Episode 4052 (04/21/2008)

“If I learned one thing from the Liberty Bell, it’s that crack is whack. Stay in school, kids! This is The Colbert Report!“

All You Can’t Eat: “Tonight, is the world running out of food? That would explain Paul Newman’s new line of 100% organic premium Ranch nothing!”

• Philly loves Stephen
• Stephen discusses the global food crisis … with “Bobby”

The Audacity of Pope: “Then, the Pope visits America. I hear his Popemobile still has that ‘new Pope’ smell.”

• First guest: My Life With the Saints – Father James Martin, SJ

Belt Sanders: “And, my guest Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont is the Senate’s only Socialist. Which means I have to nail every part of him equally.”

• Stephen talks to Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders

In closing: [Scene opens with Stephen, wearing a Colbert Report bib and eating ribs] Folks, that is it for the Report. I’d like to wish a special farewell to my stage manager, Bobby, whose, ah [Stephen, smiling, takes a big bite of one of the ribs] whose last show was today. Earlier tonight, he, ah … he “tendered” his resignation. Mmmm. So tender. Let’s take a fond look back. [Clip montage of "Bobby" moments] We’re gonna miss you, Bobby. We’re also saying goodbye to “Eric Drysdale“, one of our talented writers. But you know what, folks? Writers are a dime a dozen. Stage managers like Bobby? Rare. [Stephen pulls a familiar looking headset out of his plate of ribs] Good night!

