Stephen Colbert for President 2008!

Nation, I have finally solved the riddle of how a benevolent and white God could possibly allow the candidacy of Stephen Colbert, would-be favorite son of South Carolina (and potentially favored god-child of, naturally, God), to be so viciously pre-empted by things as simple as $35,000 and the contempt of Democrats.

The answer, so blindingly simple I can’t believe it’s escaped me for so long, is this: Stephen Colbert’s candidacy has NOT ended. No, in fact, it continues. You, however, are either having a nightmare or in a coma having a nightmare, or possibly having a nightmare about being in a coma and having a nightmare in which your life continues on as normal since you went to sleep/became comatized sometime last week. Your mind is now constructing a hellish dystopic future that would make H.R. Giger blush. Stephen Colbert’s apparent lack of a candidacy is merely the first fanciful step of the imagination down a path that will eventually take us somewhere between Mad Max and Bladerunner, maybe with some Postman thrown into the grinder.

By which I mean, if you own a tape or DVD of Kevin Costner’s The Postman … throw it into a grinder. Any will do. Coffee grinder, herb grinder … I believe a garbage disposal qualifies as a grinding device. Use a garbage growler just to be safe. Growler sounds way more like grinder than ‘disposal’ does anyway.

All righty Colbertians (colh-BEAR-ee-uhns), Halloween is almost upon us. No doubt this weekend you were already beseiged by ghouls, goblins, and oh-so-clever kids dressed up as democratic lobbyists. As if it wasn’t creepy enough to be without our beloved Report for what was truly a dark, dark week. A week so dark … that it has inspired an evil, darkling Hallowe’en poem! A poem so evil, so terrifying that we could not in good conscience omit the apostrophe from between the two e’s, there to indicate the absent ‘v’ from the once-conjunctual ‘evening’, as in “All-Hallow Even”! If you don’t enjoy the poem, at least enjoy the holiday. I myself will be roaming the Nixon Library in Yorba Linda, desperate for a little piece of that liminal action - you know, the limited time when spirits can make contact with the mortal realm?

One Halloween night, my Colbertian posse,

I sat in my room with eyes bloodshot and glossy

On such an occasion I’ve nothing to fear

For I live Halloween every day of the year

Each day I see folk in the strangest of clothes

Assaulting the eyes and assaulting the nose

Burners and burnouts, hipster and hippie

I guess I ought not to be getting lippy

For freakiness is always the status quo

When you live in a city like San Francisco

But on this particular October’s day

I simply had no idea what I could say

For I had seen something so awful and grim

That chances of my forgetting it were slim

A lone trick-or-treater appeared at my door

With a countenance I have seen often before

It haunts me in sleep, tormenting me when awake,

The meanest thing my ‘magination could make

So what was this costume, all frightening and grossy?

None other than our Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

“The horror … the horror.”

-Marlin Brando, Apocalypse Now

Any ideas on where the poem should go from here?
I CHALLENGE YOU, NATION, TO BUST A RHYME LIKE IT’S QUITTIN’ TIME

 

Ladies and Gentlemen;

My name is Alex and I will be your blogger for the next seventeen months. We know you have your choice in shameless Colbert idolatry, and we appreciate your decision to worship with us.

As the election draws irrevocably, inevitably and incrementally nearer, our thoughts of course turn to Stephen Colbert’s chances of becoming President. Everybody wants to know what they can do to help, but most people are bored with the tired old cliches like campaign signs or commercials. Are you thinking what I’m thinking? That’s right … the horrible and probably painful manipulation of Stephen Colbert’s Genetic Code!
“Okay, Alex, put down the crazy pills,” you might say (and I won’t), “surely Colbert could win the Presidency based on his charm, wit, intellect and disarming dress sense!” Sure, he may be the blindingly obvious choice of the people, of both the common, the uncommon and the trans-common man, but Al Gore received the majority of the public’s votes and look what happened to HIM.

Um … he won an Oscar. Okay, bad example, but I digress.

The point is - wouldn’t it give Stephen that much more of an edge in any campaign if he harbored certain mutant, magical, alien and/or superhuman powers? Imagine the possibilities - he could perhaps soar through the skies with Stephen Jr., ensuring the little guy learns to stay the hell away from that Canadian border. Debates would be complete landslides - “My opponent’s stance in favor of Nancy Pelosi’s canonization makes me angry. And you don’t want to see me angry.” Or perhaps he would benefit from telepathic powers - not only could he answer his interview subjects’ questions himself on the show, eliminating the need for them to talk (or be paid as much), but he would instantly know the true intentions of devious foreign dignitaries. Like the Iranians. Or the French. Or Nancy Pelosi.

I think we get the idea, people. Stephen needs a shot of Super in the ass and he needs it quick. I don’t care what you have to do: irradiate a spider and slip it into the studio; accidentally replace one of the show cameras with a miscalibrated gamma-ray generator; “accidentally” misplace an ancient, mysterious Nordic hammer in his glove compartment; hell, graft a hitherto-undiscovered and nigh-indestructible metal to every inch of his skeletal structure for all I care. But in the name of all that is truthy, do something.

For lack of anything better to do, try submitting your creative conceptualizations of just what a superhero Colbert would look like to beezling@gmail.com and we might just consider re-posting the less awful submissions. Here’s something to inspire from our friends at MediaBistro: