Soooooo . . . what a night! I ducked out of work early (and I’ll be paying for that this weekend, but it was worth every second of it) and got my butt over to Lisner as early as possible, so I lucked out and was in the middle section of the auditorium, roughly the sixth(?) row. My memory may be shaky in a few spots, but here’s what I heard this evening, to the best of my recollection. (There may be some lapses in that because of the overdose of pure delight, so I apologize in advance for any errors, but — !!!) Joy!

First surprise of the night: Who should be interviewing Stephen (and “Stephen”) tonight but TIM RUSSERT?! Totally unexpected, but an awesome, awesome bonus (made all the funnier by the fact that when Stephen was introduced by the woman from the Smithsonian, she listed several of the stories he’s covered in recent weeks, and she included “pumpkin riots” in the list). Stephen and Tim had clearly come from their Meet the Press taping, which they referenced at several points throughout the interview.

Some basic notes:

  • Stephen spoke for a little over an hour.
  • He was wearing a black suit, white shirt with French cuffs, a red tie, black shoes and a WristSTRONG bracelet (which he later gave to an audience member).
  • Several of his brothers and sisters were in the audience tonight, and Stephen was clearly thrilled that they were there.
  • He was very gracious, as ever.

More excruciating details behind the cut.

EDITED: As requested, more details added (including Stephen’s recollections of the RNC and DNC filmings, thoughts on Nixon, and kind words for “Bonnie R.”).

They covered a lot of the same ground that gets covered in all of Stephen’s interviews: why don’t you have an accent, why don’t you let your kids watch the show, did you know the WHCD would be such a big moment, etc. I wish people would come up with new stuff more often, but it’s always a joy to see Stephen, and at least he didn’t get asked about the plane crash this time around.

Here’s one great story, some of which I hadn’t heard before:

Russert referenced that quote from the recent Parade article, about how if you’re laughing, you can’t be afraid, and Stephen said he’d discovered that it was physiologically impossible to be afraid while you were laughing. He started talking about the aftermath of 9/11, when everyone was terrified and no one knew how to be funny, or whether it was still okay to be funny. He mentioned that he was working at The Daily Show at the time, and he said that no one — not just the folks at TDS — really knew how to be funny then, but he thought that Jon’s reaction and take on the tragedy were particularly well-expressed. Anyhow, he said that they’d written tons and tons of jokes in that period, but that they threw it all out because the jokes weren’t “tender” or “gentle” enough (I forget what word he used, but that was the gist). He went on to say that he and Steve Carell had actually written an “Even Steph/ven” segment about whether it was okay to be funny/how to be funny after that tragedy (sorry, my memory’s fuzzy there again). In it, there was the “Yes!” “No!” and then Stephen *pied* Steve. Very gently. Then very gently wiped his face off. Then asked Steve — very tenderly — if that was okay. Steve replied, “Yes,” and that was it. But he said they cut it and never used it because it still didn’t seem gentle enough. I would LOVE to see that, even now.

Stephen also expanded on a few stories I’d read about before, so that was a lot of fun. He mentioned that when he was invited to perform at the WHCD, he called Jon right away to tell him about it, and Jon was like, “What, like you got invited to be a guest?” And Stephen told him that it was to perform. Jon: “To speak?! Like with the — ? And the — ? You know, sitting right there?! Have they seen your show?” It was adorable the way he described it, imitating Jon’s incredulous yet totally excited tone. Stephen said they knew it would be a rare opportunity to speak “at the epicenter of the bullshit”. Russert asked him if he ever had a clue it would be so controversial (that’s not the word he used, but I can’t remember how he phrased it), and Stephen said that the only time he realized that it might be was on the train ride to DC. He mimicked his wife sitting in front of him on the train, reading his script, then: “[*gasp*] Stephen!” She’d turn half-way around in her seat to face him. “You’re not saying that!” And he just replied, “Yes.” (There was the sort of wide-eyed, Stone Phillips, “Oh it’s true. Yes,” tone and nod at that point.) Hee!

Despite Russert’s re-treading over ground the die-hard Colbert fans have heard a million times already, he was a good interviewer. He made fun of himself — and the press — a bit when talking about the WHCD, driving home the point by bringing up the BKAD segment with Lynn Westmoreland and saying, “Sometimes, we just don’t ask the right questions,” before explaining that Stephen had asked Westmoreland (who, as we recall, had proposed requiring the display of the Ten Commandments in the House and the Senate) to name the Ten Commandments. That got a huge laugh from the audience; it really is a classic segment and I definitely haven’t tired of it yet.

