Oh, the poor folks, hate the rich folks

And the rich folks hate the poor folks

All my folks hate all of your folks,

It’s American as apple pie

I memorized those lyrics when I was 11 or 12 years old, by watching “That Was The Week That Was,” the NBC comedy that ran from 1965 through 1967 and made Lehrer famous.

I loved the show, not only because I thought it was funny, but because it was intended for grown-ups — and I got the jokes. My parents liked it enough to buy the record and I thus began my lifelong love of political humor.

There wasn’t much of that on TV when I was a kid. The clean-cut singing Smothers Brothers teased President Lyndon Johnson, but the aw-shucks banter between them softened even their best shots.

Political comedy had a home on Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show. Johnny poked fun at the sitting president and other politicians, but that happened long after my bedtime. And even when I got to stay up later, his jabs barely stung, much less draw blood.

After Carson retired, Jay Leno followed his lead, with a night-club set of jokes, a guest who might sing or do short stand-up routine, a chat with a movie star.

David Letterman dropped the Borscht Belt/Las Vegas deportment of his predecessors. And while political jokes were on the menu, they were rarely the main course, and tended to be lightly salted, delivered with a deprecating smile.

Saturday Night Live was — and remains — the last “variety show,” with a commitment to impersonating presidents in skits that didn’t always work. Weekend Update swung hard at politics and politicians — with a middling batting average.

Late night talk shows got edgier in 1999, when Comedy Central handed over “The Daily Show” to baby boomer Jon Stewart, who transformed a kind of on-air People Magazine into a smart and snarky take on politics that, at one point, was a primary news source for many young people.

Stewart didn’t play the role of bland talk show host. His monologues presented the news without any pretense of the kind of “balance” that is used to defang the truth.

“The Daily Show” featured its quota of movie stars and sports figures, but Stewart also interviewed ambassadors and eggheads shilling brainy books. He was enchanted by a 2009 lesson about economics from Elizabeth Warren, before everybody knew her name — she was just as smitten by his intelligence and attention.

Stewart was always funny, even when he was angry — which happened more and more over the years. His punchlines about everyday injustices and global nightmares sometimes landed hard enough to raise whiny objections from his targets, which only helped the ratings.

He stepped out from behind his TV desk and into the real world when Congress dithered about paying 911 first responders for serious medical conditions. As a New Yorker he took the affront personally. You could almost see the smoke coming out of his ears when he testified before a congressional committee that was considering the allocation. That was around the time I started calling him my rabbi for delivering rousing jeremiads about America’s failure to live up to its tarnished promise.

He’s still at it today, leading a band of fresh-mouthed youngsters, as he did during his earlier tenure when he introduced several unknown actors to play news correspondents, many of whom went on success on big and small screens, including Samantha Bee, Steve Carrell, Jessica Williams and Stephen Colbert (more on him later).

All kidding aside, we are living through tough, tense, scary times.

Even if you limit your news intake, it can be hard to fall asleep. Some people unwind with a drink, some take gummies. I depend on laughter for a catharsis that allows me to break through the daily dose of fear, dread and shame, that accompanies every day Donald Trump inhabits the White House.

Specifically, I depend on Stephen Colbert’s “The Late Show.” A merciless critic of The Orange One, he delivers a mean impersonation of our physically crumbling and intellectually stumbling president. He mugs, he dances, he wears masks, he makes a fool of himself.

And sometimes he gets deadly serious, like when the CDC announced broad limits to Covid vaccine availability: He faced the camera, his erect middle fingers blurred and f-bombs bleeped, and finally shouted, “People are going to die.”

I was stricken by the news that CBS will cancel the Colbert’s Late Show. The network insisted — protesting too much? — that it was a purely a bottom-line decision: Nothing to do with the show’s content. Honest.

Admittedly, the economics of late-night talk shows are not good, but the network’s decision smelled like the recent quid pro quo between Paramount — CBS’ parent company — and The Donald. He got a $16 million settlement to avoid a lawsuit that claimed Kamala Harris’s “60 Minutes” interview was edited to make her look smarter than Donnie, a charge worthy of giggles if not guffaws. Legal experts predicted that the case was likely to fail, but it appears it was a risk the company didn’t want to take.

Oddly — tellingly — the network included a stipulation that sounds a little like an apology: the settlement money would go “not directly to him,” but to Trump’s future presidential library. (Insert your own joke here.)

Trump was, of course, pleased about Colbert getting the axe and declared “He’s not funny.”  Though how on earth would he know? Have you ever seen him laugh? Or any of his “Addams Family” relations? Though Melania does a terrific impersonation of Morticia.

Until “The Late Show” is no more, I look forward to jokes about DJT’s plans to do a Mar-a-Lago glow-up to the White House. And his fury at RFK Jr.’s threatsto America’s health.

With my apologies to Tom Lehrer:

Oh, the red states hate the blue states

And the blue states hate the red states

And the rich folks don’t see the poor folks

It’s American as apple pie..

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