Stephen Colbert in the Zeitgeist – June 18, 2009

Hey, Zoners! We’ve almost made it through another week, and the weekend is in sight. It’s time to catch up on some of the Colbert news, so here’s your zeitgeist for June 18th.

Vote now!

• Voting for the Tubey Awards is in progress over at Television Without Pity, and Sweetness is nominated for an award in the category Best Performance by an Inanimate Object. Make sure you head on over and vote for Sweetness!

Some post-post-Iraq thoughts

• Wisconsin soldier gives Colbert’s Baghdad show thumbs up – Examiner.com

  “Watching their Commanding General shave Stephen Colbert’s head at the order of President Obama was a highlight of the Colbert Report in Iraq, according to First Lieutenant Kyle Hartman of the 1st Battalion 128th Infantry Regiment… According to Lt. Hartman, Colbert’s ‘visit brought a few hours of relaxed levity and comedy to an otherwise tense and serious existence.’”

• Who are you calling Rambo? – Newsweek (Recent TCR guest Paul Reickhoff discusses fighting the stereotype of the “crazy veteran.”)

  “As any veteran can attest, coming home from war is a long journey, and it’s never easy. Then again, neither is sitting across the table from Stephen Colbert. So when I appeared on his show last month, I braced myself for a new kind of incoming fire. True to form, Colbert kept the audience laughing — even when his jokes raised important points about the country’s care for combat veterans. ‘If we support our vets,’ he cracked, ‘who will be the crazed veteran in the remake of Rambo in 20 years?’”

• Long live irony: Stephen Colbert master of a supposedly dead art – Canada.com (Irony isn’t dead, and Stephen’s trip to Iraq proves it.)

  “The irony is that for a comedian who has made insincerity his stock-in-trade, Colbert has made honesty and outspokenness part of his act.

  “In Iraq, Colbert pulled off the trickiest of high-wire acts: He appealed to his audience’s sense of patriotism, and tickled their appreciation of irony at the same time.”

• Manuel’s Views: Me and Stephen Colbert

  Steve Manuel, a photographer and retired Marine, took many of the photographs on the Iraq trip that we admired so much. He has a photo of himself and Stephen posted on his blog.

• Fangirls are everywhere – From Toronto’s Globe and Mail:

  “Usually, just the words ‘custom-made camouflage suit’ make us recoil. But when we saw dreamy comic genius Stephen Colbert actually sporting one, we simply swooned. (I hereby resolve to find more occasions to refer to Stephen as a “dreamy comic genius.” Hee.)

Miscellaneous Colbertiana

• Will 2010 grads get cap, gown, Colbert? – The State Press.com (Arizona State University)

  “…[A] group of incoming seniors are already looking to follow up this year’s commencement with a major splash of their own by landing ASU yet another highly sought-after orator.

  “Like Obama, the targeted speaker leads a sizable nation, has been one of GQ’s Men of the Year winners, has been on the cover of Rolling Stone, has been one of Time Magazine’s 100 most influential people, has written a No. 1 New York Times Best Seller and has run for President of the United States.”

• Does Stephen Colbert’s ursine obsession bear any truth? – Denver Post

  “For years, Stephen Colbert, host of the hip Comedy Central TV show ‘The Colbert Report,’ has waged Bear War.

  “Bears, Colbert warns, are ‘soulless, Godless killing machines’ and ‘the No. 1 threat facing America.’

  “‘The No. 1 threat? Probably not,’ said Tom Smith, a biologist at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, who studies bear attacks. ‘But bears are very efficient killing machines when it comes to humans.’

• Why Sean Hannity Should Play Captain America – Washington Post, the Comic Riffs blog (Who should play the movie role of Captain America? Here’s a suggestion, and it’s better than Sean Hannity.)

  “1. STEPHEN COLBERT: Freshly returned from Iraq, Stephen is such a truly generous American that he’s willing to let almost anybody touch his Peabody. (Well, for the right street-value price.) And he is such a Captain America fan, he has the superhero’s memorabilia plastered on the fake walls of his set (next to other items that apparently mean so little to him that he refuses to take them home). But just look into those bespectacled peepers and you will see the very essence of Truthiness, Justice and Great Americans Who Still Insist Upon French Pronunciations of Their Surnames.”

(h/t DB, Ms. I, and Katt)