Colbert News Hub

In his book ‘Truth Be Told’, ex CNN host Larry King remembers going on The Colbert Report, and since he feels Colbert basically does a parody of Bill O’Reilly, Larry purposely did a parody of himself and shticked it up to high heaven.

“We had fun,” he recalls. Especially afterwards!

After the taping, Colbert told King:

“I was going to say it on the air, but I’ll tell it off the air:

“My first sexual experience was in a car and you were on the radio.

“I was in college—in the back seat.”

“Was it romantic?” Larry asked.

Replied Colbert: “You had a good guest.”

Well, it beats popping your cherry to Rush Limbaugh.

Amazon: ‘Truth Be Told: Off the Record about Favorite Guests, Memorable Moments, Funniest Jokes, and a Half Century of Asking Questions’ [Page 211]

Source: TheVillageVoice.com

Original Article

What do Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart have in common besides hosting two of the smartest, funniest, and award-winningest shows on cable TV?  Well, for one thing, they sure do make it on a lot of the same Top 10 lists. For another, they both know how to make a suit look good.

Each year, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert manage to entertain us, inspire us, and maybe, even teach us a thing or three. Each year, we aren’t the only ones who notice. Here’s a round up of the various publications who’ve honored our boys throughout the year. They each get a hearty “tip of the hat” from the Hub!

[caption id=”” align=”aligncenter” width=”425” caption=”© Paul Morigi | WireImage.com”][/caption]

Stephen & Jon

[caption id=”” align=”aligncenter” width=”425” caption=”© Charles Sykes | SYKEC, via Associated Press”][/caption]

• PolicyMic lists both Jon and Stephen in 4th place in their list of the “Most Politically Influential Celebrities” for the year. Oddly, the article mentions only Jon in the header but shows only Stephen in the picture. Perhaps their combined awesomeness was just too much for fourth place to handle.

• The Comic’s Comic reports the top 10 late-night ratings kings and queens of the year. Of course, both Misters Stewart and Colbert made the grade with The Daily Show coming in 3rd overall and The Colbert Report taking 7th. What’s interesting about the article is that they break down the ratings demographically by age and gender. For women 18-24 Stephen comes in 2nd but for women 25-34 Colbert comes in 7th.  Being female and past the age of 24, I’ve gotta ask: Where my ladies at?

• The National Liberal Examiner lists the “Fallout from Citizens United Vs. FEC” as number 4 in a list of the “Top 30 Political News Stories of 2011”. The bulk of the entry focuses on Colbert for “taking on one of the most important issues of the year that most of the mainstream media has ignored”.  Directly above the article is an advertisement for Americans Elect.  The COO of which, Elliot Ackerman, was on The Colbert Report not too long ago.

• The Global Post places Jon Stewart as 1st. in a list of the top five Occupy Wall Street spoofs of the year.  The article includes video clips of all the spoof-tastic segments.  Mr. Colbert comes in 5th., having been beaten for 4th. place by The Daily Show’s own Samantha Bee.  I imagine this will not go a long way toward improving the poor man’s fear of bees.

• HuffPost gives us a video montage of the “11 Funniest Late Night Moments” of the year. Jon Stewart’s goodbye to Glenn Beck takes 1st. place.  Stephen’s performance singing Friday on his one time BFFSM and now EEFSM Jimmy Fallon’s show, Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, lands at 4th. Hopefully the healing will begin around mid-March so we can see more moments like this and the Somewhere Out There duet, which has mysteriously disappeared from the internets.

[caption id=”” align=”aligncenter” width=”432” caption=”© Vince Bucci | Getty Images”][/caption]
 

• Splitsider has the boys back-to-back, in 2nd. and 3rd. place, in a list of the “Top Ten Moments Comedians Made Us Think”.  Jon came in 2nd. with a clip in which he discusses class warfare.  Stephen’s in 3rd. for “launching his Super PAC”.  The clip used is the Super PAC ad, “Undaunted Non-Coordination”.

• The Dallas Voice  places The Colbert Report and The Daily Show at a dead heat, tied for 1st place as best television program of the year.

• The HuffPost’s Rubbernecker gives both The Colbert Report and The Daily Show some love on a list of TV programs both “ridiculous and sublime”.   It’s safe to assume that our boys fall in the “sublime” category.  Their mention is about half way down the page (tenth in the list).

