by Bruce Watson
By 5:15 p.m., when the show is ready for rehearsal, Colbert prepares himself to become HIMSELF. “You can’t be ‘Stephen Colbert” all day because he’d be a terrible executive producer,” he says. “Right before they call me for the show, I have a special button that I push on my side that releases the gas.”
Alone in his dressing room, Colbert checks his tie in a mirror. If the show’s guest has arrived in the Green Room, he’ll visit to warn that his character is “an idiot” and to just play along. Then he heads out to meet the studio audience. Already warmed up by a producer, the crowd explodes when Colbert appears. He talks for a few minutes, not in character, then sits inside his trademark C-desk for a run through. By 7:00 p.m., the show is ready for taping. Cameras lurch into action, and Colbert pivots to catch each at a different angle. Blaring credits roll to the dissonant notes of “Baby Mumbles” by Cheap Trick. All attention is on Colbert. These days, it often takes a full minute for the crowd to stop chanting “Steee-Phen! Steee-Phen! Steee-Phen!”
For the next two hours, with takes and re-takes, Colbert Nation is neither a metaphor nor a concept. It is as real as each laugh, as united as each ovation. When the taping is finished, Colbert heads home, listening to music as he drives back through the Lincoln Tunnel, back to Montclair, back to his home where Evie and the kids are waiting.
Though time is said to “wait for no man,” it sometimes seems to stand still on The Colbert Report. Each half-hour passes quickly, but the show itself seems ageless. When first asked to do headline humor on The Daily Show, Colbert resisted, wanting his character to be “eternal.” But “eternal” seems to be the goal of his own show. Headlines change, spoofs come and go, but a Colbert Report from 2006 looks remarkably like a Report today. The set has not changed, nor has the format or the host.
Jon Stewart is aging gracefully, his hair graying a little each year, but even though Colbert’s hair began to gray shortly after he took on the show, it is now as dark as it was on Exit 57. As he approaches fifty, Colbert is slightly leaner, his face more seasoned. Yet he still exudes energy on camera, racing around the set, bursting with joy, coyly eyeing the camera as if still a boy competing in his family’s “humorocracy.” Some see stagnation in the day-to-day sameness of The Colbert Report, but within the familiar framework, Colbert remains a master of improv.
In the years since his Bush bashing made him a phenomenon, Colbert has broken down television’s so-called fourth wall between performer and audience. Colbert might well have rested on his laurels. A partial list of his awards include two Emmys, two Peabodys, Associated Press Celebrity of the Year (2007), two New York Times’ bestselling books, a Grammy, numerous honorary degrees, and, for some reason, a spot on Maxim’s 100 Sexiest Women (number sixty-nine).
Instead of stagnating, however, Colbert has kept viewers guessing about what he might do next. The sheer fun he has on camera is part of the show’s appeal. As if living by Second City’s improv strategy – “Yes, and . . .” – Colbert is open to all suggestions. And as if following his family motto, “Never refuse a legitimate adventure,” he continues to delight viewers with one adventure after another. He rode a bobsled with the U.S. Olympic team, sung with Willie Nelson and Paul McCartney, and let Jane Fonda climb in his lap and nibble his ear. He challenged actor Sean Penn to a “meta-free-phor-all,” issued “green screen challenges,” invited viewers to use his image in their own videos, and taught Bill Clinton how to Tweet.
Colbert’s biggest gamble, however, came in 2009, when he took the Report to Iraq to perform for American troops. Colbert allowed the army to put him through a very basic, Basic Training, but even that was not sufficiently adventurous. “If you really want to be in the military,” General Ray Odierno told him before a crowd of soldiers, “you’re going to have to get your haircut like these guys out here.”
“I don’t know about that, sir.”
“Stephen, if you want to do this right, you’re gonna have to get your haircut.”
“But without my hair, what would I blow dry? And frankly, sir, it’s gonna take more than a four-star general to get me to cut my hair.”
Static emerged offstage, followed by President Obama on a big screen. “If Stephen Colbert wants to play soldier,” Obama declared, “it’s time to cut that man’s hair.”
“Sir, is that an order?” General Odierno asked.
