer, a guy who used to work at ABC, to help with the broadcast. In what way is this fella helping you? And—and--, secondly, did you think you needed a fancy TV producer because the American people aren't interested in whether democracy survives?
SCHIFF: We're not commenting on the internal staffing or how we're structuring the hearings, beyond a certain degree. But, look, this is a very different era than Watergate. I wish we were back in the day when the American public would sit for hours and hours at a time and watch hearings of national consequence, and they would be presented, you know, by major networks, rather than, you know, the talking heads on Fox News. But we're in a different world now, where most people get their information from social media, where we have to be able to tell the story in an engaging way, tell it in a limited period of time.