• Word in the credits reverts back to “PRESIDENT BUSH HAVE A HOTDOG WITH ME”
• It is great to be back in New York City even though I had a wonderful time in Philadelphia. And I don’t think I’m alone; take a look at what Philadelphia did for me at the top of the PECO Energy Building! [Clip of the Crown Lights at the PECO building saying, "Philly Loves Colbert Nation!"] That is great! But, ah … but “love”? Um … Philly look, we had a great, ah, time … but you know it was one week. And you know … ah, you know, things happen on the road … ah … I mean, we’ll always have great memories. I’ll call you. Maybe.
• One of the reasons it is great to be back is that I have missed my trusty New York stage manager, Bobby. Hey, Bobby!
• Bobby, what did you do while we were away? [Bobby: Well, I slept in your office all week to guard it from the interns, like you told me to.] Bobby, I never told you to sleep in my office all week. I told you to stay AWAKE in my office all week! Okay? Those little grubbers go in to steal my life essence.
• Nation, when you’re covering a landmark Presidential campaign, little stories sometimes fall through the cracks. For instance, the little story of a massive global food shortage. Jim? [Clip from CNN interview with (friend of the show) Jeffrey D. Sachs, discussing the food shortage and ensuing worldwide riots.]
• Editor’s note: I mentioned this in the comments to an earlier post, but I’m a particular fan of freerice.com as just one site that allows my inner wordinista to come out and play AND contributes free rice to the UN’s World Food Program. Just sayin’.
• I know firsthand how awful a food riot can be. Last week, Whole Foods had a sale on star fruit? It was a madhouse. I could barely make it to the bok choy.
• Now, some blame the food crisis on factors like overpopulation and climate change, although that ‘climate change’ excuse might be a distraction by Al Gore so we won’t notice him eating everything. But others say our own government is adding to the shortage. Jim? [Additional clip from CNN interview with Jeffrey D. Sachs, discussing the way the embrace of biofuels exacerbates the problem] Ridiculous. Using corn to make fuel isn’t causing a food shortage. If there’s one thing we’ve done for our poor, it’s to give them plenty of corn. In the form of high fructose corn syrup. [Editor's note: No kidding. Have you read (friend of the show) Michael Pollan's book The Omnivore's Dilemma?] That is like getting a ful serving of vegetables in every packet of Starburst … Ironically, they’re fruit-flavored.
• Now, I have pointed out on this show before that visionary billionaire Ted Turner has a solution to the food shortage. [Clip of Turner talking about climate change, the failure of crops and humans' turning to cannibalism]
• Cannibalism! It might actually be the future. If so, I am proud to announce that my 2012 presidential coverage will be sponsored by Sour Cream ‘n’ Man flavored Doritos. Put some man in your mouth! *chomp* C’mon! C’mon, that sounds a little good, doesn’t it? Sounds a little good — salty.
• I predict in ten years that Ted Turner’s brainchild, CNN, will be the ‘Cannibal News Network’, and Anderson Cooper 360 just be an hour of him rotating on a spit!
• Man! Man, I gotta say, all this talk about food has got me hungry. Say, Bobby, do you think Turner is right? That the horrors of cannibalism are right around the corner?
• Bobby: Well, I mean, ‘horrors’; that’s a loaded word, Stephen. It implies a judgment derived from a specific set of cultural values. [Stephen stares intensely, hungrily, at Bobby] I mean, I’ve tried to develop an enlightened perspective, free of Western prejudices, but, ah, who’s to say my beliefs are any more valid than, say, the ancient Aztecs, who thought that by eating the flesh [image of Bobby is replaced by an image of a giant roasted fowl holding a clipboard and wearing a headset] of their enemies, they could absorb their vitality? But I’m sure you’ll agree that when you discuss endo-cannibalism in the same breath as ecto-cannibalism … [Stephen, still staring, begins wiping his mouth, as though to suppress a drool reflex] Are you okay, Stephen?
• Stephen: [in an ominously flat tone] Oh, I’m fine. [More animated, to self] Shake if off, Colbert, shake it off! You can’t eat another co-worker. [Raised eyebrow, darker tone] They’re still looking for Craig Kilborn.
• Nation, this past weekend was huge for Roman Catholics of all faiths. [*Crunch!*] What was that noise? [camera switches to Bobby, an apple lodged in his mouth, mumbling "Oh, sorry."] Bobby, no eating on the set! We eat … [trailing off and licking lips, swallowing] later. After the show. [To self] Shake it off!
• Anyway, if there is a whiff of fallibility in the air today, it is because the Pope has left the continent. It was his first visit to the United States, and, boy, was I nervous! Would he be as popular as John Paul II? Could he charm the media? Would America fall in love with him? Just look at that skin, those cheeks, those eye sockets! Oh, you could get lost in those babies. Seriously. If you go in there, bring a flashlight.
• There were some challenges to the charm offensive. For instance, some in the Jewish community were offended by the pontiff’s decision earlier this year to reinstate an old Good Friday prayer which calls for God to “… illuminate their hearts so that they may recognize Jesus Christ …” as their Lord and Savior. Strong words. But not when you consider prayers from the Inquisition, which call for the illumination of Jews the old fashioned way: with fire.
