Stephen Colbert

Stephen Colbert joked about the major story of the day and at first said it was John Gibson leaving Fox New’s “The Big Story” and then Tucker Carlson’s MSNBC cancellation, but then finally talked about Spitzer. He covered how the media followed the governor’s SUV through traffic for 20 minutes hoping he would stop and pick up a prostitute. They showed a close up of the car and it had a bumper sticker that said “My other ride is a hooker.”

Colbert pointed out to much applause that Spitzer appeared on his show on the night after he arranged for the hooker to come meet him, which was one day before he committed the deed that led to his resignation. He said he was “The meat in the Spitzer sandwich” and that “a lot of people consider an interview on my show a form of foreplay.”

Jimmy Kimmel monologue

Kimmel’s monologue wasn’t that great. He said that if you do the math of $80,000 spent on hookers over the last ten years, that’s only $22 a day. He also said that Spitzer didn’t seem contrite in his speech, then they showed a fake clip of the end of Spitzer’s speech that had a hooker getting up from underneath the podium afterwards.

Kimmel showed the picture of Spitzer’s hooker in a bikini and said that he should have held it up and said “Look at her. What are you going to do?” Then he brought on his security team as the “worst political team on tv” to talk about the scandal.

David Letterman’s monologue

Letterman said Spitzer left his resignation on the nightstand with a $300 tip. He also said it’s a somber mood in NY and the hookers in Times Square were wearing black armbands. Letterman quipped that Spitzer will now have to pay women to call him Governor. He said Spitzer was on Hillary Clinton’s shortlist for a possible Vice President and “boy she can pick ‘em can’t she?”

The Daily Show

Stewart’s was easily the funniest commentary on the scandal.

“The answer: ‘A day and a half.’ The question: ‘What is the amount of extra time you get to stay in power after the revelation of a sex scandal if you are a non-gay governor.’”

“And so, Elliot Spitzer headed to his midtown office to make the announcement while receiving what the networks now refer to as ‘The Full OJ’” [cameras following his SUV]

“As you can see, the trip gave commentators ample time for analysis.” [Cut to boring comments by news reporters about traffic.]

“If you’re in the car with your wife, on the way to resign from the state’s highest office after facing prostitution charges. I’d run that light…”

As for the fact that the Governor’s wife accompanied him to the second press conference, Stewart said “Calgon take her away! There’s got to be a chaise lounge in Bermuda with that lady’s name on it…”

Stewart pointed out the irony in Spitzer’s remarks that “From those to whom much is given much is expected.”

He answered: “Which is why I gave over $80,000 to hookers. I expected a lot from them. And then of course the big news.”

Stewart jokes that the day Spitzer has chosen for the “orderly transition is St. Patrick’s Day” and shows a picture of a shirtless guy drinking a beer wearing giant green sunglasses and a green top hat. “I’m beginning to wonder about this guy’s judgment.”

What do you do when you’re the host of a late-night faux news show and you’ve got no writers? Well you could sit on your ass, you could mumble at random, or you could do something great with your time and support a charitable cause. But what if your show is all mockery? How do you do something that’s actually good, while poking fun at the same time? Well if you’re Stephen Colbert, and you happen to have broken your wrist a few months back, you do everything you can to “raise wrist injury awareness” – and donate the money to the Yellow Ribbon Fund, which supports injured U.S. soldiers . How do you raise the money? By selling red WristStrong bracelets of course.

“The only thing worse than the pain has been the agony,” the bespectacled funnyman said. “Hollywood has been glamorizing wrist violence for years…and I am fighting back with the most powerful tool known to man—the silicone bracelet! It is go time. Just to put it on requires a wrist—that’s one level of awareness,” Colbert continued. “Every time you look down, it will remind you that you have a wrist. And if you ever forget what the area connecting the hands to the arm is called, you can just look down and it says ‘wrist,’ right there on the bracelet.”

On Wednesday, he encouraged fans to purchase more bracelets and send them to New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady, who may or may not have been sporting a boot on his foot when he was photographed leaving girlfriend Gisele Bündchen’s Manhattan apartment this week. “Now, I know that he injured his ankle, but I have said many times, the ankle is just the wrist of the foot,” Colbert said.

[From E! News]

Colbert raised $17,000 just from auctioning off his wrist cast. Awesome… and kind of gross. He got New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg, Brian Williams, Tim Russert, Bill O’Reilly, Tony Snow, Katie Couric, and Nancy Pelosi to sign the cast before the auction by asking them to “board the “WristStrong” express.” Between all his fundraising efforts, Colbert was able to hand over a check for $171,525 to the Yellow Ribbon Fund. The charity helps injured U.S. service members who are recovering at the National Naval Medical Center and Walter Reed Army Medical Center, and provides housing and transportation for them and their families. They also provide job mentoring and internships, and give tickets to sporting and cultural events.