“General, as your commander in chief, I hereby order you to shave that man’s head.”
Game for anything that would get a laugh, Colbert sat still while the general’s buzzing clippers mowed off his hair. For the next several weeks, the crew cut served as a reminder of the Iraq adventure and made Stephen Colbert seem still more human.
Each Report may look the same, but many contain transformative moments when “Colbert the caricature” becomes “Colbert the marketing genius.” Blending TV with the Internet, social media, and his own vivid imagination, Colbert continually challenges his “nation” to take action. Some actions scale the heights of the human ego.
A few months after Colbert v. Bush went viral, Colbert learned of an online contest to name a bridge across the Danube River in Hungary. Early voting had “The Chuck Norris Bridge” in the lead, but then Colbert told his fans to vote to name the bridge after him. A week later, with only 1,774 votes, Colbert gave more explicit voting instructions. Overnight, Colbert Nation poured online and moved him into second place with 438,039 votes. He then added a link to his own Web site that bypassed the hurdle of the Hungarian language.
“I think if we hit 100 million votes, I get to be prime minister,” he told his nation. A week later, the “Stephen Colbert Bridge” had some 17 million votes. Colbert then called off the campaign, noting that 17 million “is 7 million more than there are in the country of Hungary.” The Hungarian government, however, refused to go along with the gag, changing the rules to allow only names of dead Hungarians. Colbert pretended to be outraged, but later hosted the Hungarian ambassador on the Report. “He made me an honorary citizen and invited me to speak at their parliament,” Colbert said. “That’s when I realized we had something special with our audience.”
In subsequent years, Colbert Nation has gone online to append Colbert’s name to a Michigan hockey team, and the “Combined Operational Load-Bearing External Resistance Treadmill (COLBERT)” on the International Space Station. The treadmill was a compromise offered by NASA after Colbert handily won its online contest to name a room on the space station. Colbert has also lobbied for himself, talking guests into appending his name to an airliner, a spider, an eagle, a beetle, and a gift shop in Alabama. His unbridled ego is contagious. Almost everyone wants in on a Colbert joke. Everyone except Wikipedia, that is.
Founded in 2001, Wikipedia was still struggling for acceptance in July 2006, when Colbert took out a laptop and showed viewers how easy it was to alter the site’s content. The online encyclopedia, whose wiki technology allows anyone to edit any entry, seemed the perfect target for truthiness. “I love Wikipedia,” Colbert announced. “Any site that’s got a longer entry on ‘truthiness’ than on Lutherans has its priorities straight.” He then introduced the “Word of the Day,” “Wikiality.” Slapping his laptop’s keyboard, Colbert pretended to change Wikipedia’s entry on George Washington to read that the first president had not owned slaves. If enough people agree on “Wikiality,” he said, it becomes reality. “What we’re doing is bringing democracy to knowledge.” He then told his nation to log onto Wikipedia, search “elephant,” and add that the number of elephants in Africa had tripled in the last six months. “It’s the least we can do to save this noble beast. Together, we can create a reality we can agree on - the reality we just agreed on.”
Colbert’s wiki campaign broke down another wall, the wall between television and the Internet. Most TV shows had Web sites, but Colbert was the first to send viewers to sites other than his own. When Colbert Nation crashed Wikipedia’s servers, Wikipedia responded by locking its entries on “elephants,” blocking ac
cess to entries about Colbert and his show, and banning the user name “stephencolbert.” Colbert backed off, only to return a few months later to announce that someone had broken through: Wikipedia’s entry on elephants read, “Thanks to the works of Stephen Colbert, the population has tripled in the last ten years.”
Colbert later urged viewers to amend Wikipedia’s “Warren Harding” entry by adding that Harding had been a “secret negro president.” In 2011, Colbert Nation amended Wikipedia’s “Paul Revere” entry, adding “pealing bells” to his midnight ride, as Sarah Palin had recently claimed.