• More importantly, could the Pope win over a packed house of 60,000 American Catholics in Yankee Stadium? The stakes were high, not just for the Pope, but for the Lord. Follow me on this one: America is God’s chosen country, and if the Pope, the vicar of Christ, can’t charm us, then, as I understand it, Jesus is not the Son of God. Life has no meaning, we’re just all random balls of protoplasm, the stars blindly run, we were spontaneously created by an unthinking universe! There is no Heaven, no twenty-four hour cloud trampolines, and the Eucharist is not the Body of Christ, it is just empty carbs!
• So, did he do it? Here to hopefully renew my faith in my faith is friend of the show, Father Jim Martin.
• Your book My Life with the Saints, which I’m reading right now, is fantastic. I’m not in here, I notice; I’m not listed as a saint.
• Martin: Yeah, that’s More My Life with the Saints. That’ll be the next book.
• Stephen: [laughing] My Life with the Saints, II: The Re-Saintening. Okay. Now, before we get into how the Pope did on this latest trip, you were not always a fan of this guy, right?
• Martin: I wasn’t, yeah.
• Stephen: Tell me your reaction when this Pope was elected.
• Martin: Well, I wrote somewhere that, when he stepped out on the balcony after his election in the Vatican, I wanted to jump off of my balcony.
• Stephen: [stifling a horrified laugh] That’s bold! That’s bold for a man of the cloth!
• Is it hard to follow John Paul II? Because that was such a beloved, you know, figure. He was “Il Papa”; he was the Holy Father that we think of.
• Martin: Right.
• Stephen: And now Mother Church has a new Holy Father; it’s like the Holy “Stepfather”. It takes a while to get used to him, right?
• Martin: You know, for a lot of people, especially young Catholics, John Paul was the only Pope that they knew. But you know, Benedict, I think, has said I’m not John Paul, and he’s really stepped into it, and he’s his own person. He’s more of a shy, bookish person, but people really warmed to him during his visit in the United States –
• Stephen: How did it go … you were at Yankee Staduim, right?
• Martin: I was.
• Stephen: Did he win the crowd? How did it go?
• Martin: Well, honestly, it was a very emotional experience. I mean, for me, to be with the person who’s, you know, we believe is the successor of Saint Peter, and also be with all these 60,000 Catholics who are just happy to be Catholic after, you know, some tough times in the Church. It was very emotional, and I … it was one of the most wonderful days of my life. I know that sounds cheesy, you know Doritos cheesy, but –
• Stephen: [laughing] That could be a new flavor: “Papal Cheesy”.
• Martin: [laughing] That’s right.
• Stephen: Let’s talk about the sex abuse scandal. This Pope, before he was Pope, he said that he thought that, to some degree, this was a manufactured scandal by the press. He caught a lot of heat for that. But now, he seems like he’s doing the right thing by apologizing, meeting with the families of the victims; is that just proof that when you become Pope, you become infallible?
• Martin: I think it’s proof that when you become Pope, you learn more about the Church. And, you know, I think the meeting with the victims, I just think was one of the most important things he did here, if not the most important, and I think you could see a shift in people’s understanding of him after they found that out. And, ironically, the most important thing that he did was the least public, with these five victims. So, for me, that was just — if he had just come here and done that, it would have been enough. I was really proud of him and proud to be Catholic at that moment.
• Stephen: Now, let me ask you something about infallibility for just a moment. It seems like making the Pope infallible is kind of going about this the wrong way. Why doesn’t the Church make all of us infallible, and make him fallible, and then we could forgive him? It would be much easier, wouldn’t it? [Martin, laughing] It would be a much better world if everyone was infallible. Couldn’t they just flip a switch and reverse the polarity on that decision?
• Martin: It would be a much easier world for us; that’s for sure.
• My guest tonight is a member of the United States … I’m sorry, I’m sorry. Bobby, what are you doing?
• Bobby: Sorry, I’m just smelling myself. I was at a spa this weekend and I had one of those avocado and cucumber body wraps …
• Stephen: Really? Did you get one of those honey mustard facials? Where … where they would put bacon over your eyes? I hear those are, ah, I hear those are good.
• Bobby: I’ve never — I’ve never heard of that one.
• Stephen: [smiling helpfully] You should get one. You look a little puffy [swallows with great deliberation].
• Anyway, my guest tonight claims to be the only Socialist in the Senate. I’ll get him to name names. Please welcome Senator Bernie Sanders!
• Now, you describe yourself as a Democratic Socialist, correct? [Sanders: Yes.] That takes, if you’ll pardon me for saying so, some huevos rancheros. [Sanders: laughing] To call yourself — to call yourself a “socialist” in this day and age! That’s like, after the Chicago fire, saying, “I’m an arsonist!” You know, “socialist” … we crushed you people in the Cold War, didn’t we? Capitalism won, sir!
• Sanders: Not exactly. Communism –
• Stephen: Oh, oh, really? Where’s your Iron Curtain now?
• Sanders: Ah, the reality is that there are several countries in Scandinavia and Europe who have done things like provide universal health care to every man, woman and child as a right of citizenship that we should be doing.
• Stephen: Sir, need I remind you this is not Scandinavia or Europe, last time I checked a globe? And, admittedly, I do not check globes.
