Stephen Colbert: Beyond Truthiness (5 page)

Steering the show into the political arena, Stewart encouraged Colbert to make his correspondent persona more topical. Colbert was skeptical. “I thought topical stuff had an ephemeral quality — it would be meaningless in a week.” But Stewart “infected me with his spirit of satire,” Colbert said, so he began doing more pieces from the studio, often seated beside Stewart. In one, he challenged the charge that the media were feeding kids “a cesspool of sex, vulgarity, and violence.” At the word “violence,” Colbert reached across the desk to slap Stewart in the face. Parents could not compete with the media in raising children, Colbert said. “We in the entertainment industry have parents
so
outgunned! We’ve got professional writers, digital networks, global distribution systems! What do you have? A handicam and the love for your child? We will bury you! That’s why we must take the children away from their parents and allow them to be raised by the media!”

Colbert could face down parents because he was proving himself a devoted one. Becoming the father he had lost, he doted on his kids - reading to them, playing, constantly joking. Joy, he said later, is “to be with my wife and children.” By the fall of 2000, Stephen, Evie, Madeleine, and Peter Colbert had moved from Westchester County, which they considered too costly, to Montclair, New Jersey. The Colberts appreciated that suburb’s fine schools, arts, and proximity to Manhattan.

The move highlighted another contrast between “America’s Anchors.” While Stewart rode to the
Daily Show
’s midtown office in the backseat of a Comedy Central car, talking on his cell phone to get a head start on each show, Colbert drove to work. He still does. “The network would happily send me home in a car,” he told
Vanity Fair.
“After all, they don’t want me running off the road. But I’d work the entire way home, and I need more than thirty seconds from the car to the front door to become a dad and a husband again. So I drive home, and I crank my tunes. And by the time I get there, I’m normal again.”

As the Colberts settled into their routine – Madeleine in first grade, Peter in pre-school, and a third child, John, born in 2002 – the American media spun out of control. Back when Colbert was working at Second City, weird comedians had little competition. TV news seemed sane, its anchors staid, and the graying men behind the desks considered themselves journalists, not entertainers. In those final, pre-Web years, newspapers were mostly reliable and free of the cluttered competition of Web sites, Tweets, and blogs.

But a decade later, with 24/7 cable spreading and every pol and pundit saying whatever it took to get attention, a comic could scarcely be more outrageous than the media circus. As the age of FOX News and the
Drudge Report
dawned, opinion replaced fact, rumor was treated as truth, and no conspiracy, however trivial or trumped up, went unnoticed.

Luckily for Colbert, satire has always feasted on fakes and frauds. “I have never made but one prayer to God,” Voltaire said. “O Lord, make my enemies ridiculous. And God granted it.” Stewart, Colbert, and
The Daily Show
were suddenly blessed with enemies more ridiculous than any god could have provided.

The year 2000 brought another election, but it would not be just another election. Suddenly, after a year of struggling to find a voice,
The Daily Show
team of writers and correspondents spoke as one. Stewart recalled the election as “when I think we tapped into the emotional angle of the news for us and found our editorial footing.” In 1996, Craig Kilborn’s
Daily
Show
had ignored the political conventions, but Stewart insisted on full coverage.

A debut segment - “Indecision 2000” - turned a lackluster campaign into a Swiftian satire of mealymouthed liberals versus uncompassionate conservatives. Senior Political Correspondent Stephen Colbert took it all too seriously. Reporting from the Republican National Convention, Colbert summed up the mood: “Well, Jon, as a journalist I have to maintain my objectivity, but I would say the feeling down here was one of a pervasive and palpable evil. A thick, demonic stench that rolls over you and clings like hot black tar. A nightmare from which you cannot awaken. A nameless fear that lives in the dark spaces beyond your peripheral vision and drives you toward inhuman cruelties and unspeakable perversions. . . .” Then, to emphasize the fakeness of the entire process, Colbert stepped from the convention floor – a space marked by a green screen in the studio - and sat with Stewart at his desk.

But the campaign was just a warm-up for what followed. When the Florida recount spiraled into legal battles over hanging chads, Colbert left his green screen and traveled to the Sunshine State “to cut through the fog of information and facts.” There he interviewed voters at a senior citizens’ home, calling on “Tiny Turquoise Woman” and “Light Blue Lady.” Then, noting that the recount was being compared to a circus sideshow, he found a Florida circus and interviewed the Fat Man, the Fire Eating Dwarf, and the Snake Charmer.