Behind Colbert the prankster, his eye twinkling at each new gambit, stands Colbert the Philanthropist. True to what he told Stewart moments before his first Report, Colbert has made “a lot of money doing this.” His earnings start with his annual $4.5 million Comedy Central salary, plus residuals from various voiceovers in films. He also earns plenty from his best-selling books, I Am America (and So Can You), and America Again: Re-becoming the Greatness We Never Weren’t. Then there’s the Tek Jansen comic book series based on Colbert as a superhero. Add up the earnings and the man who once used his infant daughter as an audition prop now rakes in $6 million a year. The figure puts Colbert’s earnings far below those of top celebrities, yet few have been more generous with their time and none have been as creative in raising money for charity.
On October 18, 2006, the first anniversary of the Report, Colbert auctioned the portrait of himself that hung over the fireplace on his set. A Charleston barbecue restaurant paid a cool $50,605 and hung the portrait in its lobby. At Colbert’s request, all proceeds went to Save the Children charitable organization. A year later, when Colbert fell on the set and broke his wrist, he had guests sign the cast, then sold it on eBay, with proceeds going to the Yellow Ribbon Fund that helps American soldiers returning from active duty abroad.
Colbert soon found a charity that remains his favorite, Donors Choose, which lets anyone donate directly to specific projects for needy public schools. Colbert first used the DonorsChoose.org site during the 2008 Pennsylvania Democratic primary. He first asked his viewers to cast their votes online for candidates Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton, then he referred them to Donors Choose. What he called his “Celebrate the Democalypse” campaign raised $185,000 for Pennsylvania public schools. Colbert has continued to raise six-figure sums for Donors Choose, sending huge quantities of supplies to children who send him their drawings in return. In 2009, he joined the charity’s board of directors.
In 2012, Colbert gave royalties from his children’s book, I Am A Pole (And So Can You!) to U.S. Vets, a group that provides basic services to veterans. Proceeds from the sales of his Ben & Jerry’s ice cream flavor, Stephen Colbert’s Americone Dream, are also distributed to charity. Others who have benefitted from Colbert drives include Amnesty International, Autism Speaks, Feeding America, the Global Fund for Women, and Stand Up to Cancer. Finally, Colbert also donates all proceeds from his public appearances.
Why does he give so much? Christian charity? Noblesse oblige? “That we have the capacity to give so much of ourselves to others is, I think, what separates us humans from the animals,” he said. “Sure, there are other things, like the fact that we don’t shoot venom out of fangs.”
“Colbert the Prankster” has earned wild applause, and “Colbert the Philanthropist” has won enduring gratitude. But “Colbert the Politician,” despite his impishness and joie de vivre, has drawn venom from the powers that be. Beyond his roast of President Bush, Colbert has rankled politicians of both parties. He is at his best, however, when taking on the universe of greed, ego, and cold cash that American politics now embodies.
In late 2007, responding to Internet petitions nominating Stewart and Colbert for president and vice president, Colbert threw his hat in the ring. He was not the first comedian to stage a mock run for the White House. In 1968, when Vietnam and race riots brought American politics to a boiling point, the deadpan comic Pat Paulsen ran a satiric campaign that included smoke-filled fund-raisers, whistle-stop tours, and speeches on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour. But Paulsen never filed papers to run for office, and he never appeared on any ballot. Even when he revived his campaign and received hundreds of write-in votes, Paulsen drew a line between satire and serious campaigning.
Colbert decided to erase that line. He announced his candidacy in a mid-October 2007 Report. Balloons fell from the ceiling, “I’M DOING IT!” flashed on the screen, and the audience all but wet themselves. Three days later, he appeared on Meet the Press. Host Tim Russert, unsure which Colbert was seated across from him, tried to be both straight man and comic. Challenging Colbert’s last name, Russert asked if he should change his name to “Russ-air.” But Colbert stayed in character, explaining why he was running.
“The junctures that we face are both critical and unforeseen, and the real challenge is how we will respond to these junctures, be they unprecedented or unforeseen, or, God help us, critical.” Without his roaring studio audience, Colbert fell flat on Meet the Press. That Sunday afternoon, however, he flew to South Carolina’s capital, Columbia, for his first rally. Before a cheering crowd, he announced, “I promise, if elected, I will crush the state of Georgia.” The Mayor of Columbia gave him a key to the city and proclaimed “Stephen Colbert Day.” Polls soon showed Colbert backed by 2.3 percent of South Carolina voters, more than New Mexico’s Governor Bill Richardson could muster.
