Publisher’s Positions
Goodbye And Good Riddance
The outcry by the Left at the cancellation of Stephen Colbert’s late-night show is almost as amusing as it is stupid. Colbert reportedly has a huge staff of writers, yet is about as funny as an attack of poison ivy in a tender spot. The Left has completely ignored the fact CBS was losing an estimated $40 million annually airing the Colbert show. Naturally, money means nothing to the Left as they believe they can simply take somebody else’s earnings to pay for whatever they like. For the Left, it was well worth keeping Colbert on the air as group therapy. It’s hard to make money when attacking half the country. Nor was Colbert the number one show in his time slot; that prize goes to Greg Gutfeld’s show on the FOX network. One big difference is that Gutfeld really is funny and the show is entertaining.
Unfortunately for him, Stephen Colbert is neither interesting nor entertaining and if possible, his guests were usually even more boring than he is. CBS probably should have labeled Colbert’s late-night gab fest as a political show rather than trying to pass it off as entertainment or comedy. Colbert’s show was biased in every way. Colbert has hosted no fewer than 176 leftist guests and only one Republican since 2022. That one Republican guest was Liz Cheney, and it is perfectly obvious as to why she was invited on the Colbert show.
During the first six months of 2025, Colbert has hosted 43 leftist guests and not a single Republican or conservative. Among those were 14 leftist politicians and 29 left-wing journalists. Guests like socialist candidate Zohran Mamdani and New York City Comptroller Brad Lander failed to wow anybody but other leftists. Chuck Schumer, Bernie Sanders, Cory Booker and Elizabeth Warren were among the usual suspects of the guests on Colbert’s show.
The once almighty “big three” networks of television – – – CBS, NBC and ABC – – – have seen their heyday come and go. Television, as we once knew it, has long since passed. With so much of the country streaming, shows like Colbert’s and the idiocracy of “The View” have to appeal to someone in order to generate revenue and remain on the air. Just why anyone interested in political or social commentary would tune into “The View” to hear the political opinions of Whoopi Goldberg, Joyless Brayhar, and Sunny Whatever-Her-Name-Is boggles the mind. One can make the argument that they do have some of the most brilliant minds on the Left’s political spectrum. The question is, why the shows are not marketed as political opinion shows rather than as comedy or entertainment? Perhaps more people would watch those shows, but my guess is probably not.
There have been some wildly successful late-night shows like those of Johnny Carson and Jay Leno, who made fun of both political parties and all candidates. Neither comedian (and unlike Colbert, they were actually comedians) was one-sided, and they each boasted an audience of tens of millions who wished to be entertained, not indoctrinated.
Vice Mayor Should Preside Over City Council Meetings
City Councilwoman Amelia Parker doesn’t like the idea of the mayor serving as the presiding officer of the city council. The Focus agrees with Councilwoman Parker. The Knoxville City Council, for decades, has demonstrated a propensity to be servile to the whims of the mayor. The city council, at least theoretically, is part of the legislative branch of the government, while the mayor heads the executive branch of the government. The branches are supposed to be equal and separate. The president of the United States is not the presiding officer of the U.S. House of Representatives. As everybody knows, the House chooses its own speaker. The governor doesn’t preside over either the House or the Senate in Tennessee. The vice president does serve as the presiding officer of the U.S. Senate, although everything is run through the majority leader with input from the minority leader. When Jim McIntyre was superintendent of our schools, he planted himself right in the middle of the members of the board of education, which elects its own chair. Frankly, the superintendent and school personnel should be sitting apart from the board, which is the legislative body for the school system. County Mayor Glenn Jacobs doesn’t preside over the county commission, which also elects its own chair.
Knoxvillians should be concerned about the city council actually functioning as a legislative body, not a rubber stamp for the mayor. The people of Knoxville would do well to watch a council meeting and observe it. Hardly any member of the council ever has any proposal of their own, and almost all of them readily give their stamp of approval to whatever abomination is laid before them by the mayor. That isn’t unique to Indya Kincannon. Kincannon’s only public experience was serving on the Knox County Board of Education, which she chaired. Current city council member Lynne Fugate served on the board, too, and 99% of the time, they were content to cast their votes to do whatever Jim McIntyre wanted done.
The City of Knoxville has a spending problem. It spends everything it can get and then raises taxes every two years to spend even more while doing less and less for quality of life issues. Whenever you hear one of the council people, and there are a slew of people running for city council right now, talk about affordable housing, ask that person if he or she is for raising taxes. What they mean when they talk about affordable housing is building subsidized housing, subsidized by the taxpayers. Raising property taxes (and Kincannon and the city council raised property taxes a whopping 40% the last time) raises rents and mortgages for working people, making it LESS affordable for them. NOTHING from the government is free. It might be “free” for some, but make no mistake – someone has paid for it.
Currently, Kincannon is asking the people of Knoxville to raise the sales tax to have more money to spend. A few candidates, like Karyn Adams, are weaseling and not giving a direct answer to whether or not they favor the sales tax increase. Believe it or not, councilmen/women are elected to represent the people of their district, not the mayor or the executive branch of the government.
The mayor serving as the presiding officer of the city council blurs the line between the separation of the two coequal branches of the government, and the result has been the executive branch dominating the legislative branch of our city government. It hasn’t worked well for city residents, and the city model has been less responsive to the people. Electing a majority of the council by district rather than the choices of the district being overturned by voters citywide was a step forward for city democracy. Knoxville has a vice mayor, elected by the city council from one of their own, who apparently has no real function except to preside in the absence of the mayor. Let the vice mayor become the presiding officer and make it a meaningful role, not simply an empty title to boost the ego of a single council member.
Amelia Parker is right about wanting to see the mayor come to the podium instead of presiding over the city council. It doesn’t work in the interests of the voters and defiles our democracy.
