Episode 4079 (06/16/2008)

“Have I told you lately that I love me? This is The Colbert Report!“

No For The Gold: “Tonight, should the U.S. boycott the Olympics? What will we do with all the unused steroids?”

• Remembering Tim Russert
• The Colbert Report Global Edition

The WØRD: Ploy-cott

Traitor Joe’s: “Then, I introduce a new feature about enemies at home. It was going to be about enemies overseas but, you know, the weak dollar.”

• A Colbert Report Special Report: The Enemy Within — Wizardry!

In It To Darwin It: “And my guest Kenneth Miller is here to debunk intelligent design. I think he’ll be surprised by my stockpiles of ‘bunk’.”

• Guest: Kenneth R. Miller, Biologist and author, Only a Theory: Evolution and the Battle for America’s Soul

THE COLBERT BUMP – YOU’RE GETTING IT:

Only a Theory: Evolution and the Battle for America’s Soul

In closing: “Nation, have you ever bought a roll of LifeSavers and realized you got twelve instead the usual eleven? Oh yeah, I count. Well, when music legends R.E.M. appeared on my show a while back, they unexpectedly played an extra song. So tonight, I’d like to give you a little bonus rock to suck on. From their album Accelerate here’s R.E.M. ["Hollow Man" performance] Oh, they looked so much younger then. That’s it for The Report, everybody, good night!”

Video Highlight:

Tim Russert Tribute — Stephen pays homage to Tim Russert by showing his interview on “Meet the Press.”

NOTABLE MOMENTS — Video links and more after the fold!

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

• Full Episode Video
• Intro – 6/16/08 : Stephen questions whether the U.S. should boycott the Olympics, introduces enemies at home, and discusses intelligent design with Kenneth Miller.
• The Word – Ploy-cott: Let the other countries boycott the Beijing Olympics, but America has to go.
• The Enemy Within: Stephen interviews a substitute teacher in Florida who was fired for wizardry.
• Kenneth Miller: Kenneth Miller compares advocates of intelligent design to welfare queens waiting for the government to give them a handout.
• Hollow Man: R.E.M. performs “Hollow Man” from their album, Accelerate.