David Letterman, Craig Ferguson, Jay Leno, Conan O’Brien, Jimmy Kimmel, Jon Stewart and Steven Colbert will return to their respective talk shows this week. Letterman’s company has struck an agreement with the Writers Guild of America that allows him to use writers for “The Late Show.” Craig Ferguson’s “Late Late Show” is controlled by Letterman’s production company, Worldwide Pants, and also has the advantage of falling under the interim agreement and being able to use writers. Leno and the rest of the late night hosts will have to make due with whatever they can muster that doesn’t violate the WGA contract. That is expected to entail longer celebrity interviews and more off the cuff audience interaction. “On the street” segments are also anticipated.

The first celebrity guest booked on Letterman’s show is Robin Williams. Both Letterman and Ferguson have an added edge over their talkshow host competitors in that guests don’t have to cross picket lines to appear. Williams is one guest who certainly wouldn’t need a scripted Q&A to appear, however. He is particularly gifted in off the cuff absurdity which can sometimes be hard to follow.

Steven Colbert and Jon Stewart are expected to be scrambling to come up with material that’s not prepared. They rely on scripted segments for their shows and will be hard pressed to ad lib. Under the WGA contract they can’t even use ideas that are prepared ahead of time by writers. These two strike me as cleverer than most, so we’ll have to see how they deal with the situation. It will also be interesting to see if Letterman and O’Brien have shaved their “strike beards,” or if they’ll grace us with their unshaven faces at least for one night.

As for how the writer’s strike continues to affect television, I read an interesting article that compared the 1988 strike to the current strike and said that there’s evidence that television lost 10% of its viewership almost permanently after the five month strike from March to August. This current strike could result in a nearly 30% drop in television viewers and could go a long way toward strengthening the audience for online content and web-based shows. And we may have to make due with more open-ended interviews with lesser-known celebrities on the talk shows. Maybe that’s an added benefit to refusing to cross picket lines - celebrities don’t have to worry about sounding stupid if they can’t rehearse their answers ahead of time.

Here’s a link to a wikipedia article that has an updated list of how many episodes are available for specific shows.

Thanks to the NY Times and The Wall St. Journal for the details for this story.

Letterman is shown on 10/20/05 with a horse, but I swear to you this picture is captioned “Madonna Visits The Late Show with David Letterman” by the photo agency, PRPhotos.

I love the way Stephen Colbert takes jokes way too far. There was the time he claimed that African elephants were no longer endangered and expanded in number to three times their previous population in just six months. As a result, so many changes had been posted to Wikipedia that they had to block access to both the “elephant” and “Stephen Colbert” articles. He’s more the willing to take his humor beyond his show and mess with the everyday as well. I think all is fair in love and humor, but even I’m a little surprised that Colbert is actually trying to get his name on the South Carolina primary ballot – because I’m presuming it’s all for a joke. That’s a really, really involved joke – but if you’re really committed to it, I guess you have to take it all the way.

It’s no joke: Stephen Colbert really is running for president. The mock conservative pundit, 43, is expected to file paperwork Thursday to enter South Carolina’s Democratic primary, CNN reports. Colbert announced his bid October 16, declaring on his Comedy Central show The Colbert Report that he would run as both a Democrat and Republican so “I can lose twice.” Perhaps price made him change his mind? The fee to get on the GOP ballot is $35,000. (Colbert only has to cough up $2,500 — or get 3,000 signatures — to get on the Democrat ballot.)

But Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton shouldn’t start worrying just yet: South Carolina Democratic officials will meet Thursday to determine whether Colbert is “nationally viable” and has spent enough time campaigning in his home state before putting him on the ballot, according to CNN.

[From Us Weekly]

Something tells me Colbert won’t be deemed “nationally viable” – though I’m pretty sure he could take a chunk of votes away from other Democrats and really mess with the polls. It’ll probably make for some good clips on his show, though I would have found it much more amusing to mess with the Republicans. Does anyone else find it telling that you have to pony up $35,000 to run as a Republican, but only $2,500 (or 3,000 signatures) to run as a Democrat? You’d think that, if nothing else, Comedy Central could have dug the money up. Colbert vs. Obama? Mildly amusing. Colbert vs. Giuliani? Now that’s funny.

Update by JayBird: Lifeline Live just reported: “South Carolina Democrats don’t think Stephen Colbert’s presidential bid is all that funny. Colbert filed to get on the ballot as a Democratic candidate in his native South Carolina. His campaign paid a $2,500 filing fee just before the noon deadline today, but after about 40 minutes of discussion by top party officials, the executive council voted 13-3 to keep the host of The Colbert Report off the ballot. “He’s really trying to use South Carolina Democrats as suckers so he can further a comedy routine,” said Waring Howe, a member of the executive council. He will be able to get his money back.”