They also spent some time talking about Stephen’s faux candidacy. They first talked about how South Carolina has proportional representation, so if Stephen wins 2.5% of the vote in the South Carolina primary, he can send a delegate to the Convention who will vote for him. Russert laid out a hypothetical wherein Stephen has his one delegate, but the Democrats want to make a *statement* and to select their nominee by acclimation, be that Hillary, Obama, Edwards, etc. Stephen’s delegate would obviously stand in the way of that. Russert asked Stephen, would you trade your one delegate for an opportunity to speak at the Convention? You could tell Stephen was totally torn on that one; Russert even teased him about it a little bit, pointing out how Stephen was such an attention whore, etc.; Stephen was clearly stumped on just which he’d prefer. [Explanation: Stephen had called himself an attention whore -- or was it an "adoration whore?" -- earlier in the evening while basking in his standing ovation. He joked that it was because he was the youngest of eleven children.] Anyhow, Stephen said he’d burn that bridge when he came to it.

Russert’s best line of the evening, IMO, came when he was asking Stephen about a possible running mate. Russert said that he’d heard Stephen was considering Sen. Larry Craig as a running mate, and they bantered about that for a while, with Stephen tossing out innuendo like, “I’ve reached out to him . . . ” and “We had – you can call it a ‘conversation’ . . . “, etc. At that point, Russert said, “Are you STALLING?” and everyone, including Stephen, cracked up. Stephen got out of his chair and down on one knee in tribute to that line.

EDIT II: (Removing links and consolidating posts)

Russert asked Stephen why he wrote a book, and Stephen explained that it was because O’Reilly, et al, do that sort of thing all the time, so “Stephen” had to do it, too. He and Russert talked about other pundits that Stephen models himself after ( i.e., Hannity for his total lack of curiosity, Lou Dobbs — Stephen mused that Dobbs may be SO passionate about immigrants and broken borders that Dobbs may actually consider all of America to be his *personal* space, and no one likes it when his/her personal space is invaded — for his passion about our broken borders, Anderson Cooper for being as shiny as a new dime — the “Silver Surfer” of journalism, etc.), but Stephen said that they have to aspire to be the king, and O’Reilly remains king of that genre.

They also talked a bit about where the money being donated to Stephen’s campaign will go, so Stephen got to pimp donorschoose.org again, which was cool. He also gleefully noted (again) that he is kicking Obama’s ass on that site.

Stephen mentioned Huckabee at some point, too; I think when they were discussing running mates. He said that he has warm feelings for Huckabee because of Huckabee’s promising him the Vice President spot (several times over), and also because he thinks nothing *truly* bad can happen in a country where someone has to say “President Huckabee”. Just saying “President Huckabee” makes things seem less dire. And that is pretty funny, even to someone like me, who would NOT find much else about a Huckabee administration very entertaining.

He also talked about the DNC and RNC tapings. It was pretty funny to hear him talk about the difference between the two (even though I’d heard it before): that the DNC was overbooked and totally in violation of the fire code, but that the atmosphere was totally passionate, like a Baptist revival. The RNC, on the other hand, was much more restrained; true believers, of course, but more of a Presbyterian feel than a Baptist feel. A woman asked him about how he feels when people take his satire seriously, and he mentioned the piece he’d done at the DNC — the one with the “diverse” group of Black, Native American, gay, etc., members — and how the punchline was that it was a waste of the party to have all these diverse members. Well, evidently, when he was at the RNC, after the nominee was announced and the balloons were dropped, the place just emptied out; like, everyone was *gone* before the balloons even hit the ground. Stephen was sitting there in the emptiness, relaxing, with his feet up, and some guy from TX came up to compliment him on that piece; this guy had taken it literally! So Stephen explained that it was irony, that he was actually making fun of the monolithic nature of the RNC, and just completely deconstructed the whole segment for the guy. And the guy listened to the whole thing, then patted Stephen’s knee and said, “Well, if you say so, I believe you. Anyway, thanks; loved that report!” (I believe the phrase :HEADDESK: was invented for times like this.)

Russert also mentioned, at one point, having seen Stephen washing his window at one of the DNCs, and Stephen started laughing. He said, “Yeah, I was trying SO hard to get arrested that day!” Everyone started laughing at that, and Stephen explained that it was because it was the anniversary of the 1968 Dan Rather dust-up at the Convention, and they wanted footage of Stephen getting ejected. He described how, in the Rather footage, Dan was wearing the big earphones, carrying one of those huge microphones they used to have and was wearing one of those suits that make you look really solid and paunchy around the middle. So Stephen dressed up with a backpack full of stuff, a cord running out of it to his big headset, and carrying a boom mic that they’d dismantled but that was still just grossly oversized. He said he was down on the Convention floor without any credentials, and he reminded us that this was in 2004, when the nation was at “Code Red”. He told us how they’d all been drilled on how you couldn’t go anywhere without your credentials; you needed a different one for every place you went there, so he just went in empty-handed and had The Daily Show‘s cameras tracking him in some long shots, trying to get the footage. Well, not quite “empty-handed”. He’d grabbed a scrap of paper and written “STEVIE” on it with his left hand, then written “Ask me about shipping” on another scrap; that’s what he had instead of credentials. He said he was confronted by these officers and Secret Service people who were like, “Uh, you can’t be here; you have to leave.” And Stephen was just sitting there, saying, “Make me.” Oh my! The bratty little tone he used there — hilarious! And these guys were just begging him, pained, “Come on, *please* leave.” Finally, Stephen said, “You’ll have to arrest me.” Them: “No.” Stephen: “Why not?!” Them: “Because we know that somewhere in this room, there’s a camera tracking this.” HA! Stephen said that he finally just grabbed the first, semi-official staffer person and *demanded* that she throw him out; that’s the footage that they ended up using.

