Comedy Central's first attempt at black (as in African American) comedy following Dave Chappelle's untimely 2006 departure, Chocolate News, premieres tomorrow night. In the same vein as prime time heavyweights The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, Chocolate News will attempt to mock news of the day with a wry, liberal bent. From what I've seen, it's not going to work.

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Stephen Colbert spoke at the New Yorker Festival this weekend, and left his Bill O'Reilly persona at home. Instead, Colbert gave a rarely seen look at his Kaufman-esque technique for becoming the liberal media's favorite angry conservative:

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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.

BigThink.com is a new press-happy website where ideas of "great minds, leaders and cultural figures will be used to catalyze an online discussion about the big issues of our day among a global audience." It's also the place where New Yorker editor David Remnick made fun of a media blog, and David Patrick Columbia defended bloggers.

Today, the site is home to a new roundish table discussion video about the WGA strike — with actual writers discussing the matter.

We mean to emphasize this because most Internet videos featuring striking writers show them not speaking, and communicating through the written word on cue cards. Or pieces of cardboard and a Sharpie.

The segment has comedy writers Dan Goor, Laura Krafft and Colin Jost "[offering] a perspective of the strike from the picket line. They talk about what's behind the strike, what's at stake, as they see it, and why they're still deeply committed to the cause."

And in an asterisk-worthy note: "The writers requested that we not post their show affiliations."

Huh. That's curious. Writers on strike who don't want their show affiliations mentioned? Because talking about the strike more than Nikki Finke is somehow bad form? We're not buying.

Which is why we copy/pasted their names into IMDB to REVEAL ALL THEIR SECRETS!

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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.

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.

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