Did anyone see this last night? Excellent episode but I noticed that he fell out of character in the interview with Christy Todd Wittmann.
Good interview, he seemed too engaged with her ideas to play the right wing clown and wanted some real answers. I think Colbert might really be a moderate Republican. (Like me).
Has anyone ever seen him fall that far out of character?
BTW: Christy is in trouble for telling people as head of the EPA that it was safe to return to lower Manhattan after 9/11. A Judge rules she & the EPA could be sued.
I thought she was a good interview and was ready for the humor of the show. It surprised me at first, but then I remembered she did at least one interview with Howard Stern and held her own against his stupidity Shtick, so Colbert should be easy.
I agree about the interview, but this seems to be an inherent problem with the format. The role works fine with the news, and the Word, and the staff, and even with Congress critters to some extent, but they obviously don’t want to go into full Rush or O’Reilly mode for guests. So the throws out a few weak generic right wing comments, and sometimes asks good questions and even, Og forbid, listens to them.
Last week I was worried that the Word segment was getting weak, btw, but it was brilliant all this week.
I watched last night and was really impressed with Ms. Whitman, too.
I don’t mind that Colbert let the mask slip the little bit that he did. He kept enough of his character’s responses intact, but I think it would have been uncomfortable rather than funny if he was properly bellicose throughout. In most of his interviews with actual persons, there’s always a sense of both parties winking at each other and the audience. Hard to imagine how it could be otherwise.
“Mifflin Street Co-op” actually exists in Madison, although it’s not vegetarian. I used to work there many years ago. I was somewhat less crunchy than Cross’s character.
So did they completly make up the character David Cross played, or did he already exist as a fake news guy to satirize overly liberal news guys, like Colbert does to conservatives?
Pretty sure he’s made up. That’s always been my problem with his “appearances.” There are more than enough REAL people and issues for Colbert to react to, and he does so very well and very funnily. There doesn’t seem to be much sense in reacting to made up shit. His take on actual news items is what makes the show work. Creating an as-literal-as-you-can-get straw man like this just makes no sense to me whatsoever. Plus, it’s not even very funny, which of course is worse.
“Straw man?” Howzat? It’s not as though the bits are meant to argue against liberal ideas – it’s just a lampoon of the format. I think the Colbert Report needs more scripted routines to keep things interesting. A steady diet of improv would make the show anemic in short order.
Maybe it’s just a taste issue, because I’m a huge fan of David Cross ever since Mr. Show, his stand-up kicks ass, and I think his appearances are much funnier than the real guests, because, well, he’s a performer, and most of them aren’t.
Sure, I guess they could try to arrange gags like that with real guests (ie; make jokes about Colbert claiming that the guest has been too “cowardly” to respond to previous invitations that never existed, or pretend that he’s unfairly misinformed the guest about the topic of discussion in order to gain a debate advantage, or do the “I’m cutting your mike!” thing,) but it’s not really feasible to attempt that sort of thing with a guest who isn’t a comedic actor, and it would fail most of the time.
Christie Todd Whitman gave a good interview, but you couldn’t really place her in a similar position and expect her to deliver a comic performance. It didn’t really work as comedy, though – it was one guy in character and a guest who laughed every time he got off a good one. If Stephen Colbert was the only professional funny guy on the show, you’d have less funny.
I’m also a fan of David Cross. I thought he was very good - his lame chant about a higher minimum wage was great. Lieber is a sendup of liberals, but he exists to parody the way these pundits create rivalries and shout at each other. Doesn’t Bill O’Reilly dare people to come on his show all the time? (And I guess it sort of pokes fun at the Colbert character if the only liberal who has it in for him is this semiprofessional nobody from Wisconsin.)
I suppose that in time, he’ll attack enough people that they might be able to do that. But it’s a lot easier to script some comedy with David Cross than to make fun of some Congressman and hope he’ll be funny when he appears on the show. I think the funniest interview thing thing Colbert has done was the one with Ken Burns - and the good part [where Colbert and Burns do a Civil War-style documentary about their own interview as they conduct it and Stephen writer a letter to his wife] was scripted.
I only occassionally watch either The Daily Show or the Colbert Report. Last night I had both on in the background while I was on my computer, and the Colbert Report definitely caught my attention and made me laugh a lot more. Is it always that good?
It is a shame she is now getting sued for giving in to Bush and Cheney’s pressure to tell residents it was Okay to return to Lower Manhattan. (return to normalcy)
I have heard it was one of many reasons why she resigned. Lots of head butting with the Right Wing portion of the admin and lack of voice in the admin were other major points.
Politically, I think her career is over, but maybe she can help the moderates retake the party.
On a literal level: creates a fictional character for the sole purpose of arguing with it. American Heritage dictionary says “An argument or opponent set up so as to be easily refuted or defeated.”
I’m not saying he’s wrong to do it; I’m not using the term “straw man” in the same accusatory way I’d use it with someone I personally was debating against. I’m just saying there are plenty of REAL things for Colbert to react to. That’s the point of his show. He’s REACTING to the real world. It just doesn’t make sense to me that he would create something fake, to fake-react to.
I think Colbert is a Democrat of about the same stripe as Jon Stewart. They’re center-left, DLC, Bill Clinton-type Democrats, the kind of people who get along just fine with moderate Republicans.
The other night, Stewart totally ripped Cindy Sheehan for being chummy with Hugo Chavez. That’s something you won’t hear from Air America or Michael Moore.
And Colbert isn’t so much parodying conservatives as he is parodying a specific conservative - Bill O’Reilly, and more general other conservatives like him who live on bombast, self-righteousness and chutzpah. Limbaugh, Pat Robertson, etc.