They took a few audience questions, too. Most of them were of the “If you were elected, what would you do about ___?” variety. Those didn’t do much for me, because there’s only so much humor you can really put into an answer to that type of thing. He also got asked about whether he’d had any musical training and whether any of his kids were in music. The woman asking said she’d posed that question to Jon once — something about how children at an early enough age have perfect pitch, etc. — and Stephen cut her off with a disbelieving interjection of “Are you saying Jon has perfect pitch?!” that was really quite funny. He then told the story about how he learned guitar at the age of 25 after his then-girlfriend ripped his heart out, stomped on it, pressed it, notarized it, encased it in fiberglass, and mailed it to him, so in his misery, he picked up a guitar. He said that all the songs he knows how to play on the guitar are things he learned in that six month period . . . at the end of which, he met a lovely girl, fell in love, and put down the guitar. Awwww! (He also mentioned that he still knows enough to play “Froggie Went A-Courtin’” for his kids.)

I also got to ask him a question (wheeee!!), and I mentioned that I’d read in several sources that there was a potential writers’ strike approaching (he concurred, explaining to the audience that October 31st was the deadline, “Spoooooooky!”). I wanted to know, as someone who has tickets to see both his and Jon’s shows in the next month, whether there were any contingency plans in place. The rest of the audience seemed to find this funny, but I honestly was curious. He told me to call him(!!) and that he’d read the paper to me over the phone. HAHAHAHAHAHA!

When they were done speaking, Russert left fairly quickly, but at least half of the audience stuck around to get books signed. He actually signed both my book and my blad, which I’m very excited about. When it was my turn to get my book signed, he looked up and said, “You asked me a question.” Because I’m dumb, I just said, “Yeah.” (Idiot!) Then, while he was signing my book, I asked him how many people noticed the eagles in his eyes on the cover of the book. He said, “No one does! At least, you’re the first to have mentioned it.” He seemed tickled that I had noticed it, and held up my blad by way of comparison to show that the eagles were added after the blads were printed. So cute!

A couple final tidbits:

Russert asked Stephen about the Nixon poster he has hanging in his office at one point, and Stephen got this delighted grin on his face when Russert mentioned it. He said it was something he’d stolen from one of his older brothers or sisters, pointing down into the front rows (where they were sitting) and gleefully saying, ” One of you worked on a Nixon campaign; I got it from one of you!” He talked a bit about Nixon then, about how he was so liberal, he’d never even get elected as a Democrat nowadays; he’d started the EPA, lowered the voting age, ended the draft, opened up a dialogue with China, etc. I think the best part, though, was that he described the poster, itself, in great detail: it had all these ‘issues’ in watercolor-y print around the edges of the poster (“Drugs!” “The Draft!” etc.) and in the center was a picture of Nixon (he demonstrated how Nixon was posed, sitting forward with his legs apart and his heels dug in so that you saw the bottom of his shoes, “looking supremely uncomfortable, with hugely tapered legs” because of the foreshortening) listening to this child, and the child had a hearing aid (“They covered EVERYTHING!”), and the center slogan said “Nixon: Now more than ever.” Hee! This lead to some reminiscing about Nixon between Stephen and Russert, Stephen talking about how he remembered these images of Nixon walking on beaches (“In wingtips!”) and Russert telling a story about how Nixon’s people wanted to film him doing something unscripted “to humanize him.” Nixon agreed, so they took a camera crew as Nixon went to visit his mother. “And he walked up to the front door, and he RANG THE DOORBELL.” Stephen started laughing really hard at that, too.

And one other thing I forgot that totally tickled me: Stephen referenced the “Green Screen Challenge”, and he mentioned that he had spoken to the winner of the contest on the phone. He said, “She said the nicest thing to me, maybe the nicest compliment anyone’s ever given to me.” I’m not going to get the wording right on this, but he said that she had, in essence, thanked him for putting all of the ridiculousness and absurdity and *truthiness* into one form so that “his character gave us a standard” by which all other ridiculousness and absurdity, etc., could be measured. I just have to say that I think it’s so amazing that Stephen listens to these compliments and takes them so much to heart, so much so that he will mention them in other public appearances over a year after the fact. It really demonstrates just what kind of a person he is, I think; this is someone whose own celebrity has in NO way corrupted the genuinely kind and appreciative person he seems to be.

I don’t think I’ve lost the goofy grin since early this evening!

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