NY Times Mag: How Many Stephen Colberts Are There?
by Charles McGrath, to be published in print in full on Jan. 8
There used to be just two Stephen Colberts, and they were hard enough to distinguish. The main difference was that one thought the other was an idiot. The idiot Colbert was the one who made a nice paycheck by appearing four times a week on The Colbert Report (pronounced in the French fashion, with both ts silent), the extremely popular fake news show on Comedy Central. The other Colbert, the non-idiot, was the 47-year-old South Carolinian, a practicing Catholic, who lives with his wife and three children in suburban Montclair, N.J., where, according to one of his neighbors, he is extremely normal. One of the pleasures of attending a live taping of The Colbert Report is watching this Colbert transform himself into a Republican superhero.
Suburban Colbert comes out dressed in the other Colberts guise dark two-button suit, tasteful Brooks Brothersy tie, rimless Rumsfeldian glasses and answers questions from the audience for a few minutes. (The questions are usually about things like Colberts favorite sport or favorite character from The Lord of the Rings, but on one memorable occasion a young black boy asked him, Are you my father? Colbert hesitated a moment and then said, Kareem?) Then he steps onstage, gets a last dab of makeup while someone sprays his hair into an unmussable Romney-like helmet, and turns himself into his alter ego. His body straightens, as if jolted by a shock. A self-satisfied smile creeps across his mouth, and a manically fatuous gleam steals into his eyes.
Lately, though, there has emerged a third Colbert. This one is a version of the TV-show Colbert, except he doesnt exist just on screen anymore. He exists in the real world and has begun to meddle in it. In 2008, the old Colbert briefly ran for president, entering the Democratic primary in his native state of South Carolina. (He hadnt really switched parties, but the filing fee for the Republican primary was too expensive.) In 2010, invited by Representative Zoe Lofgren, he testified before Congress about the problem of illegal-immigrant farmworkers and remarked that the obvious answer is for all of us to stop eating fruits and vegetables.
But those forays into public life were spoofs, more or less. The new Colbert has crossed the line that separates a TV stunt from reality and a parody from what is being parodied. In June, after petitioning the Federal Election Commission, he started his own super PAC a real one, with real money. He has run TV ads, endorsed (sort of) the presidential candidacy of Buddy Roemer, the former governor of Louisiana, and almost succeeded in hijacking and renaming the Republican primary in South Carolina. Basically, the F.E.C. gave me the license to create a killer robot, Colbert said to me in October, and there are times now when the robot seems to be running the television show instead of the other way around.
full: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/08/magazine/stephen-colbert.html?pagewanted=all
Blacksheep214
(877 posts)Sabriel
(5,035 posts)There's nothing in there that isn't in the last biography I read about Colbert.
Is the NYTM that hard up?
Rex
(65,616 posts)The NYTM sucks eggs.
rocktivity
(44,577 posts)Last edited Fri Jan 6, 2012, 12:51 AM - Edit history (4)
Colbert...addressed the president...I stand by this man because he stands for things. Not only for things. He stands on things. Things like aircraft carriers and rubble and recently flooded city squares. And that sends a powerful message: that no matter what happens to America, she will always rebound with the most powerfully staged photo-ops in the world...
Male cattle droppings.
Mark Smith knew EXACTLY what he was getting -- if anything, his ulterior motive was for Colbert to say all the things to the Bush regime that he couldn't. And may I remind the Times that they didn't mention Colbert's appearance AT ALL the next day? Was that their way of being "kind" to him, as if he'd peed on floor?
rocktivity
ejpoeta
(8,933 posts)as they had to squirm and take what was being dished out.
annabanana
(52,791 posts)It was a spectacular expression of courage. I hd never been so proud of the possibilities of humankind.
TlalocW
(15,391 posts)There was no flop sweat; there was no nervousness. He sailed through that routine like the expert he was and deflated everyone in the process. That performance was just the most bought item on iTunes the next day.
TlalocW
Mojeoux
(2,173 posts)"People say the Bush administration's changing staff members is like re-arranging deck chairs on the Titanic. No fair, this administration soars! It's like rearranging deck chairs on the Hindenburg!"
Long live Colbert!
RainDog
(28,784 posts)each stage along the way he demonstrated how money is hidden and corrupting the political process.
annabanana
(52,791 posts)The lawyer couldn't answer that one.
annabanana
(52,791 posts)And (if you saw the whole of his testimony on immigrant farm labor) you would know it was the real man . . using his alter ego only as an entry point to a very serious point.
90-percent
(6,829 posts)Stephen's appearance there was one of the most courageous and patriotic acts that ever occurred during the dark ages of the heinous Bush era.
He kind of jumped on a live grenade in the name of patriotic dissent. I found it simply heroic and courageous.
-90% jimmy
Rageneau
(3,503 posts)Talk about the emperor's new clothes.