Stephen Colbert: Feeling Good About Being a 'White Male Christian American' Is a 'Dark Feeling'

In an extensive Rolling Stone interview published Wednesday, CBS late-night host Stephen Colbert talks at length about the guilt he feels about being a privileged white male in America, the #MeToo movement, and the “fantasy world” he says President Donald Trump lives in.

Among Stephen Colbert’s hottest takes is that it is a “dark feeling” to feel good about being “white male Christian, American, straight.”

In the interview, Colbert was asked, “You once said that The Colbert Report was a 10-year confession. Could you elaborate on that idea a little more?”

He responded with a long, meandering answer, telling Rolling Stone in part, “It’s two things: It was a confession and it was a question at the same time. It had a thesis statement about what feels right to you, as opposed to what is supported by fact. That’s the thesis statement of the entire 10 years. But the question was, why am I, Stephen Colbert — white, male, straight, Christian, American — a hegemonic figure? In my life, I don’t just mean in character.”

The 54-year-old also said, “I’m like, ‘Yeah, fuck yeah, me, me. Me, white male Christian, American, straight. Number one!’ That is a dark feeling, because it is indulging in an appetite for yourself, it’s very possessive, it’s very consumptive, it’s pornographic, and so the confession is: Yes, I have these feelings as well. But the question is: Why are those feelings indulged in America?”

Colbert also commented on the #MeToo movement. “Did you have general thoughts about, perhaps, men being worse than you imagined?” Rolling Stone‘s Brian Hiatt asked the CBS host.

“I imagine men to be pretty bad, so that’s not that shocking,” Colbert answered. “I never had a great expectation for the sexual behavior of men, but this has certainly lowered the bar even further.”

Finally, Colbert went after President Trump, calling him a “heretic against reality” who “lives in this fantasy world where only his emotions count and therefore only his reality is real.”

Last month, the late-night host called Trump a “racist, horny old burger-goblin.”