Stephen Colbert for President 2008!

On Telegraph.co.uk, the newspaper’s US editor Toby Harnden has posted a terrific entry discussing Mark Twain as a presidential candidate. Y’all ought to check it out, ’specially as he had the decency to link to our fine blog. Harnden writes:

Have written a piece for the paper about Mark Twain, Mark Twain lookalikes and the 2008 election. Twain impersonator Jim Wadell was kind enough to give me a copy of Twain’s manifesto for president, entitled “Mark Twain as a Candidate” and published in the “Frankford Chronicle on January 1st 1879.

Twain was essentially doing what Stephen Colbert tried this month before falling foul of Democrats in South Carolina – mounting a presidential bid in character as a ludicrous political figure as a way of highlighting the emptiness of much that goes on in US politics. Patt Morrison of the LA Times makes the comparison in a very good oped about “joke” candidacies here.

World-wide, baby. Already the Colbert Nation is spreading its message across the Atlantic. In the comments to that blog, I was challenged to put forth Colbert’s Manifesto. Here is my humble effort.

MANIFESTO COLBERTO

Stephen Colbert’s manifesto, though I cannot claim to speak it with any authority or permission, is thus:
America is no longer just a Nation Indivisible - It is a Nation Undeniable. Why can it not be denied? Because only the truth can be denied; but America no longer deals in such trivialities as the truth. We have become a Nation of Truthiness. We have become a Nation that transcends reality in favor of Wikiality. We are a Nation of triumphant eagles, soaring high above the brutish bears stuck to the terra firma of outdated ideals. We are no longer just A Nation. We are THE Nation. The Colbert Nation. United We Stand. Tread On Us Do Not. The Buck Stopped Here Already.

For clarification, I recommend conducting research at www.stephencolbert08.com

I NEED YOU, NATION, TO CONSTRUCTIVELY CRITICIZE THIS MANIFESTO.

Now tell us what you think. The winning suggestion, as decided by a panel of four webmasterful judges, wins a hand-inked scroll with the manifesto done in the calligraphic style of your choice. No fibbin’!

 

This morning I’ve decided to sort through a brief selection of random comments, just to let you know what sort of wonderful, creative and sometimes impotently furious commenters the site has managed to attract.

7 Responses to “The Truthiness Is Out There…”

1. Reggie p Says:
   November 5th, 2007 at 7:41 am eSomeone publish names and phone numbers of sc committee. We must protest!
2. Reggie p Says:
   November 5th, 2007 at 8:59 am eI called the committee (800 841-1817) (info@scdp.org)and they listened to me but they sort of blew me off. They better start taking Stephen seriously. Everyone should call and email to protest South Carolina’s discrimination against Stephen just because he happens to tell jokes. Every other politician tells a joke once in a while!
3. josh Says:
   November 5th, 2007 at 9:55 am eDisagree with the SC Dems? Let them know what you think:

   http://www.colbertforsouthcarolina.com/

4. Peter I Says:
   November 5th, 2007 at 9:36 pm eMy top 10 reasons for Stephen Colbert as President of South Carolina:

   10.) Really, do we need to have any reasons to vote for this guy?

   9.) The next time a comedian goes on TV and gets the guys from Crossfire fired it could be the Prez himself.

   8.) Nacho Cheese Doritos

   7.) Second best interviewer after John Stewart. Maybe this way the leader of the free world can actually hold a conversation with the rest of the leaders of the free world. Instead of just trying to look like they are having a good time together.

   6.) 1.200.000 Friends on Facebook

   5.) “I, Stephen Colbert, do hereby pledge to practice absinth-tinence by remaining absinth-tinent from Absinthe . . . Since Absinthe incidents in many instances induce incipient synesthetic inspiration and sinister synthetic insistence on sin, I sincerely insist I will be absent from instances of Absinthe ingestion, this instant”.
   If you can say this really fast, you can run this country better then most current runners-for-the-presidency.

   4.) ~4200 new voter registrations since putting a link up on Facebook, thats 1 voter a minute. Maybe soon 53 percent in the great state of South Carolina go vote.

