Huffington Post blogger (and author of “So Wrong for So Long”) Greg Mitchell has contributed a lengthy essay today discussing Obama’s election, and Stephen Colbert’s role in it. In this excerpt from his latest book, “Why Obama Won: The Making of a President 2008“, he details Colbert’s run for president and the effects that each move had on the actual Democratic primary. Here is the introduction to that excerpt, courtesy of the Huffington Post.
Obama Owes Presidency To…Stephen Colbert?
Even Stephen Colbert was not immune to the Obama mania of Tuesday’s Inaugural. On last night’s show he broke down and “cried” over the crowds, the Obama girls, even the hope. But some pithy, and more serious, references to Colbert by two leading political pundits today got me to thinking about how much he — or his faux rightwing blowhard — has filtered into our political/media consciousness.
Maureen Dowd in her column today refers to Obama’s dissing of Bush, to his face, as taking a page from Colbert’s famous routine at that White House Correspondents Dinner three years ago. And Glenn Greenwald, over at Salon, offers his latest takedown of the MSM (and especially David Gregory’s) failures with Bush and cites the same Colbert routine as a turning point in revealing that the emperors of the media often wear no clothes. We all know how much Web/blog/video influenced the 2008 race.
This in turn led me to reflect that, given Colbert’s blog and street cred, it’s a good thing he didn’t stay in the race for the White House or Obama could have really been in trouble (for a minute or two, anyway). So on this happy day, allow me to present here an excerpt from my new book on the 2008 campaign, Why Obama Won, published yesterday — it’s made up partly of my posts at Huff Post and also covers some of the campaign scoops here — this entry exploring Colbert’s tentative entry into the race a little over a year ago.
And in case you missed it, here’s Stephen weeping (and its mucus-inducing results) from last night’s show.
Ahhh, memories from Stephen’s run for President. I have to say, it was just pure genius. Great photo at the top too! I like the perspective from which it was shot.
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He didn’t make any sort of argument related to the title question. I was hoping he would.
I remember news of Colbert’s run seeping into my consciousness then. I think someone posted about it at one of my message boards. (I just confirmed that I did find out about it that way. in my post there on the topic, I said that I had never watched the show, and I thought Colbert was cool but not funny. times change huh?!)
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Yeah, but the article is an excerpt from his book, so the book would be more focused on answering the question (I should imagine, anyway).
It’s funny how quickly you can become a fan of someone/something. Although I’ve loved TCR from the first episode, that wasn’t the case with TDS. But a few years ago, after being a “casual” fan of The Daily Show for quite some time, it suddenly became a “must-see” show for me. I don’t know what brought the change about, but … well, I jumped into the ranks of devoted fans pretty enthusiastically at that point. Who knew?
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To me it seems that Colbert helped insofar as the WHCD speech galvanized the watchers and the media to speak up and wake up about Bush at a dark time while bumping his (and TCR’s) popularity and pitch perfect satire. His presidential campaign mockery had its effect on the dedicated but it was finally the competence vs. incompetence factor that won the day for Obama. The one/two punch of TDS/TCR mockery for the last 8 years spread past just comedy viewers to the MSM and their attitudes at large and that was big. They deserve the nation’s gratitude for their public service while making us laugh.
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