Colbert continued milking the campaign on camera, but when he filed papers to be on the primary ballot in South Carolina, officials thought the joke had gone far enough. The executive council of the South Carolina Democratic Party convened to decide his fate. Before their meeting, Colbert lobbied the council with cocktails and snacks, shaking hands and “spoon feeding them Democratic talking points, most of which I lifted from Neil Young lyrics.” The following day, the verdict was announced. “The council really agonized over this,” said chairwoman Carol Fowler, “because they really like him, they love his show, and everyone thinks it’s wonderful that he cares about us.” But by a thirteen-to-three vote, Colbert’s application was rejected. Claiming he was not a viable nationwide candidate, the council returned his $2,500 filing fee. Colbert broke down on camera. He would return.
In 2010, Colbert again crossed the line between comedy and politics, and this time his rejection was not so polite. That September, California Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren, whom Colbert had hosted on the Report, invited him to address a congressional committee debating an agricultural jobs bill. Colbert had already participated in a migrant workers’ “Take Our Jobs Day,” picking beans in upstate New York. He planned to tell Congress about the backbreaking labor, but would they take him seriously?
By then, the congressmen he once tricked into improv interviews knew him well. His show, books, and soaring celebrity had made him a household name, and he was just a month away from a rally with Jon Stewart on the Mall in Washington, D.C. Everyone, it seemed, loved Stephen Colbert, even Bill O’Reilly. “I think satire is very, very entertaining for any society to have,” O’Reilly said of Colbert. “I have never had a problem with it as long as it’s not mean-spirited, and I don’t think he is.” But if there is one entity whose members refuse to laugh, it is the United States Congress. So when Colbert sat down before the congressional subcommittee, he faced the toughest audience of his life.
On a sunny D.C. morning in late September, Room 2141 of the Rayburn House Office Building teemed with Colbert Nation citizens. Colbert entered with a police escort. One woman shouted, “Thank you for saving our corn, Stephen!” As cameramen snapped photos, the congressmen and women sat at their mikes bewildered or tight-lipped. Opening the hearing, Rep. John Conyers of Michigan thanked Colbert for drawing so much attention, then asked him to kindly excuse himself and let the committee get on with its business.
Colbert should have taken the advice. Instead, he deferred to the congresswoman who had invited him. Lofgren urged him to speak, and he began by sharing “my vast
experience spending one day as a migrant farm worker.”
“Does one day in the field make you an expert witness?” a congressman asked.
“I believe that one day of me studying anything makes me an expert,” Colbert replied.
He then gave a semi-serious, semi-satirical look at migrant work that drew few laughs and much scorn. Having picked beans for a day, he was shocked to discover that “most soil is at ground level.” Joke after joke drew a chuckle or two from the gallery, glares from the congressmen.
“This is America,” Colbert went on. “I don’t want a tomato picked by a Mexican. I want it picked by an American, then sliced by a Guatemalan and served by a Venezuelan in a spa where a Chilean gives me a Brazilian.” A few laughs.
Colbert continued reading from a written statement: “Maybe the easier answer is to find fruits and vegetables that pick themselves. The scientists over at ‘Fruit of the Loom’ have made great strides in fruit-human hybrids.” Silence merging with disgust.
Stepping out of character, Colbert said he had accepted Lofgren’s invitation because “I like talking about people who don’t have any power, and it seems like some of the least powerful people in the United States are migrant workers who come and do our work but don’t have any rights themselves.”
The congressmen remained resentful, and the press denounced Colbert’s testimony as a “stunt” that was “emblematic of the dumbing down of American political culture.” Colbert v. Congress was not an Internet sensation. Even today, it’s hard to watch.
Colbert’s brief testimony had scarcely dumbed down American political culture, but by 2011 many wondered whether Colbert and Stewart were doing democracy any favors. Ever since “The Year of Jon Stewart” in 2004, media experts had worried that “fake news” might be harming young Americans who make up the bulk of The Daily Show audience.