Stephen Colbert in the Zeitgeist – February 6, 2010

So is everybody excited about watching the Super Bowl tomorrow? Yeah, me neither. But hey, the Olympics are less than a week away, the speedskaters are all in Vancouver, and Stephen and Team Colbert should be up to their collective eyebrows in preparation for their own trip to Vancouver. I’m eager to see what kind of silliness they have planned for us! In the meantime, I’ve got the wrap-up of news from the past week or so, including a couple of items related to the upcoming Faces of America series, a few leftover Grammy Award bits, and even a quick visit to the International Space Station.

Faces of America

• Reality isn’t funny for Stephen Colbert; ‘Faces of America’ reveals his family history – NY Daily News – A somewhat spoilerish article about Stephen’s appearance on Faces of America, although some of the information revealed was also discussed during the interview with Henry Louis Gates Jr. on Thursday’s TCR.
• Local knowledge helps track down US satirist Stephen Colbert’s Limerick roots – Limerick (Ireland) Leader – “Local historian Tony Browne and parish priest Fr Donough O’Malley have helped track down the Limerick great-great-grandfather of America’s top satirist Stephen Colbert… [A]fter being contacted by researchers working on a genealogy programme for PBS, Mr Browne helped them find details of Colbert’s ancestors in St Mary’s parish records in the city.” (Fract: There’s a train station in Limerick city called Colbert Station, named after Conn Colbert, one of the executed leaders of the Easter Rising of 1916. Stephen has jokingly claimed to be related to this particular Colbert.)

US Speedskating

• U.S. speedskaters get more ice time thanks to Stephen Colbert – Los Angeles Times, Olympics blog – “There will [be] more ice for the U.S. long-track speedskating team, thanks at least in part to Stephen Colbert’s jibes at Canadians for having limited access to foreign athletes at the 2010 Olympic Oval… The official training period for all athletes has been advanced a couple days.”

The Grammys

• Kathy Griffin Denies Slamming Stephen Colbert for Grammy Win – Us Magazine – “Kathy Griffin swears she didn’t slam Stephen Colbert on Twitter after he beat her out for the best comedy album Grammy… On Sunday, a message was posted — and widely picked up by blogs — on a Twitter page the comic says she no longer uses, ‘Stephen Colbert STOLE my mother f-ing Grammy!!’ Wrote Griffin on her real account Monday night, ‘OMG, I feel like Miley Cyrus. My old Twitter acct was hacked…I did NOT diss Colbert re Grammys.’”
• George Lopez Grammy Talk – Lopez Tonight [VIDEO] – George Lopez whines about his loss to Stephen Colbert at the Grammys. I’ll warn you now, it’s teeth-grindingly irritating because he mispronounces Stephen’s name.

Space, the final frontier

• One on One: T.J. Creamer, Astronaut (Currently in Space) – New York Times - A Q&A with T.J. Creamer, currently on board the ISS, featured this exchange:
  • How’s the Stephen Colbert running machine working out?
  • It is wonderful. It gives us a good running workout, and everyone who uses it really likes it. I like it so much, I’m running on it nearly every day.

  (I’m sorry… “running machine?” The article includes a photo of T.J. doing his workout on the COLBERT. I defy you to look at it without tilting your head sideways.)

Colbert 2012

• Colbert: Court eases 2012 ‘bid’ – POLITICO.com – An interesting assessment of how a potential presidential bid for Stephen in 2012 might be affected by the Supreme Court decision that struck down corporate spending restrictions. It compares a potential 2012 bid to his campaign for the 2008 election, which ran into legal issues with regard to those same federal election laws.

“Canada’s History”

• TV funnyman Stephen Colbert turns great white north blue – Toronto Star – I bet the editors of The Beaver Canada’s History are laughing themselves silly over this. Or maybe not: “…the ‘Canada’s History’ entry on the well-known online slang repository [urbandictionary.com] has more than 800 opinions expressed, some with graphic Canadian-themed descriptions.” (I read some of those entries, and all I can say is there are some very creative members of the Colbert Nation out there. And by very creative, of course I mean totally depraved.)

Random acts of news

• Why Do Late-Night Hosts Always Keep Their Desks on the Right? – Slate.com – “Because it makes them seem powerful. In Western culture, we read from left to right, and we watch theater and television that way, too. Our eyes end up on the right side of the screen — where the host sits (also known as stage left). In the theory of stagecraft, it’s understood that a rightward placement telegraphs royalty. So no matter how famous the guest may be, sitting to the left makes him or her seem subservient.”
• The Colbert Nation of Charity – NBC Connecticut – “You almost wouldn’t notice the good deeds for all the comic juice Colbert has squeezed out of the auction and Olympic campaign, portraying the efforts as an ego trip for a character obsessed with getting things named after him (the auction bit is called ‘Own a Piece of Histor-me’)… For Colbert, charity isn’t necessarily a special event — between his website and show, he’s made modest fundraising a regular part of his act.”
• Outrage versus dismay: Why liberals do better on TV than radio – Baltimore Sun – An interesting comparison between the outrage of conservatives, which plays well on the radio, and the dismay of liberals, which requires a visual medium to capture the subtlety and irony of political humor, and the facial expressions that often help to express it. Citing both Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert as examples, the article states: “Mr. Stewart thrives on late-night television because the medium allows us to observe his frustration. When he shows us a clip of a Republican saying something stupid, we can laugh at his reaction, we can laugh at the person who said it, and we can share a moment of common dismay at the sheer ignorance regularly on display.”
• Blue Rhino Studio – If you scroll down until you get to 12/11/08, you’ll see a picture of Stephen holding a life-sized bust of himself. This was intended to be used as a running gag on TCR, but I don’t recall ever seeing it. It’s a little freaky, but a pretty accurate likeness.

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

• Stephen Colbert in the Zeitgeist – March 13, 2010
• Stephen Colbert in the Zeitgeist – March 3, 2010
• Please don’t sue us – An open letter to Tony Fox, PR rep for Viacom
• Eye Candy: Stephen Colbert at Christ Child Society’s Great Gatsby Gala