• Sanders: But need I remind you we have 47 million Americans without any health insurance, and we spend twice as much as any other country on Earth?
• Stephen: Wait, so you say that we should just be providing health insurance or providing education, to, to — to everybody in the county? Even, even the losers? Even the people — I mean … what happened to Darwinism, sir? I thought you socialists were really big on natural selection.
• Sanders: I happen to believe that if countries like Finland can provide free college education and graduate education to all of their people, you know what? We can do as well. And the other thing that I believe is that there really is something wrong when we give tax breaks to billionaires, when we have the highest rate of childhood poverty of any major country on Earth. We can do better than that, Stephen.
• Stephen: [to the cheering crowd] Applaud the billionaires once I’m done. Now, we should punish billionaires for being successful?
• Sanders: No.
• Stephen: You going to increase their taxes?
• Sanders: Damn right, I am.
• Stephen: That’s punishment! You’re punishing billionaires.
• Sanders: No, no, no. George Bush has given hundreds of billions of dollars in tax breaks to billionaires and millionaires. At the same time, he is cutting back on programs for middle income and working families. We now have a situation where the upper one-tenth of one percent earn income more than the bottom 50%. That’s wrong. These guys, who have never had it so good, don’t deserve tax breaks.
• Stephen: Have you ever heard of the economic theory — have you ever heard of the “dribble down” theory?
• Sanders: Yes, I have.
• Stephen: [pantomiming] We give everything to the super rich, they gobble everything up, and then some of it trickles down into their beard, and then the poor get to climb up their chest, and, and — and suck the nutrition of what’s left over in the rich guy’s beard. Is that too complicated for you?
• Sanders: No, you got it perfectly! That is the theory!
• Stephen: Yes.
• Sanders: I don’t think it’s a good theory. I think we can do a little bit better. I think we should pay attention to the middle class, to our working families, rather than the big campaign contributors.
• Stephen: Is there any chance that your embrace of socialism is just, like, a retro fad? Like, people who only wear vintage clothing or listen to Rockabilly? I mean, it really is … you have to admit that socialism is on the outs; it’s not a celebrated political philosophy anymore.
• Sanders: Well, not in this country. But many of the precepts, such as the need to abolish poverty, especially childhood poverty –
• Stephen: The market will take care of poverty. The “invisible hand” of the market will take care of our problems. You have to let the free market run free.
• Sanders: Well, the free market in this country has given us a situation where they almost twenty percent of our kids living in poverty, and the result of that is, you know what? We end up having more people behind bars than any other country on Earth, including China.
• Stephen: That’s class warfare. You’re talking about class warfare. You’re talking about redistribution of wealth.
• Sanders: I am. I am.
• Stephen: Redistribution of wealth — oh, so everybody should have a yacht like me? Do you know — do you know how crowded my yacht club is to begin with? Who’s gonna get the prime deck space, you know? Where’s the mooring? Am I gonna have to take a skiff out to the harbor just to get on my Hinckley?
• Sanders: [laughing] I’m not much into yachts. But this is what I do believe: This is a great country. We should be able to provide health care to all of our people. We should be able to make sure that every able person who has the ability gets a college education, regardless of the income of their family. We should be able to do something about the growing inequality of the very rich and everybody else. We have enormous potential. We can create millions of jobs if we start standing up on this issue of greenhouse gas emissions, move to solar energy, move to wind, move to energy efficiency. Take on the oil companies, take on the coal companies, and begin to stand for the middle class of this country. We can do enormous things in America.
• Stephen: That’s a long laundry list you got, right there … So, who do you support among the Democrats?
• Sanders: Well, as an Independent, I’m staying out of the primary, but this is what I will tell you: either Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton on their worst day, will be a better President than George W. Bush has been on his best day.
• Stephen: I am not gonna sit here for another six minutes and listen to you trash talk our President! Bernie Sanders, thank you so much for joining us.

Fangirl Suit Report: Grey pinstriped suit, pearl grey shit with barrel cuffs. Electric blue tie. WristSTRONG bracelet.

Farewell to Bobby: Stephen looks back at Bobby’s finest stage managing moments.

More Video Highlights, courtesy of Comedy Central’s shiny new Colbert Report website

• Intro 4/21/08: The world faces a food shortage, the pope continues his papal visit and Senator Bernie Sanders speaks up for socialism.
• Philly Loves Colbert Nation: After a brief affair with Philadelphia, Stephen returns to his beloved New York City studio and stage manager, Bobby.
• Global Food Shortage: Stephen’s 2012 presidential run may sponsored by sour cream and man-flavored Doritos: Put some man in your mouth!
• The Papal Charm Offensive: You can really get lost looking into the pope’s eye sockets — seriously, take a flashlight.
• Bernie Sanders: Stephen worries that Senator Sanders’ call for a redistribution of wealth will overcrowd his yacht club.

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