The way to show clout on late night, it is clear, is not just to have a sitting President of the United States at your desk, which Stephen Colbert did last week, but to have a long line of stars show up and bear witness. It happened when Jimmy Fallon kicked off his “Tonight Show” gig in February and Colbert, on his way to take over for David Letterman next year, did it Thursday in his final edition of “The Colbert Report.”
In an episode that was in many ways with keeping with nine years of his shows (except for a battle with the Grim Reaper), the musical theater buff closed by taking microphone and singing “We’ll Meet Again” the old wartime song, with a hundred or more of his closest friends from a huge array of fields, a testimony to the ground he covered, the friends he made and the clout he takes with him from cable to broadcast:
These are some who we identified:
- Jon Stewart
- Randy Newman (on piano)
- Willie Nelson
- Bryan Cranston
- Doris Kearns Goodwin
- Tom Brokaw
- Mandy Patinkin
- Neil deGrasse Tyson
- Sam Waterson
- Jeff Daniels
- Cyndi Lauper
- Keith Olbermann
- Andrew Sullivan
- Katie Couric
- Ken Burns
- Ric Ocasek
- Gloria Steinem
- Charlie Rose
- Michael Stipe
- James Franco
- Cookie Monster
- Toby Keith
- Dean Kamen
- Yo Yo Ma
- Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
- Barry Manilow
- Bill DeBlasio
- David Gregory
- Jeff Tweedy
- Christiane Amanpour
- Patrick Stewart
- Andy Cohen
- Arianna Huffington
- Peter Frampton
- Stone Phillips
- Alan Alda
- George Lucas
- Cory Booker
- Bob Costas
- Henry Kissinger
- Mike Huckabee
- Tim Meadows
- Elijah Wood
- Vince Gilligan (picture in chains, writing new series and unable to get there)
- U.S. forces in Afghanistan
- Crew of show
- Bill Clinton
- J.J. Abrams
- Jake Tapper
- Matt Tiabbi
- Eliot Spitzer
- Jonathan Alter
- Eleanor Holmes Norton
- Thomas Friedman
- Paul Krugman
- Richard Clarke
- Samantha Power
- Dr. Francis Collins
- Mark Cuban
- Claire McKaskill
- John Ratzenberger
- Bo Dietl
- Pussy Riot
- Leslie Stahl
- Smaug
- Debra Wilson
- Jon Patiste
- Alexi Lalas
- Chuck Schumer
- Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. Ray Odierno
- Nate Silver
- Bradley Whitford
- Jeffrey Toobin
- Leon Wieseltier
- Trevor Potter
- Norm Ornstein
- David Hallbarg
- Kevin Spacey
- Grover Norquist
- George Saunders
- Astronaut Garrett Reisman