Stephen Colbert, character and candidate PAUL LEWIS November 1, 2007

CHESTNUT HILL, Mass. FOR STEPHEN and supporters while staging acts of charitable COLBERT (the character), entering the race for (think “compassionate conservative”) giving to president in both parties in a single state is a the poor; undermining church-state separation typical act of self-promotion. It follows directly by giving municipal funds to parochial schools; from the performance of self-love on display in and rigging elections. his interactions with his TV audience: the broad Enter Stephen Colbert, presidential candidate. smiling, high-fiving, victory lapping, and Though he may try to run in both South applause-seeking that are regular and hilarious Carolina primaries, his political stance will features of his show. By drenching it in laughter, continue to make him a threat to conservatives. Colbert (the character) makes narcissism look Just as Republicans running for president are like fun. polishing their positions — tacking hard right so But there are other features of his act that that they can later tack back to center — Colbert highlight what Stephen Colbert (the satirist) is will tack, as he might say, harder and hotter by up to in general and in this mock-campaign stunt being more pro-security, pro-Bush, pro-life and in particular. By leaping to the right of everyone pro-Jesus than the Republican field. Outflanking else, he takes conservative policies to absurd the outflankers, Colbert (the satirist) will extremes, exposing their grounding in bad undermine their credibility by hurling the values, including but not limited to homophobia, question raised by his “candidacy” back at the religious pride, American exceptionalism and ostensibly “real” politicians, in this way putting greed. In this way, he notes, “There’s nothing the air quotes around the word real: Why should wrong with being gay. I have plenty of friends these constructed, tweaked and poll-driven that are going to hell”; wants to know whether characters be taken seriously? environmental changes that threaten Planet Those who worry about the rising cynicism of Earth will be bad for “Planet America”; says, the American electorate would be wrong to “Sorry, Catholicism is clearly superior. Don’t blame satirists like Colbert, Jon Stewart and Bill believe me? Name one Protestant denomination Maher for the trend. Satire directed at politicians that could afford a $660 million sexual-abuse becomes convincing not by virtue of its settlement”; and insists that, “If I’m not making cleverness but by virtue of its accuracy. They as much money as I want, the terrorists could not make Dick Cheney seem like Darth would’ve won!” Vader or George Bush seem like a blithering While the writers who work for The Colbert fool — any more than Rush Limbaugh could Report are obviously gifted, their ability to make Bill Clinton seem like a rogue — unless crank out a show based almost entirely on such their targets provided a wealth of material. It reductions to the absurd suggests that the takes a good deal of folly, corruption, money-driven, base-debased state of our politics mismanagement and hypocrisy to support is supporting a new Golden Age for American effective satire. A sense of these failings and of satire, one that seems to be replaying the their serious costs intensifies the impact of the dynamic that allowed the most successful satirist’s dark wit. political cartoonist in U.S. history, Thomas Nast, to help drive William Marcy Tweed, the Paul Lewis, a professor of English at Boston boss of Tammany Hall, the New York City College, is the author of Cracking Up: Democratic Party machine, out of power in the American Humor in a Time of Conflict. 1870s. Similarities not widely noted give the Colbert- The Providence Journal Nast and Bush-Tweed comparisons significance, insofar as the Tammany abuses were based on Reprinted in The Star Tribune (Minneapolis), the cronyism, corruption and lawlessness. As for The News & Observer (Raleigh), The Lake policies, consider these Tweed precursors of Wylie Pilot (SC), ScrippsNews.com and Bush practices: running up $30 million in StandardNetLive! municipal debt in a few years that would take the city 30 years to pay off; enriching insiders