“Oh, please,” the 700-pound Mr. Huge told Colbert, “if anybody ran a sideshow the way Bush and Gore are running this thing, they’d be out of business in a week.” Pressed by Colbert, two men whose act consisted of driving spikes into their noses admitted to voting for Bush. “The numbers don’t lie,” Colbert deadpanned. “While 49 percent of Floridians voted for Gore, 100 percent of Floridians who drive spikes into their heads voted for Bush. Why? Because Bush is the candidate they can relate to.”

As the end loomed, Colbert used his nauseated waiter routine to announce the next president, retching and holding back vomit at the name. But the Bush victory provided Colbert with ideal targets for his smarmy sincerity. Suddenly, a swamp full of politicians and pundits were touting themselves as saviors of the nation. Colbert studied them carefully. “I tried to ape whoever was the loudest and the rightest in prime-time cable news,” he recalled.

And as Colbert became “the fake newsman’s” fake newsman, the journalism establishment noticed. In April 2001, for the first time in history, the George Peabody Award for “distinguished achievement and meritorious service by broadcasters” went to a fake news show,
The Daily Show
, for “Indecision 2000.”

Just as Colbert was settling into a steady role, he was stunned by 9/11. Ironically, the date marked the twenty-seventh anniversary of the Colbert family tragedy. Colbert’s sister Elizabeth was in Manhattan that morning in a building near the World Trade Center. Fleeing through the debris and chaos, she made it to the Port Authority terminal and took a bus home to Charleston to grieve with her mother. And as if the family had not suffered enough, the aging Lorna Colbert had recently endured another loss, that of her son Billy. The older brother whom Stephen acknowledged as “the joke teller” of the family was a lawyer for the U.S. Treasury Department. Stephen would always remember Billy’s love of W.C. Fields and for teaching his youngest brother to juggle. A stroke claimed William “Billy” Colbert at age forty-nine.

Colbert doubts that grief played much of a role in his decision to become a professional funnyman. “There’s a common explanation that profound sadness leads to someone’s becoming a comedian, but I’m not sure that’s a proven equation in my case,” he told
The New York Times
. “I’m not bitter about what happened to me as a child, and my mother was instrumental in keeping me from being so. She taught me to be grateful for my life regardless of what that entailed, and that’s directly related to the image of Christ on the cross and the example of sacrifice that he gave us.”

But the Stephen Colbert who speaks frankly about that 1974 loss of his father and two brothers said nothing about losing a third brother. His faith tested again, he strode into the new century with his persona firmly fixed. The grim nod. The pursed lips. The rigid, pointed finger. Still, Colbert the sketch comedian found time to pursue more side projects.

During the early Bush years, Colbert was busier than ever. His
Daily Show
work was getting him attention and jobs. He did voice-over work on cartoons and a video game, appeared on
Law and Order
and
Curb Your Enthusiasm
, and hosted two
mockumentaries
, one a rehash of his old stories and the other an
On Air Guide to Getting on the Air
. Then, in December 2002, NBC hired Colbert and Stewart to write a sitcom pilot. Set in Colbert’s beloved South Carolina, the show was designed to both eulogize and satirize the South, adding gay characters and ethnic jokes to some vague
Mayberry R.F.D.
send-up. NBC thought the script was “too vague” and canceled the project. Then, in 2003,
Daily Show
viewers were startled to see Colbert “searching for Mr. Goodwrench” in commercials for General Motors. Colbert was not proud. “I don’t think I can sell out any more than Mr. Goodwrench,” he admitted. “I reached an apogee of pimping.”

That same year, Colbert teamed with Sedaris and Dinello to write his first book,
Wigfield
, subtitled,
The Can-Do Town That Just May Not
.
Wigfield
struggled mightily to amuse readers and skewer small towns. The story was told by a purported journalist, Russell Hokes, whose literary tour of Wigfield was a hodgepodge of interviews, oral histories, newspaper articles: and first-person reporting. The message was simple: Small towners are hopeless hicks. That message did not go down well in 2003, as small-town America prepared for war in Iraq. Despite its authors’ fame and their nationwide tour in a stage version,
Wigfield
sold poorly.

