“I’m just so surprised that this giant, global corporation would not stand up to these bullies,” said late-night television host Stephen Colbert last month in response to the FCC threatening The View with a never-enforced “Equal Time” rule while promising his show could be next. CBS announced last summer that The Late Show with Stephen Colbert would be canceled on May 21, 2026. Ever since, the comedian has been sparring with the FCC and his network for months as new owner, David Ellison, transforms CBS, in a move many argue is to curry favor with the Trump White House. Colbert has managed to use the show’s downfall to create momentum for himself, his staff, as well as continued discussion around the First Amendment. Over the weekend, Colbert won the Walter Bernstein Award at the WGA East awards last night. The Bernstein statue, named after the blacklisted writer, is given for “bravery” in the industry for which Bernstein refused to name names during the US Government’s orchestrated attack against Hollywood in the early postwar years. “How many of us could say that today,” asked presenter writer Robert Smigel (SNL, Late Night with Conan O’Brien), “other than Pam Bondi?” The audience seemed cautious to laugh at the comic’s dig at the Attorney General’s continued dancing around details in the Epstein files. “It’s a thinker,” quipped Smigel, who lauded Colbert for speaking truth to power with class and conviction.

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The House Un-American Activities Committee (pronounced HUAC), was founded in 1938 by Representative Martin Dies (D-TX) to investigate radical subversion in the United States but honed in an anti-Communism following the war. The HUAC investigation is not to be confused with McCarthyism, which followed years later under the failed leadership of Joseph McCarthy (R-WI). As a blacklisted writer, Bernstein worked under fake names for over a decade before resuming his craft with the deserved credit in films such as the Cold War thriller Fail-Safe and World War II epic The Train (both 1964) and The Front (1976). A group made up of primarily writers were subpoenaed for a number of years following the infamous 1947 hearings that landed ten screenwriters — known as the Hollywood Ten — in jail for refusing to produce names of fellow left-wing colleagues. In his acceptance speech, Colbert argued that “while to be associated with Mr. Bernstein in any way is a great honor, I want to be clear that I do not deserve the implied parallel here.” Colbert noted his surprise to learn that the Hollywood Blacklist was not “a law or a regulation or an executive order” but instead “a voluntary industry-wide agreement to deny work to left-leaning artists out of fear that certain members of the government might publicly attack the parent corporation of these artists or the union that they belong to.” The continued threats from the US government led to loss of work following the infamous 1947 Waldorf Statement, where studio heads made policy of not hiring writers who were ever associated with left-wing causes. “It was that threat, only the threat, of trouble that ended so many careers,” lamented Colbert.

The late-night host refused to draw parallels to the 1950s, saying, “This is not the Red Scare. No one in late night is fomenting a revolution. As we know, the revolution will not be televised. It was going to be televised, but then Paramount bought it.” CBS parent company, Paramount Skydance, and its CEO, David Ellison, have continued grabbing headlines as he transforms the network after hiring prominent Substacker Bari Weiss as Editor-in-Chief. Ellison most recently won the hostile bidding war for Warner Bros. Discover, but has vowed to keep CNN’s editorial independent.

Colbert spoke fondly of his writers, the love of being in the writer’s room, and the difficulty of hearing the chuckles from down the hall and not being able to join them as much as he’d like to after his job moved in front of the camera. In an emotional final statement, Colbert said of his writing team, “These people, who despite whatever fresh hell, whatever it is, that the news washes in, make that beautiful sound happen every day.” Colbert began his comedy career in the writer’s room, which is where his heart remains. One can hardly blame him. After all, amidst our increasingly polarized political climate, there’s nothing better than the sound of genuine laughter.