Stephen Colbert in the Zeitgeist – March 3, 2010
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Hey, gang! I hope everyone is having a great week-after-the-Olympics. I’m feeling a little lost without the Olympics to watch, but with The Pluto Files and the final episode of Faces of America both airing this week, it’s not like there’s nothing good on TV. Just as there’s been a wealth of Colbert goodness on TV, we’ve got plenty happening in the news this week, too. Today’s zeitgeist includes a few last gasps from Vancouver and the Olympics, a look at the late night landscape now that The Guy Who Used to Host The Tonight Show is back at The Tonight Show, and a bridge I’d like to sell you. It’s in Hungary. Read on!
Vancouverage: the final word, maybe
- NBC’s Olympics website posted a poll to vote for the favorite personality of the Games. I call your attention to #10: Stephen Colbert, speed skating: “The ‘Assistant Sports Psychologist’ of the U.S. speed skating team, Colbert was everywhere during his run in Vancouver. He rode a moose. He climbed into a fire. He dressed up as a Canadian Mountie. And above all else, he introduced an unexpected and entertaining wild card onto the landscape of the Olympic Winter Games.” (I’d tell you all to go vote for him because he’s only at fourth place, but it looks like the voting might have closed. Boo.)
- Mediabistro’s TVNewser has posted their choices for the top 10 images from the Winter Olympics coverage. They’re not posted in any particular order, but halfway down in the right column, you’ll see a familiar Canadian Mountie sitting in front of a stuffed moose in NBC’s studios.
- NESN.com offers its list of Top 10 lessons to take away from the Vancouver Games. Lesson #10: Having fun has its rewards – “Heckling may not have been invented in the USA, but Americans perfected it. Stephen Colbert of The Colbert Report, a right-wing parody of a TV show airing on Comedy Central, made waves for his lambasting of Canadians as ’syrup suckers’ and ‘ice holes.’ The attention he and his show brought to the Games, however, certainly assuaged any hurt feelings Canadians might have had.”
- In a more somber reflection on the Olympics, The Washington Post looks at the troubles confronting US Speedskating as they face a very uncertain financial future with the end of the Colbert Nation sponsorship. Sports Illustrated is featuring a similar story focusing on the long-track speedskaters.
Hungarian bridge
- Remember the bridge in Hungary that Stephen tried to have named after himself? The bridge shows up on Google Maps with the legend “Colbert híd,” which translates to “Colbert Bridge” according to a quick Hungarian-to-English online dictionary search. As the article explains, the name is from user-contributed information, and isn’t officially part of Google Maps. But if you want a giggle, go over to Google Maps and do a search on “Megyeri Bridge, Budapest, Hungary.”
St. Patrick’s Day is coming up
- …and you can tell because items like this are starting to show up. IrishCentral.com has published their list of the Top 10 funniest Irish celebrities for St. Patrick’s Day, and look who’s at number 1: Stephen Tyrone Colbert. “Subtle, understated, brilliant. Just came back from a gig at the Vancouver Olympics where he killed them with an Irish stand up routine at the Irish House. Despite the humor, takes his Irish heritage seriously.” Among the other Irish folks he beat out for the honor of being #1: Jimmy Fallon, Conan O’Brien, and Denis Leary.
Late night TV
- With Jay Leno returning to The Tonight Show this week, it raises the question of whether the late night talk show format is still relevant. Two TV media experts disagree on the answer, but both conclude that future success might depend on becoming more “edgy and controversial” like Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert. (Via the Lincoln (NE) Journal Star)
Random acts of news
- MTV’s Splash Page has an interview with Mad Men star Jon Hamm discussing the possibility of playing various superheroes in upcoming films. But Hamm has his own suggestion for casting the role of Captain America: “I think that Captain America should be played by Stephen Colbert,” he laughed. “I think that would be perfect.”
- Eric Zorn in the Chicago Tribune airs one of his pet TV peeves: the wild applause from studio audiences that suck up valuable air time. He accuses Jay Leno and Stephen Colbert specifically of allowing all that yelling and screaming to go on and on and on, to the detriment of the show. You’ll want to read the comments at the end of the column for a response from DB about the genuine enthusiasm of TCR audiences.
- I’m going to indulge myself for a minute here and point out a nice article in THE USA Today on Father James Martin, S.J., the official Colbert Report chaplain and one of my favorite TCR guests. He has a new book coming out next week, The Jesuit Guide to Almost Everything: the Spirituality of Real Life. The article includes a sidebar on Father Jim’s three appearances on TCR, and quotes Stephen as saying, “Jim is a Jesuit priest and a funny guy. I’m grateful to know both of him.” (Pardon me for a sec while I go add this book to my reading list…)
Gratuitous name dropping
- Economic news out of South Carolina: a state politician recently introduced legislation that would put South Carolina back on the gold standard, replacing U.S. dollars with gold and silver coins. The reaction? “I’m thinking of a Stephen Colbert half dollar, aren’t you?” (Via Bankrate.com)
(h/t DB, Ms I, Jennie, and Katt)
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Dear Mr. Fox:
My name is DB Ferguson, and I run NoFactZone.net, a blog which many consider to be the best independent Stephen Colbert fan site on the web. We’ve been blogging about Stephen Colbert since July 17, 2006, so close to 4 years. We have an all-volunteer staff of 13 Completists, who blog 7 days a week to bring the Colbert Nation the most up to date news about Stephen Colbert and the ‘Colbert Report’. We receive on average over 60,000 unique visits a month and over 100,000 page views. We’ve had over 2.5 million unique hits over the course of our blog, and every one of those hits was free to readers and positively biased towards Stephen Colbert.