Stephen Colbert may be on the short list of famous men who have the potential (honor, really) of becoming my husband. So far it’s Andy Samberg, Anderson Cooper, and Colbert, in that order. Though Anderson Cooper might get bumped to the head of the line after he visited Sesame Street yesterday and gave his news report from a garbage can. So the other two guys are really going to have to work, and I think Stephen Colbert is trying, because he understands nothing is sexier than power. And with that in mind, he’s thrown his hat into the ring and is running for president of the United States. And it’s unclear if he’s totally and completely joking, because he’s messed with some important social stuff before (like Wikipedia).

Colbert for 2008? Stephen Colbert has announced his candidacy for president. “I shall seek the office of the president of the United States,” the Comedy Central host, 43, declared Tuesday on his show, The Colbert Report, as red, white and blue balloons rained down around him.

“After nearly 15 minutes of soul-searching, I have heard the call,” he told the audience. Colbert said he planned to run in his native state of South Carolina, “and South Carolina alone” as both a Democrat and Republican, explaining, “I can lose twice.” He listed his running mates as Colbert-Huckabee, Colbert-Putin or Colbert-Colbert.

[From Us Weekly]

All well and funny, but I will point out that Stephen has a crazy following that just could accidentally get him elected.
Colbert eventually coined a neologism to reflect this truthiness in action: “Wikiality,” which he defined as “a reality where, if enough people agree with a notion, it becomes the truth.” To demonstrate, Colbert told viewers he was going to silence the endangered-species lobby by claiming that the population of African elephants had increased threefold in the previous six months. Within hours, so many changes had been made to Wikipedia, the popular, communally edited, online reference site, that its administrators had to restrict access to its “elephant” and “Stephen Colbert” entries.

[From Vanity Fair]

So I’m just saying, it’s pretty damn funny, and I’m sure you’d do a hell of a lot better than the current president, but there’s a chance you may actually end up in the Oval Office. Be careful what you wish for.

Let me just let you know right now that there is not yet video online that I could find of this incident. I looked on just about every online video sharing service I could find. Some douche even put the keywords Branson and Colbert together on YouTube, but it’s not this video. Anyway maybe Branson just didn’t get Colbert’s truthiness, or maybe he’s just a dick, but Colbert didn’t let him plug one of his new low-cost airline services in an appearance on his show and Branson got pissed and threw water on him. Colbert asked for some water, sat there and waited, and when someone delivered it he reciprocated by dousing Branson.

I guess Branson even named a plane after Colbert, so that could be one of the reasons he took it so personally. Please let there be video of this soon:

I haven’t posted a recap anywhere else, but I’ll spill it here first. Branson was apparently upset that he wasn’t able to give a direct plug to the new Virgin service and doused Colbert with his guest mug of water. Stephen was DRENCHED. He took a beat, then signalled for his own “ammunition” for about twenty seconds until Alison (Silverman) ran and gave him her bottle of water, and Stephen retaliated. The two of them sat for a VERY uncomfortable second looking like two wet cats. Then Stephen thanked him for coming. I really don’t think it was planned, since Stephen had another bit to introduce (the American Samoa Better Know a Protectorate) and a full interview left to do. They had to get him a new jacket and even broke out a blowdryer. Everyone in the crew had a “WTF?” reaction.

[NoFactZone via MediaBistro and Daily Mail]

And the original commentor who was in the audience clarified what happened, and this is said to be confirmed by other sources:

I forget what the “trigger” was exactly. Let me back up a bit and say that for the first part of the interview Stephen tried to get Branson to sign an IOU for $1 million. Branson was trying to squirm out of signing it. He made the big mistake of trying to appeal to the audience, like “Do you think someone like him really needs a million dollars?”, which made the crowd go BERSERK. Apparently, he was unaware that you don’t try to turn the Nation against Stephen.

I didn’t catch all of what he was saying before the water throw, but it was something along the lines of how he’d been sitting there all that time and didn’t get the chance to say why he was on the show, which confused us and Stephen a little, because it was pretty clear from the top that he was hawking Air Colbert as part of Virgin’s new American service.

[From No Fact Zone]

The Daily Mail, where I originally heard this news, says that the episode was going to be retaped, which kind of made me lose hope of ever seeing it. But it turns out that Comedy Central is going to air it after all, and that they know ratings gold when they see it. It’s going to air Wednesday, August 22.

Branson’s people have changed their tune about the incident. In the statement they gave to The Daily Mail they seemed to indicate that Branson was pissed. His rep said, “Richard did throw his water over Stephen. As most people know, Richard can be unpredictable.” But in their statement to MediaBistro they turned it into something comical, which it doesn’t sound like it was, “The segment was never intended to air live. Richard enjoyed his time with Stephen, and the splash was part of the fun.”

Richard Branson is worth $7.8 billion USD, according to Wikipedia. He owns all the Virgin airlines, Megastores, and the Virgin record label. I saw him on that short-lived Fox reality show that was supposed to compete with The Apprentice, The Rebel Billionaire, in 2004 and I honestly thought he was a decent guy. He came off as 90% less of a dick than Trump does on an average episode.