   3.) The other guys didn’t think that he was who they thought he was. They let him off the hook!

   2.) Vice President: John Stewart

   1.) He is funnier then W, and he does it on purposery.

   Thanks for the info on how to get in touch with the Dems of SC, I just wrote them an email to let them know why Colbert would make a better Prez then the last one!

5. Stephen Colbert for President 2008! Clinton Plays Dirty; Is Obama Anti-Colbert? Says:
   November 8th, 2007 at 4:30 am e[…] All I know is I’m going to continue to go through a carton of Americone Dream a day until the truthiness is revealed and this crisis is over. By which I mean, I hope I wake up soon. […]
6. DAVID J ANDREONI Says:
   November 8th, 2007 at 9:55 am eMR. COLBERTR YOU SIR:ARE THE BIGGEST ASSHOLE ON TV. I CERTAINLY DO NOT TUNE YOU IN ON COMEDY CENTRAL. BY ACCIDENT I I SAW YOU ON MEET THE PRESS.AND ON THE FACTOR. YOU’RE NOT FUNNY, IN FACT WE FIND YOU OBNOXIOUS, AND POMPAS. YOU ARE A JOKE AND I AM NOT LAFFING. BE WELL, KEEP B SING THE PUBLIC.
7. Beezling Says:
   November 8th, 2007 at 10:05 am eMr. Andreoni;

   I’m not sure who this “Mr. Colbertr” is with whom you seem to have much beef. I would say you are in fact heavy with beef. And “We” find you obnoxious? Is that the royal we, or are you claiming to represent some form of a constituency? Those with beef say No to Colbert, apparently. And those without dictionaries or keyboards without sticky Caps Lock buttons. Personally, nation, I think we need a new term to describe the failure of an insultor to convey an insult to an insultee (in this case me) due to inherent flaws in grammar and spelling. Today’s word is “MISMEANING” It’s like a misspelling, except it goes so far as to cloud what you mean and generally start the fubar train rolling towards the what-the-hell-happened depot.
   If Stephen Colbert is POMPAS, it simply demonstrates his exceptional talents. I mean, I’ve never even heard the word pompas, let alone know that someone could BE it.
   Mr. Andreoni, I am not laffing either. In fact, no one is laffing or has ever laffed. I think only the pompas can laff. Such things are beyond us mere mortals.
   Finally, I don’t know what it means to B Sing the public. But I’m sure Stephen Colbert can and will do it. And he’ll do it with aplomb; he’ll do it with panache; he’ll do it with god-damn PRESIDENTIALITY!

   With great respect and humble gratitude to all posters, as intelligent minds can disagree,
   Alex Brant-Zawadzki
   StephenColbert08.com

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.

The brave folk over at OC Weekly have hijacked our truthiness for their own purposes. But they are noble purposes.

Though this is not necessarily campaign-related, its news significance is staggering enough, and the truthiness emphasized enough, to warrant a reference.

We need something to cheer us up after the South Carolina Snub.

 

 

Truthiness About Carona Revealed!

Posted by Gustavo Arellano in Carona Watch 2007, Main, Naranja News

November 2, 2007 11:36 AM

Permalink | Comments (3)

Turns out our Scott Moxley had everything wrong about Sheriff Carona, according to the DC-based news source Prime Legitimate News. The pictures between Carona and Las Vegas mobster Rick Rizzolo? Carona “went undercover as a corrupt cop” in “an undercover police uniform pretending to party, accept large cash contributions, even going so far as to sample strippers in Rizzolo’s presence to make the criminals believe that he would be the kind of man who might throw his Christian values out the door in exchange for sex and cash.” Carona allowing a felon to film inside off-limits Homeland Security facilities? According to PLN, “The whole anti-terror exercise was a FAKE! Carona organized the entire phony exercise so that the Saudis would THINK they knew how America does anti-terror, but they really had no clue at all.”

“By reporting the story,” PLN concludes, “the OC Weekly blew Carona’s cover just like Joe Wilson blew his wife’s cover as a CIA agent when he started criticizing the War On Terror.” Read more of PLN’s shocking truthiness here.

 

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: