Obama orders Stephen Colbert's head to be shaved

Wearing a custom-made Brooks Brothers camouflage suit, Stephen Colbert began his weeklong broadcast from Baghdad yesterday in a show of support for the troops. He is doing these shows to help the U.S.O. in its mission to "provide morale, welfare and recreation-type services to uniformed military personnel." You have to love this guy.

Attending bootcamp wasn't quite enough, however, and President Obama beamed in to order the shaving of his head! Yowza.

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Conservatives, Steven Colbert is laughing AT you, not with you!

Last year I dated a Russian guy with broken English who was surprised that I was such a huge Stephen Colbert fan. I said, "You do know he's joking, right? He's not really a Republican. It's satire!"

He looked confused. Did I burst his bubble? Maybe he didn't know what the English word satire meant?

"Are you sure about that?" he asked me. Before presuming his idiocy, I decided that his confusion instead had to be the result of his not understanding English well. Then again, this was a guy who made lots of dough working at Goldman Sachs, most likely a very conservative conservative. Obviously I was channeling Cleopatra, the Queen of da Nile.

Lo and behold, HuffPo uncovered a story about an Ohio State researcher's study called "The Irony of Satire" revealing that conservatives don't know Colbert is joking.

. . . there was no significant difference between the groups in thinking Colbert was funny, but conservatives were more likely to report that Colbert only pretends to be joking and genuinely meant what he said while liberals were more likely to report that Colbert used satire and was not serious when offering political statements. Conservatism also significantly predicted perceptions that Colbert disliked liberalism. Finally, a post hoc analysis revealed that perceptions of Colbert's political opinions fully mediated the relationship between political ideology and individual-level opinion.

This doesn't surprise me in the least. I just wonder what explanation they have for Colbert's 2006 roast of Bush at the White House Press Correspondents Dinner. Some of my favorite gems:

"Everybody asks for personnel changes. So the White House has personnel changes. Then you write, "Oh, they're just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic." First of all, that is a terrible metaphor. This administration is not sinking. This administration is soaring. If anything, they are rearranging the deck chairs on the Hindenburg!"

"We're not so different, [Bush] and I. We get it. We're not brainiacs on the nerd patrol. We're not members of the factinista. We go straight from the gut, right sir? That's where the truth lies, right down here in the gut. Do you know you have more nerve endings in your gut than you have in your head? You can look it up. I know some of you are going to say 'I did look it up, and that's not true.' That's 'cause you looked it up in a book."

Let's name the new NASA nodule after Stephen Colbert

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Name the NASA Module After Stephen

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Stephen Colbert announced on last night's Report that he wants everyone to help convince NASA to name their latest baby after him. NASA's website declares:

NASA wants your opinion in naming the International Space Station’s Node 3 – a connecting module and its cupola – before the two segments travel to space and are installed on the orbiting laboratory. The name should reflect the spirit of exploration and cooperation embodied by the space station, and follow in the tradition set by Node 1- Unity- and Node 2- Harmony.

They have four different (lame) names from which to pick, but they also have a "write in your own" category.

Nation, go vote! You have until March 20th. Here's the website. And you may want use another browser if you usually use Firefox, as it doesn't seem to work.

And lo and behold, guess what's the top pick so far?

Top 10 Suggestions

COLBERT

XENU

BUDDY

TRANQUILITY

SYNERGY

VISION

VISTA

HORIZON

HOPE

ENTERPRISE

Stewart & Colbert: New Yorker Fistbump, Take Two!

I loved July's infamous New Yorker cover in all its Swiftian, satirical glory. A few days after its publication, The Daily Show did a great bit called "Satire on the Street" mocking the backlash against the "controversial" illustration by Barry Blitt. But Entertainment Weekly does one better this week. Not only is the cover sublime, its corresponding chat with the simultaneously modest-yet-genius team of Stewart and Colbert is well worth reading if you're at all interested in the current (sad) state of affairs.

The entire Mock the Vote Q & A interview with both of Comedy Central's Emmy-winning funnymen (Colbert for Best Writing, Stewart for Best Late Night Overall) is online and includes the below excerpt, my favorite analogies from the entire piece.

E.W.: There are a lot of issues in this election. The biggest one right now is the economy.
STEWART: We were in this huge credit crisis, out of money. Then the Fed goes, We'll give you a trillion dollars, and all of a sudden Wall Street is like, ''I can't believe we got away with it!'' Can you imagine if someone said, ''I shouldn't have bought that sports car because it means I can't have my house,'' and the bank just said, ''All right, you can have your house. And you know what? Keep the car.'' [He throws up his arms joyfully and shouts] ''Yeaaaaah, I get to keep the car! Wait, do I have to give the money back?'' ''No, it doesn't matter.'' ''Yeah, I'm gonna get another car! I'm gonna do the same thing the same way, except twice as f---ed up!''
COLBERT: The idea that Lehman Brothers doesn't get any money and AIG does reminds me very much of ''Iran is a mortal enemy because they have not achieved a nuclear weapon. But North Korea is a country we can work with, because they have a nuclear weapon.'' The idea is, Get big or go home. How big can you f--- up? Can you f--- up so bad that you would ruin the world economy? If it's just 15,000 who are out of jobs, no. You have to actually be a global f---up to get any help.

2008 Emmys