Background on the Stephen Colbert Presidential bid: Is he for real?

Oooh! Lucky, lucky TWoP poster Miss Kean was in the audience at The Colbert Report last night, and she’s generously shared her experience, including a response to those of you who were wondering whether the announcement was serious. From her post (my emphasis added):

We got to sit in the front row, right in front of the desk . . . The stage manager came out to instruct us how to be enthusiastic and said casually that Colbert was on his way back from an appearance on TDS. I almost imploded and I also felt like I was the only one in the room who understood just what a cool, amazing announcement that was. Whoa!

Stephen came out with the usual fanfare, spinning lights, running around, lots of yelling, looking, as always, handsome and adorable. He did his running by, hand slapping thing and both my sister and I made contact. He asked for questions in the usual way, something about getting to talk to him before he morphs into the obnoxious guy . . . Then he called on me. I told him that I had been there two years ago tomorrow, for the very first show. He said “aawwww,” stepped close to me and stuck out his hand for me to shake it. When I put my hand out he took it and held it between both his hands. Oh my. And just kept it there. Oh my oh my. He said, “you’re a member of the original one hundred…you’re electric.” Then he let go of my hand and pointed quickly back and forth between us and said, “we’re electric.” Then he asked how the show had changed and I said it was much more polished now. He said, “Yes! Polished! I’m polished! That’s because they polish me before every show.” Then he bounded off to the next questioner before I got a chance to ask my question, but that was O-tay!

. . .

He sat down at the desk and that song with the line “it’s the end of the world as we know it” was playing. He mouthed along and occaisionally would make eye contact with someone in the audience. Once he made a slashing pantomime across his neck while he was mouthing “the end of the world.” There was some fussing with make-up (the glasses came off) and hair. They had to shoot the opening of the show three times, which was a delight. The first time he cracked up when he said the name “Tom Tacredo.” He commented that “you’ll like the jokes the second time around. They’re better when they’ve been aired out a little. Not wrapped in plastic any more. Hung on the line, flapping in the breeze.” The next time he said “Iraq wall” instead of “Iraq war.” He cracked up and said, “it’s even better the third time.” It was a joy to watch. He was positively giddy. The third take went smoothly. Each time they shot he would try a different way of approaching the camera. Once he pushed his chair way back and wheeled it in really fast toward the camera and the other two times he tried spinning his head or turning his body in a different way, just working on shaping the material as he went along.

The rest of the show was pretty much as you saw, though after he did the president/balloon drop, segment, he asked the audience, “how many of you thought that was real? How many of you though it was fake?” He looked around and it was about evenly divided, which he said was interesting. Then he said, “because we’re really doing this. We’re filing papers tomorrow.” He was grinning and obviously loved the whole idea.

There’s a bit more in the original post; go here to read it all. What a fabulous experience, Miss Kean!

Check out this cNet article, which features comments from the Democratic National Committee of South Carolina. They said that “Werner added that representatives from The Colbert Report had placed calls to the state party’s headquarters several weeks ago but that the party thought it was all a joke at the time.”

Stephen Colbert announces presidential bid, but is it the truth or truthiness?