NOTABLE MOMENTS

• Nation, last Friday, America lost one of the greats: Tim Russert. He was a man of great personal integrity and journalistic ethics, and yet his show was incredibly popular. I have no idea how he did it.
• I personally may not have been a big fan of the way he “prepared for interviews” or “treated guests fairly”, but I always respected his ability to nail people.
• He could take your words and twist them in a way that held you accountable for the things you said!
• I personally had the honor to appear on Meet the Press during my short run for President in South Carolina, and I’m not gonna say I was nervous, but this is the shirt I wore that day. [Holds up a horribly sweat-stained shirt.] I wish that were a joke.
• And I have to give credit to the “Master of the Nail”: he got me. [Plays clip of the Meet the Press appearance, with Russert quizzing Stephen on the pronounciation of his last name and holding up a Sesame Street Bert doll.] This supposedly objective interview show was clearly brought to you by the letter “T”.
• Mr. Russert was a model journalist who brought dignity, credibility and joy to his work. He will be sorely missed.
• Big news, Nation, The Colbert Report has gone international! We have a new Global Edition that reaches countries the world over – GLOBAL! So welcome, global viewers! This is great, because there are so many global stories to cover, everything from President Bush’s trip to Europe … to protests of the President’s trip to Europe.
• But the big international story, of course, is the 2008 Olympic Summer Games in China. Recently, China’s Olympic Committee placed new restrictions on Olympic visitors: curtailing freedom of the press, free congregation and barring any visitors with “… mental diseases ….” Terrible move, China, now you’re gonna have to keep all the athletes out! C’mon, devoting ten hours a day, seven days a week to doing this? [Clip of a shot putter] That’s crazy!
• China’s harsh restrictions on visitors are a travesty, and the subject of tonight’s WØRD: Ploy-cott!
• Now, I have always been a critic of China; the pollution, the human rights violations, a dozen tube socks for $3.99? What am I, made out of money?! [Soon, Money Also Made in China]
• And now these new rules, folks — these rules, which, by the way, are published only in Chinese! [Secret Code Known Only To 1.3 Billion People] Really — how, how do they expect visitors to understand them? There’s only so much Chinese you can pick up reading lower back tattoos. [What's Chinese Character For "I Was Drunk"?]
• So I am calling on all the nations of the world to boycott the Beijing Games. Athletes, coaches, heads of state, honor what the Olympics stand for! [Pretending To Care About Water Polo] Honor it by staying home.
• You can compete in the 2012 Games in London. After all, England’s biggest human rights violaton is forcing Daniel Radcliffe to play a boy wizard well into his thirties. So world, take to the streets now! Go out there and protest! You go on! We Americans will catch up in just a minute. Wooo! You’re doin’ the right thing!
• Okay, they’re gone; it’s just us Americans now. Here’s the thing: all that stuff about boycotting the Olympics? Uh-uh. They boycott, we go. [The Old Boycott and Switch]
• Here’s the deal: we’ll say we’re not going, but at the Opening Ceremony, I want our whole team to show up at the last minute in some surprising way. [With Zero Endorsements]
• Hell, we could mail the gymnastics team in a FedEx envelope; they’re tiny! [Cargo Plane Will Stick the Landing]
• It’ll just be us vs. the Chinese; we take the gold! [May Contain Some Lead]
• Plus, China is counting on these Games economically. They’ve sunk ridiculous money into them, something like $40 billion. [About Three Months In Iraq]
• So if the rest of the world boycotts, it’ll be like Tonya Harding’s baseball bat to China’s financial knee. [A Global "Gillooly"] So let the other countries boycott, but we have to go. Besides, we can’t upset the Chinese; we owe them too much money. As far as I’m concerned, they can do anything they want.
• Nation, we’re fighting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but there is a third front: everywhere.
• It is time to shed some light into the darkest corners of America. Tonight, we visit Land O’ Lakes, a small town in Pasco County, FL. Small, but not too small to hide the enemy within!
• Meet the enemy: Jim Piculas. He used to be a substitute teacher, but not any more.
• Piculas: One day, I was working at a school … I received a call from the head of Human Resources, said, ‘Jim, we’ve got a huge issue. You’re accused of wizardry.’
• That’s right, wizardry. And what form of incantation did this substitute sorcerer perform? School Board Chair Kathryn Starkey recounts, the horror.
• Starkey: Mr. Piculas did a magic trick with a disappearing toothpick.
• *The graphics in this segment — The Fellowship of the Ring, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, etc. — are cracking me up.*
• [Stephen's voiceover as Piculas continues to make his toothpick appear and disappear] Stop doing that! Jesus, Mary and Joseph!
• My guest tonight is here to make the case for evolution. I say, if we’re related to monkeys, why don’t they send me birthday cards? Please welcome Kenneth Miller!
• *Hee! The guest brought his own Peabody!*
• Miller: The reason that we have become the greatest scientifc nation in the world is precisely because we trusted scientists. We’ve allowed the process to work — and you’ll appreciate this — without government interference. But right now –
• Stephen: Like the Manhattan Project? No government interference there.
• Miller: The thing to appreciate about pretenders for the classroom like “scientific creationism” or “intelligent design” is that these are ideas that haven’t been able to cut it within the scientific community. So you know what they’re doing? … They’re asking for a government handout … I would compare the advocates of “intelligent design” to “welfare queens” waiting for the government to give them a handout so that they can get into the classroom.
• Stephen: So you will agree with me that there are “welfare queens” out there, driving Cadillacs, waiting for their government cheese! Thank you for coming on board with me and Ronald Reagan! I’ll take that as a victory for our side.
• You admit here that [reading the quote] “more than 50% of Americans believe that ‘intelligent design’ is a plausible theory”; I’d say that science is having its monkey ass handed to it.
• Miller: The problem with “intelligent design” is really simple: no data. It hasn’t produced any data, it hasn’t produced any testable hypothesis …
• Stephen: Have you read the Bible? … I’ve got twelve hundred pages of data right there. Every page is a polite variation on “God did it.”
• Miller: And every time you look at that book, you’ve got a thousand different ways to interpret it. Which is why it might be a spiritually correct book — and you and I are both Catholics and we agree on that point — but it’s not a book of science. And even St. Augustine recognized that the Bible wasn’t a book of science, and in the Fifth Century, a little bit before Darwin –
• Stephen: He also heard voices, he also heard voices — yes?
• Miller: … a little bit before Darwin, he was — and maybe the voices told him Genesis is not a book of science — what you’ve got to do is basically understand the Bible as a spiritual document and not a scientific one. And if you put it in the classroom as a scientific document, or a theory that’s supported by it, you’re making a scientific — and a religious — mistake.
• What about, one of these days, if “intelligent design” just takes the name “evolution”? Wouldn’t you be in trouble there?
• Miller: … I have to tell you something: that’s something to worry about. Because the people behind “intelligent design”, they’re not very good at doing experiments, they’re not very good at science, but they’re really good at re-labeling. So I do have to worry about that.

Fangirl Suit Report: Black suit, white shirt with French cuffs. Gold tie with subtle gold pattern. WristSTRONG bracelet.