THE NIGHT THE MASKS FELL: WHEN COLBERT, KIMMEL, FALLON, AND MADDOW QUIETLY ENDED THE ERA OF PRETENSE — AND AMERICAN TELEVISION CHOSE TRUTH OVER COMFORT

New York City — February 2026
No red carpet.
No urgent crawl across the bottom of the screen.

Just four voices — each carrying years of earned trust — deciding, separately yet in eerie unison, that the old rules of distance and decorum had become complicity.
That February night, American late-night and cable news did not erupted.
It exhaled.

And in that single, deliberate …