Stephen Colbert in the Zeitgeist – June 14th, 2010

Howdy, Zoners! It’s time to take a quick look at the Colbert news around the Interwebs, and surprisingly, it’s been kind of quiet out there. Maybe because it’s the beginning of summer and everyone is out doing summer things? Who knows. Today we have a list with Stephen’s name on it, a backhanded apology from the Wall Street Journal, and news of Stephen in video form at a special exhibition at the Library of Congress.

100 Greatest Characters

• Entertainment Weekly recently published their list of the 100 greatest characters in pop culture during the last twenty years. At #30 on the list was “Stephen Colbert.” I’d argue that he should have been higher on the list (c’mon, EW, SpongeBob is #10? Really?), but frankly I was more annoyed that they put Dr. Gregory House at only #84. From the print version of the magazine: “The blowhard host of The Colbert Report (the alter-ego of real-life comedian Stephen Colbert) is a beacon of truthiness in the ever-growing fake-news realm — and one of the most brilliant (and meta) comic creations in recent times. ‘I’m not sure why I’m on this character list, since I am a real guy,’ deadpans the faux pundit.” For more fun, here are the five characters “Stephen” is dying to play:
  

  1. Steve Jobs: “iPad, iPhone, iPod, iMac — he’s the only person more obsessed with ‘I’ than I am.”
  2. Mohandas Gahdhi: “Though I would’ve added a ton of muscle, a headband, and a machine gun. Wait… can I change my answer to Rambo?”
  3. Betty White: “She’s the sexiest silver-haired beauty on TV. (Sorry, Anderson Cooper — too slutty.)”
  4. RMS Titanic: “One of the biggest movies of all time. Why wouldn’t I want to play the title role? Plus, I would not object to Kate Winslet having a tasteful nude scene on me.”
  5. Rupert Murdoch: “I’ve got a head start on this one: I do a great Australian accent, and I’m already destroying the news.”

  (Big h/t to lockhart43 for transcribing all that from the magazine and passing it on!)

Who’s riding Stephen’s coattails now?

• The Wall Street Journal’s Digits blog has a response to Stephen’s complaint that the WSJ ignored his contribution to men’s fashion by failing to note that Stephen originally came up with the idea of a suit with a custom iPad pocket. They’re now willing to acknowledge that Stephen appeared at the Grammy Awards in January with his special suit, before their article appeared. (Today’s rhetorical question: Why do so many people refer to TCR as “The Colbert Show”? I don’t get that at all.)

Hope for America

• For any of you who live near Washington, D.C., or are planning to visit in the near future, the Library of Congress has just opened an exhibition called Hope for America: Performers, Politics, and Pop Culture, which draws from Bob Hope’s personal papers, files, and broadcasts donated to the Library by the Hope family in 1998. The exhibition is intended to explore the link between entertainment and politics as it evolved in Hope’s career and as it continues today with other comedians and satirists. The exhibition’s introductory video is done by Stephen. From the Associated Press (via Yahoo News):
  

  Comedian Stephen Colbert greets visitors to the exhibit, “Hope for America: Performers, Politics and Pop Culture,” in a video tribute. The satirical conservative TV pundit even takes a swing with the trademark golf club that Hope liked to use as a vaudeville cane…

  Colbert salutes his own portrait in the intro but turns serious when he calls Hope “not just a funny man” but “a patriot.” He also paid tribute to Hope on his show last year, with golf club in hand, when he visited troops in Iraq. “Some of the younger troops have asked me what the golf club is all about,” Colbert said at the time. “Well, it is partly an homage to Bob Hope who did USOs like this for 250 years. Good man.”

  Also of note is one of the themes from the exhibit, Blurring of the Lines, which discusses, among other topics, how entertainment and the news have started to resemble each other in recent years, and which features among its artifacts a copy of I Am America (And So Can You!).

  The exhibition is open Monday through Saturday at the Bob Hope Gallery of American Entertainment in the Library of Congress’ Thomas Jefferson Building, 10 First St. S.E, in Washington D.C.

Today’s head-scratcher

• Um, what? Didn’t anyone learn from the Iranian advertising debacle that used Stephen’s photoshopped image? (Originally posted by Gozulin over on the CN boards.)

(h/t Ms I, Katt, and Gratefull)