But Colbert’s side projects were mere distractions, given his growing reputation on
The Daily
Show
. “Whenever any of his stories ran,” former correspondent Bob Wiltfong remembered, “there was a huge reaction from the audience. The feeling among the rest of us was, ‘Why is this guy still on the show?’”

Common enemies and a sense of being the sharpest wits on the set cemented the friendship between Colbert and Stewart. They rarely saw each other away from the set, but on camera the two men played off each other like the best comic duos. Colbert accentuated his earnestness with new and distinctive mannerisms - the tilt of the head, the pregnant pause, the slow, measured pacing towards the camera. Though each report was tightly scripted, a Q-and-A segment following Colbert’s opening allowed him to pursue a private goal, that of getting Stewart to break up on camera. “I knew the piece was good if he couldn’t look at me when we were at the desk together,” Colbert said.

Stewart and Colbert were ideal alter egos. “Jon deconstructs the news,” Colbert said. “He’s ironic and detached, while I falsely construct the news, and I’m ironically attached.” Other
Daily Show
correspondents, however, found Stewart and Colbert too attached to each other. “Jon and Stephen were always very friendly and chummy with each other,” said Wiltfong. “It always seemed like a world we couldn’t get into. . . . Jon just doesn’t let many people in, and Stephen was one of the few.”

Colbert, however, remained above the jealousy and even the celebrity of his fame. As America careened towards war in Iraq, he was too busy studying the media to worry about private feuds. And when the war came, bringing with it spoon-fed news from embedded reporters, Stewart and Colbert became anchors of ironic protest. “Senior Military Correspondent” Stephen Colbert proved Saddam Hussein was still alive by running a clip of Groucho Marx in the 1933 film,
Duck Soup
. He mocked the futile search for weapons of mass destruction (WMD) by claiming inspectors had found “perfume, Drano, Prell (for moderate to oily hair), and salsa - Tostitos mild, I believe.” And when Bush officials finally testified that they had found no WMD in Iraq, Colbert called the announcement “the non-smoking gun we’ve been looking for.”

Come another election year – “Indecision 2004” – Colbert was back in full political mode. His evolution from sketch comic to caricatured correspondent was complete. His reports from the field were funnier, drier, more distinctive than those of Steve Carell, Samantha Bee, or Ed Helms. Colbert was clearly second-in-command at
The Daily Show,
” dwarfed only by his co-anchor. The cacophony of the campaign made humor a daily requirement, thus turning 2004 into “The Year of Jon Stewart.” Suddenly, Stewart was everywhere - on magazine covers,
60 Minutes,
even
Crossfire,
where his blistering attack became an Internet sensation. Colbert stayed in Stewart’s shadow, filing report after report - his future waiting in the wings.

With America mired in a controversial war, cable news became a verbal mosh pit. Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, Laura Ingraham, and others were openly insulting guests and spewing false facts, causing the ghost of Edward R. Murrow to spin in his grave. Who would take these high priests and priestesses of punditry down a notch?

Periodically throughout 2004,
The Daily Show
previewed a new program,
The Colbert Report
. The clips showed a strident Colbert shouting, sneering, and not just adjusting his glasses, but ripping them from his face. In his nastiest voice, Colbert announced, “Tonight, I sit down with top newsmakers and tell them to SHUT THE HELL UP!” Colbert denounced guests as being an “Idiot!” or a “Jackass!” and he played off O’Reilly’s “No Spin Zone” by suggesting a “No Fact Zone.” In a supposed interview with the Dalai Lama, Colbert asked, “What the heck do you know about world peace, baldy? SHUT UPPPPP!” More
Colbert Report
segments aired, but Stewart called them “previews of an exciting new
Daily Show
spin-off that’s already been canceled.”

America, however, needed
The Colbert Report
. The election had hardened the divide between the so-called red states and blue states, and the partisan bickering was left to caricature itself. “Shut up” became not just a Colbert joke, but an attention-getter. Right-wing pundits became best-selling authors and full-blown celebrities. If only Colbert could break out of parody. If only he could embody
the strength and virility of Stone Phillips, Geraldo Rivera’s sense of mission, and the crusading warrior spirit of Bill O’Reilly. Such a caricature would be m
ore than the high-status idiot Colbert had played since his time with Second City. This evolving egomaniac would mock all that Stewart and Colbert saw as being wrong with America and its flaming media. Pompous, full of himself, oblivious to facts, the emerging Colbert would be a hybrid of many different media personalities.
Such a character just might find an audience.