Stephen Colbert Baked 'Cum' Cupcakes After Publix Censored a 'Summa Cum Laude' Cake

In response to one of the most bizarre instances of censorship in history, Stephen Colbert baked a batch of "cum cakes." So, we can safely say free speech won the day yet again. 

In short, a South Carolina mother ordered a custom graduation cake for her son with the phrase "Congrats Jacob! Summa Cum Laude class of 2018" on it from Publix, a regional supermarket. Publix found this common Latin phrase, meaning "with highest honors," to be unprintably vulgar and simply delivered the cake with "Summa --- Laude" instead. She then vented her outrage on Facebook, in a post that's no longer available, calling the incident "utterly ridiculous" and using an angry-face emoji. 

"Shame on you Publix," the Facebook post read, "for turning an innocent Latin phrase into a total embarrassment for having to explain to my son and others (including my 70 year old mother) about this joke of a cake."

Understandably, Stephen Colbert couldn't resist discussing this during his The Late Show monologue, which you can see at 1:15 in the clip above. He really summed up the situation best with the question, "Publix -- and I'm not asking this literally -- where do you get off?" Naturally, he then discussed how by its logic, the regional chain's name could be read as "pube licks." And that's unacceptable.

As a way to set the whole situation right, he did a little baking of his own and revealed what he called "cum cakes" -- pronounced like the Latin word, of course, not like... the other thing.

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James Chrisman is a News Writer at Thrillist. Send news tips to news@thrillist.com and follow him on Twitter @james_chrisman2.