“In the year 2028,” he continued, “the acceptance speeches will read: ‘I pledge myself, if elected, to appoint a Committee to look into the condition of the farmer, to keep the tariff so that it will protect the most voters, and absolutely pledge myself to take the question of Prohibition right out of politics.’ ”
All these years later, there’s a certain amount of truthiness to that. There’s a certain amount of Will Rogers in Colbert, and a big chunk of Paulsen, too. In 1968’s Pat Paulsen for President special, a politician introducing Paulsen told the crowd, “Will Rogers never met a man he didn’t like. Pat Paulsen never met a woman he didn’t like.”
And Stephen Colbert, it seems, never met a person he couldn’t skewer.
In one of his last Colbert Report shows before the strike, Colbert introduced a fellow dark-horse candidate — chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov, running an opposition campaign for president of Russia — by announcing, “Finally! Someone else who sees the world in black and white!”
It’s a good chess joke — but as an accurate description of the way the real Colbert sees things, and operates, it’s not even close. Shades of gray, and moving behind enemy lines — that’s where the fun is. And in that game, Colbert is a grandmaster himself, always thinking several moves ahead, and always poised to attack.
David Bianculli is TV critic for NPR's Fresh Air and for tvworthwatching.com. He can be reached at davidbianculli@comcast.net.