• Kick! Making Politics Fun gives us a 3:20 clip featuring many of our favorite people in their article: Best of 2011 Colbert, Stewart, Conan, Leno, Fallon and the GOP.  Try saying that three times fast.  The clips revolve around bits the comedians have done on Herman Cain, Donald Trump, and Newt Gingrich.

• Crooks and Liars ranks Stephen defending Papa Bear from the evil bloggers as 10th. in a “Top 50 Videos” list.  Jon comes in at 26th. for giving us a behind the scenes look at Perry’s brain during his New Hampshire foibles.

All About Colbert

[caption id=”” align=”aligncenter” width=”605” caption=”© Reuters”][/caption]
 

• Does TV.com need a specific reason to make a top 100 list?  No, they do not.  In that spirit, Stephen Colbert’s interviews made in their “Top 100 Everything” list for the year. The interview clip they choose is a Hub favorite as well, taken from the “My Fair Colbert” segments.

• McCook Daily Gazette’s Jeremy Blomstedt listed The Colbert Report as number 4 in his top 5 favorite TV shows of the year.  He sites Stephen’s Super PAC, Americans for a Better Tomorrow, Tomorrow, as the primary reason The Report superseded The Daily Show for him this year.

• @StephenAtHome makes Paste Magazine’s ”Top 100 Twitter Accounts” and comes in (drum roll, please) 3rd place!  Friend of the show, David Javerbaum takes 2nd with his @TweetOfGod.  There are actually quite a few humorous accounts that make the list.  So, if you need some new tweets to twat about, check it out.

• CNN’s Anderson Cooper honors Stephen’s “Absurd-u-Chart” by placing it as number 5 on a top 10 RedicuList countdown at the 360 site.  Mr. Cooper’s hilarious rebuttal to Stephen’s sticking him (literally, with peanut butter) on his Absurd-u-Chart (pronounced absurd-eww-chart) is definitely worth sitting through the thirty second advertisement that precedes it.  Mr. Cooper, I merely seek to use parentheses as often as you use colons, sir.

• While not in any way ranked, NPR does list their interview with Stephen titled,  ”Stephen Colbert: A ‘Company’ Man on Broadway” as one of their thirteen “Most Memorable Conversations”.  During which he sings, “Sorry-Grateful”.  He also discusses his fears of singing Sondheim, how difficult it was to interview him in character, and how he was influenced by him as a young man.  His version of “Send in the Clowns” is also included. For the FULL INTERVIEW go here.

 
[caption id=”” align=”aligncenter” width=”600” caption=”© Richard Perry | New York Times”][/caption]
 

• Entertainment Weekly’s Ken Tucker has Stephen at number 10 in a list of his favorite TV shows.  To hear him talk only about Stephen, watch the first 45 seconds of the 3 minute clip.  However, if you continue on you’ll hear an eloquent and brief descriptions of some pretty interesting shows.  What can you say?  The man has good taste.  If you prefer a picture slide show of the list, there is one here.

• Wired touts Colbert as one of  ”Pop Culture’s Tastiest Bits” stating, “As a hyperreal experiment in comedy, journalism, politics, culture and whatever, the Stephen Colbert you see on television four nights a week is the postmodern hydra spawn of  Network and Monty Python, all rolled into one bespectacled geek from South Carolina”.

• I Heart Jimmy put Jimmy’s “Relationship With Stephen Colbert” at the number 4 spot in their “Top 11 Highlights of 2011”.  Did I say that clip of Somewhere Out There disappeared off the internets…?  Check this out for a great round up of clips of our favorite frienemies.

• Speaking of Stephen and Jimmy: Indiewire has the live action clip of The Ambiguously Gay Duo, that they both starred in, as their top pick for “Best Videos of 2011”.

• Stephen made #1 in a HuffPost picture slideshow of the 25 funniest people of the year.

• A picture of Mr. Colbert outside the FEC makes Politico’s photographer Jay Westcott’s favorite photographs of the year.  His picture is the 8th. of 21.

• Colbert’s Super PAC came in 8th on a Top 10 “Biggest Comedy News Stories” list by Splitsider.

