To prepare for her appearance on The Colbert Report to plug her book The Fortune Cookie Chronicles, Times reporter and Jennifer 8. Lee smartly brainstormed with friends about what Stephen Colbert's on-air character would ask her. Potential tete-a-tetes:
Colbert : "I eat apple pie every morning - with a jack and coke - and a bald eagle egg omlette."
Jenny: Well, there are exceptions - and you are clearly an exceptional American - for most would say Chinese food.
It went down almost exactly like that.
Conan O'Brien has been "quarreling" with Stephen Colbert over who made Mike Huckabee's campaign. Conan claims he brought Huckabee insides Americans' homes. Colbert refutes the assertion; it was he who gets credit. And then there's Jon Stewart, who claims he made Conan O'Brien, so it's he who, ipso facto, should get the superlative.
Last night on Conan's show, they settled the matter. With a brawl, y'all!
(Confused? The on-air explanation after the jump. But the above video has the fight. So it's clear which one you're gonna watch.) CONTINUED »
ALIENS FOR HUMANS Recent American citizen Craig Ferguson will host the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. Considering his new immigration status, his speech probably won’t be as harsh as Stephen Colbert’s from two years ago. Too bad, because the resulting fall out was kind of funny. [Examiner]
Famous blogger and personal friend, Chris Beam, appeared on The Colbert Report last night. The best part is when they Photoshop Chris's beard onto John Edwards. You can't hire and compensate writers fairly for comedy like that.
So Chris Beam, a friend from college, is going to be on the Colbert Report tonight. Awesome for Chris!
He's really charming, and he even writes this neat blog for Slate on the campaign called TrailHead. But, after watching the above clip from a writerless Colbert Report last night, we think his appearance may have something to do with the strike. Just putting that out there.
The unthinkable (and yet, highly plausible) has happened. The American people have officially lost interest in the long, drawn out and extremely uncomfortable process of watching politicians from both parties reduced to shamelessly pandering for votes.
• Stephen Colbert on his short-lived presidential campaign: "I am shocked and saddened by the South Carolina Democratic Executive Council's 13-to-3 vote to keep me off their presidential primary ballot. Although I lost by the slimmest margin in presidential election history — only ten votes — I have chosen not to put the country through another agonizing Supreme Court battle. It is time for this nation to heal."
• Bonnie Fuller pulls a Naomi Campbell, takes a non-political "business" trip to the United Arab Emigrates.
• Jamie Lee Curtis pulls a Brian Williams' daughter Tina Fey, blogs in support of the Writer's Guild.
• The only thing black on this Ebony cover is Michael Jackson's hair, and we hear that was a wig.
• Joke's over. South Carolinian democrats stubbornly refuse to allow a comedian to run for the leader of the free world as a publicity stunt.
• Tennis truly is nothing like Hollywood. Example: Martina Hingis tests positive for cocaine; she retires in disgrace. Lindsay Lohan goes to rehab for cocaine use; she comes back with a ProActiv sponsorship and a shiny new movie deal.
• 60 Minutes proves way more effective at apprehending criminals than To Catch A Predator.
• Jacob the Jeweler is sent to prison, thereby depriving hardworking celebrities of their much-needed bling. Meanwhile, being incarcerated hasn't stopped Jacob from launching his own $80 vodka, called "Bocaj" (his name spelled backwards). Which we think it truly "C-i-t-o-i-d-i."
Whatever your Halloween plans were, you probably had more fun than the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers and the Writers Guild of America.
The two groups failed to negotiate a new contract as the deadline expired last night. The scribes who create Dave Letterman’s Top 10 List and find the stupid headlines for Jay Leno are now working without a contract, but they probably won’t be for much longer. Last week, guild members authorized a strike anytime after their contract expired with a 90% majority.
CONTINUED »
If a new poll suggesting that Stephen Colbert could be the presidential frontrunner within a month is to be believed, at what point does his publicity-fueled political campaign stop being a hilarious mockery of the campaign trail and start being an ominous sign that our country is on the brink of willful self-destruction, and gradually shifting closer and closer towards an irreversible state of moral and financial bankruptcy?
How did Stephen Colbert end up writing Maureen Dowd’s most-emailed column last week? Colbert was duped, he admits to Frank Rich at an interview last night at the 92nd street Y:
She didn't know I was going to run for president when she called me up. She said, 'How would you like to write my column this weekend?' And I said, 'Why?' And she said, 'Why did Tom Sawyer want that boy to paint his fence?"
That just might be the funniest Maureen Dowd anecdote of all time.
Hey ABC and Slate, welcome to the party! Both news outlets are reporting today that Stephen Colbert’s relationship with Comedy Central breaks FEC laws. That story was interesting somewhere around last week.
