You don’t have to like late-night host Stephen Colbert to be outraged by the cancellation of his CBS “Late Show,” which will go dark this week after 33 years on the air. Colbert, who took over in 2015 for the show’s original host, David Letterman, wasn’t for everyone.

Colbert was an odd choice, and a risky one. Once a correspondent on Jon Stewart’s “The Daily Show,” he landed his own Comedy Central show, “The Colbert Report,” where he played a bloviating, misinformed character, also named Stephen Colbert.

The fictional host was fashioned largely after Fox News blowhard Bill O’Reilly. He was narcissistic, bombastic and unyielding in his fact-free views. His news sense came from the gut rather than actual reporting. And from a comedy perspective, the fictional Colbert was a brilliant creation, a parody of the decade’s growing right-wing punditry and media figures who embraced “truthiness” over truth.

The real Colbert was so convincing as the antagonistic face of the “The Colbert Report,” it was often hard to tell how much space set the man apart from the character he played. He made audiences wonder about his sincerity. Did he really believe this stuff? The blurred lines reflected larger questions about the changing nature of conservative media. Did Fox News hosts and pundits really believe there was a liberal-led war on Christmas, or that gay marriage would lead to interspecies nuptials, or that Obamacare would lead to death panels? Or were their outrageous takes simply a ploy to boost ratings? (If so, the ploy worked.)

Colbert’s bombastic delivery and knack for turning the most innocuous of stories into rage bait was the perfect parody of the nation’s splintering media-verse and how it didn’t seem to matter if what folks were watching was accurate or even real. It was true as long as it reinforced their own views.

So it came as a surprise when a major network, CBS, picked him to take over “The Late Show” franchise. The real Colbert, not the character, would helm the show, and that guy behind the mask was still an unknown quantity to the viewing public. Letterman’s “Late Show” averaged 2.8 million viewers a night back then, compared with Colbert’s cable show, with a viewership of around 1.2 million. How would this unprecedented and arguably polarizing figure command a mainstream, late-night audience?

It turns out Colbert was the perfect untested fit for untested times.

His show premiered around the same time another unknown quantity was throwing his hat in the political ring: Donald Trump. The real estate businessman and former reality TV star launched his first presidential campaign within a year of Colbert taking the helm, and no one was better poised to deconstruct his unprecedented run than the comedian who spent the past decade as a faux, right-wing pundit.

For the next 12 years, Colbert’s topical, opening monologues riffed heavily off the news, and that included healthy doses of satire about Trump the candidate or President Trump. Trump was even a guest on the show in the fall of 2015 when Colbert joked, “I want to thank you not only for being here, but I want to thank you for running for president because I’m not going to say this stuff writes itself, but you certainly do deliver it on time every day.” Colbert went on to challenge him and make fun of everything from the orange hair to false claims the election was stolen. Just last week he quipped about the president’s overnight posting tirades. “When does the president the sleep?” asked Colbert, before flashing a picture of Trump dozed off at an Oval Office event. “Oh, right. I forgot. There you go,” said the comedian.

Trump shot back at Colbert often, his complaints against the “talentless” host escalating into threats. By December, the president demanded CBS take him off the air immediately and “put him to sleep.”

But the wheels were already in motion. Paramount, CBS’ parent company, had announced in July that it was canceling “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert.” The timing of the decision was suspect given that Paramount was in the process of an acquisition that would require approval from the FCC, which is run by Trump appointee Brendan Carr. CBS claimed the move to shutter the “Late Show” was “purely a financial decision.”

The network had just capitulated to another threat from Trump when they paid him$16 million to settle a lawsuit the president filed against “60 Minutes” for a Kamala Harris interview he claimed was “deceitfully edited.” Legal experts deemed the suit frivolous, and Colbert referred to the settlement as a “big fat bribe.” It wasn’t a stretch to believe Colbert was axed for political reasons, at the behest of a thin-skinned political leader.

Like it or not, Colbert was doing what comedians are supposed to do: hold a mirror up to society, politics, human nature or whatever their focus may be, and call out the absurdities within. Imagine if President Joe Biden or President Barack Obama had weaponized the FCC against Fox’s political humorist, Greg Gutfeld, whose show premiered a year after Colbert’s “Late Show.” But they did not use their powers to shut down Gutfeld, or the dozens of other right-wing media personalities who made bank railing against their administrations.

All of us should be concerned, if not outraged, by the cancellation of the “Late Show,” and the top to bottom overhaul of another CBS show, “60 Minutes” after it, too, came under the umbrella of Paramount. It should be noted that Sunday was Anderson Cooper‘s last episode on the news magazine after 20 years on the job.

Starting Friday, “The Late Show” time slot will be filled by “Comics Unleashed With Byron Allen,” a comedy talk show that reportedly will abstain from topical humor. Colbert’s chief rivals, ABC’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” and NBC’s “The Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon,” will both run reruns on Thursday.

Last week, Letterman visited Colbert’s show, where both men took to the roof of the Ed Sullivan Theater and hurled CBS property off the ledge. Then Letterman said, “In the words of the great Ed Murrow, good night and good luck, motherf—!” Great comedy has always been about resistance. Here’s to Colbert’s next move.

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