• Scooter McGavin’s 9th Green lists Stephen Colbert as 30 in a “Top 100 Most Entertaining People” list.

• The Wall Street Journal places a tweet from Stephen 1st in a “Top 10 Celebrity Tweets of 2011” list.

• Digital Life also lists a @StephenAtHome tweet (9 out of 10) among their Top Tweets of the year.

• Once again, Stephen’s tweet’s earn him a spot on a Top 90 Tweets list by BuzzFeed, his is the 4th. @TweetOfGod made this list as well.

Just Jon

[caption id=”” align=”aligncenter” width=”200” caption=”© Comedy Central”][/caption]
 

• AskMen ranks Jon Stewart as number 12 in a list of the “Top 49 Most Influential Men” of the year. The picture of Jon is definitely worth heading over for a peek.  Both Stephen and Jon have made the list in the past. Stephen: 2007, 2008, 2010.  Jon: 2009, 2010, and of course, this year.

• Newsvine gives The Daily Show top billing in their “Best TV Moments” list  for his take on the “death of Borders bookstores”.

• Paste Magazine has an entire tribute to “The 10 Best Jon Stewart/Glen Beck Gotcha Moments”.  Technically, it starts in 2009 but it it’s a fantastic round up of clips that’s worth checking out.

• Veracity Stew compiled a “Top Ten Bits” of Jon Stewart clips for 2011.  It’s got everything from Jon’s reaction to Bin Ladin’s death to his prank call to Governor Scott Walker.

Original Article

Who would Julie Bowen Claire Dunphy have an affair with? Stephen Colbert of course!! (6.15)
Or Hugh Laurie if he were to walk across the lot and visit the “Modern Family” set.

I always knew there was a reason why I was such a fan of Julie Bowen. She has good taste in men, and potential future co-stars!! I would love to see Stephen on “Modern Family”, if only he didn’t have a major scheduling conflict. Do I hear a Dunphy / Pritchett road trip to New York City!?!

Original Article

Americans for a Better Tomorrow, Tomorrow may be a running gag on “The Colbert Report” on Comedy Central, but it is spending money as it sees fit, with little in the way of disclosure, just like its noncomedic brethren.

Comedians, including Mr. Colbert in the last election, have undertaken faux candidacies. But his Super PAC riff is a real-world exercise, engaging in a kind of modeling by just doing what Super PACs do.

—————-

“I am much taken by this and can’t think of any real parallel in history,” said Stephen Hess of the Brookings Institution. “Yes, comedians have always told jokes about elections, but this is quite different. This is a funny person being very serious, actually talking about process. What comedian talks about process?”

Mr. Colbert not only talks about process, he has become a part of it. The current law governing political action committees was laid down in a 2010 Supreme Court ruling, which lifted many restrictions on how corporations, unions and others could spend money on behalf of almost any cause.

—————-

While most of the rest of the news media continue to cover the coming election with long-running tropes — whose horse is ahead and who has the most loot? — Mr. Colbert has taken the equivalent of a political homework assignment and sprinkled a little silly sauce on top, and people seem happy to dig in.

“He is taking on a serious subject that many Americans find deadly dull and is educating the broader public on why it matters and what is at stake,” said Sheila Krumholz, executive director of the Center for Responsive Politics. Still, she adds, “it’s all fun and games until somebody gets hurt, like a specific campaign or the electoral system.”

—————-

One person who works on “The Colbert Report​” who declined to be named, in keeping with the secrecy of Super PAC-hood, said that like the other soft-money operations with soft and cuddly names, Americans for a Better Tomorrow, Tomorrow is in it for the long haul, because, as he pointed out, “there wasn’t a lot of competition for this piece of real estate.” “Not even the actual news reporters want to cover campaign finance. We decided that we would just see how far we could go,” he said. “And it turns out that, like everyone else raising money in politics, we can pretty much do what we want.”

Full Article: New York Times.

(Thanks to Susan209 and Mariana312 for the link)

Original Article

Last night on “The Rachel Maddow Show” Rachel discussed (and gushed) about Stephen’s comic genius and his SuperPAC’s impact on the outcome of the Iowa Straw Poll.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

(Thanks to Mr. Arkadin for the link)

Original Article