So in review, again: The Colbert Report counts as a very large campaign contribution from Viacom to the Colbert campaign in the form of screen time. This breaks FEC law that prohibits corporations from making "any contribution or expenditure in connection with a federal election."
But even if Colbert has made the 2008 election more fun, campaign finance laws are still boring. Nice try, though.
Sometimes I just have to say, “what the fuck?” and the royal we doesn’t work as well. These are my thoughts—raronauer
About two minutes after John Kerry lost in 2004, Democrats and Republicans began plotting for 2008.
At this time last year, pundits could criticize politicians for starting their campaigns too early. But now, 13 months away from the general election, there’s no way to complain about fatigue. Now is the time candidates should be making stump speeches; it’s just too bad we’ve been hearing them for the past year.
So at this point, no one’s really interested in reading about demographic breakdowns of primary states. That is until Stephen Colbert entered the picture.
CONTINUED »
It's been a confusing weekend. First, we saw actor/comedian Stephen Colbert appear on Meet the Press and make a complete mockery of the presidential campaign simply by appearing to go about it in earnest. Then we saw the author of "Harry Potter" shock millions (and, undoubtedly, offend the sensitive ears of the Christian right) by "confessing" that her fictional headmaster prefers the company of wizards to witches.
So we were more than a little bit relieved to stumble upon a beacon of normalcy in this otherwise topsy-turvy existence: "Kid Rock has been arrested in Atlanta in connection with a fight at a waffle house."
And suddenly, the world (almost) makes sense again.
When Stephen Colbert announced his candidacy in the South Carolina Presidential primary, we all had a good chuckle, and thought, “those crazy Comedy Central kids. What will they think of next to promote a coffee table book for college students?”
Well, it turns out that Colbert’s TV show may be thwarting his political ambitions. The show is effectively free advertising for the Colbert campaign, and to the Federal Election Commissions, that would count as an illegal corporate contribution. This could be a real problem if this were a real campaign.
But when you’re running a PR presidential campaign, the more controversies, the better. With any luck, some illegitimate kids will show up.
Comedy Central has John Stewart for the 2010 election, but maybe not much longer. The network renewed Stewart’s contract for two years, but wasn't able to extend him for Indecision 2012.
Broadcasting & Cable reports:
The length of the extension coincides with the 2010 expiration of David Letterman’s deal at CBS, which will fuel the speculation that the Daily Show host and Comedy franchise player could be in line to take over at CBS if Letterman decides to step away after his current deal is up.
Why use the passive voice? Broadcast & Cable is speculating that CBS will close in on Stewart after Letterman retires.
As for Comedy Central, they always Steve Colbert. Of course, that's assuming that his run for president isn’t a thinly veiled publicity campaign for his new book and he’s still available.
Stephen Colbert's mock op-ed column in Sunday's Times inexplicably continues to dominate the "Most Popular" list, thereby facilitating the following mini discussion in Jossip HQ.
Editor #1: Wait, Dowd's column is still #3? Do we think it's funny?
Editor #2: Yeah. (Pause) Well, it's "New York Times' funny."
Which is to say, "Not really."
• Bill O'Reilly is stunned to discover that blacks are capable of running a restaurant, serving food other than Popeye's fried chicken.
• If Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (a.k.a. "A-Jad") were an American, we're guessing he'd be supporting the G.O.P.
• And speaking of gay, Stephen Colbert is on hand to remind us of the hidden danger of baby carrots.
• From US: "Lindsay Lohan's Rep Denies Lohan's Involvement In Divorce." Well that's silly, of course poor Lindsay wasn't to blame for her parents' —oh, this is about Tony Allen? Yeah, that was all her.
• CNN finds non-working comedians to provide unfunny solutions to real world problems.
According to the AP, Turkish nobody Cenk Uygur is insisting that comedian Stephen Colbert stole one of his jokes for a recent broadcast.
Uygur posted a video on YouTube comparing his joke — which he claims he first told on his Sept. 7 radio program — with a segment that aired on "The Colbert Report" four days later.
In both jokes, Uygur and Colbert suggest that the Republican presidential candidates sounded like Klingons from "Star Trek" while speaking about the value of honor.
Although a rep for Colbert said the comedian had no immediate comment, it's likely he will subsequently embarrass Cenk Uygur by publicly pointing out that there is not, as of yet, a patent on "Republicans aren't funny" jokes.
Apparently being in third place is really bad. Katie Couric will go to Iraq and Syria for a 12-day trip the week after Labor Day.
This leaves Charlie Gibson as the only major news anchor who hasn’t visited a war torn country lately. He's also the only anchor not to wear Stephen Colbert’s wristband. Of course, when you’re number one in the ratings, you can do whatever you want.
Katie herself is excited about the upcoming field trip:
I'm curious about very basic questions regarding living conditions, about how much fear there is in the street, about how the soldiers really are doing.
Please be safe! Moxie doesn't mean anything outside of the green zone.
