“CBS has just declared war on the heartland of America,” the far right radio host Rush Limbaugh told his audience. “No longer is comedy going to be a covert assault on traditional American values, on conservatism, now it’s just going to be right out in the open.”

It is not possible to know for sure if Limbaugh truly believes that CBS is seeking to destroy one of its flagship programs by declaring war on its audience, or if he has slipped inadvertently into parody himself, but he was not the only angry conservative to voice outrage at the appointment.

Ben Shapiro, an editor for the trenchantly right-wing Breitbart.com described Colbert’s act – lampooning conservatism by aping a cartoon conservative – as “vile political blackface.”

Bill O’Reilly, the Fox News host considered to be the model for Colbert’s smug on-screen persona, was able to muster some humour in his response, going as far as suggesting a minor role for himself.

But earlier this week O’Reilly blamed Colbert for a riot by basketball fans in Kentucky. His long and dangerously tenuous connection was that today’s youth suffered from a mindset of grievance and entitlement propagated by the left wing media lead by, yes, Stephen Colbert.

“Like many ideological fanatics, Colbert is misguided in the extreme. His analysis is delivered under the guise of comedy, but he's a true progressive. The guy does damage because he gives cover to powerful people who are selling Americans a big lie,” he said.

In fact O’Reilly is right, Colbert is an unapologetic liberal. What many of his conservative critics seem to fail to realise is that they are targeted by Colbert – and his friend and former colleague Jon Stewart – not just because of their politics, but because they make such wonderful reactive targets for satire.

Colbert has been baiting conservatives with this bluster since 1997, when he first created his persona for a segment on the Stewart’s The Daily Show. Not only has this left the right unamused, many did not even know it was a joke in the first place.

Academics from the University of Ohio published an article in the International Journal of Press/Politics in 2009 with findings from experiments showing “conservatives were more likely to report that Colbert only pretends to be joking and genuinely meant what he said while liberals were more likely to report that Colbert used satire and was not serious when offering political statements.”

But others always got the joke, and some took the time today to tweet Sharpiro, telling him that though conservative they had come to love Colbert simply because he was the best satirist on TV, and one not averse to challenging liberal shibboleths.

Making the move from late night cable to late night network is longer the leap it once was. With audiences fractured, programs like Letterman’s no longer draw the massive audiences of their prime in the 1990s and earlier.

Some of Colbert’s fans have lamented that by abandoning his cable show he is surrendering an innovative new format for a stale old one.

Others are just wondering what Stephen Colbert is like when he not doing his Stephen Colbert shtick.