Before I go any further, I would like to praise the access to videos that you have given through ColbertNation.com. I’ve been a fan for a very long time, and I remember the horrid shape of the official ‘Colbert Nation’ site and the videos for the first couple of years of the show. I remember struggling to even watch a video, and there was no way that a video was getting embedded. We at No Fact Zone mostly linked to YouTube videos, until they were taken down, not because we wanted to make money off of the videos, but because we wanted to share the greatness that is Stephen Colbert with anyone who would listen. In the fall of 2008, ColbertNation.com made a game changing move. They started streaming both full videos as well as embeddable clips. And the way that the new media department tagged the videos and the way that the videos were searchable was so amazingly wonderful. I still visit the official ‘Colbert Nation’ site almost every day, and when I do, I almost always stop to watch a video or two. Sometimes it’s something recent, but often it’s something from the vaults, something I haven’t seen in years, but I just have a hankering to watch. I’m quite grateful for the fact that Viacom listened to their viewers and gave them access to videos. I will be the first to admit that there are processes in the video experience that should be upgraded, but all in all, it’s head and shoulders over what was being offered for a very long time.
That being said, I was a bit distressed when I read at the Hollywood Reporter that Viacom will start suing bloggers who use unauthorized clips of the ‘Daily Show’. From the tone of the interview, it sounds like this edict applies to all Comedy Central shows, including the main topic of our blog, the ‘Colbert Report’. Now, I use authorized clips of the ‘Colbert Report’ and the ‘Daily Show’, with the rare exception of fanvids (virtually all of which have been removed from the original servers and are no longer available). I do screencaps sometimes, I’ll admit to that. And we often post the videos of the shows without the embed frame, as I prefer to feature the video as large as it will go on my site. But I’m using video that streams directly from Viacom and ColbertNation.com, ads and all.
You said in your interview with the Hollywood Reporter that “My feeling is if (websites) are making money on our copyrighted content, then that is a problem.” When I tell people I am the webmaster of a very popular web site, the first thing people ask is “How much money do you make?” And I can say, in all honesty, not a dime. I take pride in the fact that I do this site not because I am making money, but I do it simply for the love and the passion of blogging about a man and a show that I have grown to respect and admire. We’re more than a news site, we’re a community.
To further alleviate any concern you may have about us profiting off of Viacom’s intellectual property, let me be perfectly transparent about our finances here at No Fact Zone. Our server costs run us $129 a month. Our host graciously manages our box for free. You see that ad in the far right corner? That’s our lone ad on the site. Wanna know how much I made in February 2010 from that ad? $1.62. No, seriously. $1.62. We’ve received donations for our server, which sit in a fund that our host keeps and uses to pay our server fees. But the blogging staff doesn’t see a dime; the donations go straight to the server fees. Our staff gets no pay, no perks, nothing except the satisfaction that what we are doing is producing something we as a fan community can be proud of.
Look, I understand that you don’t want blogs profiting from your content. I know of quite a few high profile blogs that take clips and post them under their own frame. Those sites have lots of ads, and paid staff, and make lots and lots of money. I can see how that would irk you. Our site is just a simple fan blog, with some of the hardest core ‘Colbert Report’ fans on the net, whose sole mission is to praise Stephen Colbert, all glory to his name, peace be upon him. We are one shiny, happy lovefest here, a 100% biased constantly updated ad for your show that we sustain at our own expense. If you have a problem with something we’ve posted, please, shoot me an e-mail. I’ll be more than happy to take it down if you feel that somehow, for example, a screencap of Stephen Colbert in a cute outfit is going to financially hurt Viacom in some way. We want to make this work. We want to praise, and we want to blog, and we want to be a community that does not live in fear of the people who also bring us what we so very much enjoy and love.
Thank you for listening to the fans.
Sincerely,
DB Ferguson
Webmaster and founder, NoFactZone.net
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Hey, y’all, I know Val usually does the honors on previewing guests, but I hope you all will forgive me for handling this one early because I’m just tickled pink over it. See, a couple of days ago, I noticed a tweet from Rebecca Skloot, author of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, announcing that she would be a guest on The Colbert Report on March 16th.
Being the hopeless bookworm that I am, I immediately let out a thoughtless “whoo hoo!” in my office, because I’d been reading this book during my morning commute over the last week. I just finished it yesterday, and it’s outstanding. The New York Times ran several reviews of the book last month, and DB and I had actually emailed each other at the time to express our hopes that Ms. Skloot would show up on The Colbert Report.
For those of you who might be interested, I strongly recommend you read the various reviews and articles from The New York Times (try this one or this one). Ms. Skloot’s book asks hard but incredibly timely questions about race, class, privacy, consent and medical ethics. Henrietta was a black woman from an uneducated family whose cells were obtained in an era when “informed consent” was not required. The development of HeLa was invaluable in fighting diseases like polio, but the historical context (although a different type of research, it took place at the same time as the infamous Tuskegee syphilis study) underscores questions about how scientific discoveries were and are made. Who currently benefits — and who should — from medical research (particularly with respect to the increasingly-common pharmaceutical practice of patenting genes)? How do you balance the need to keep access to research open while respecting the rights of individuals to control their own cells? There’s so much food for thought in this book.
I have no idea how the interview will turn out and what they’ll have time for on the show, but I’m over the moon about seeing this author on the guest list.
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Episode 6030 (3/2/2010)
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EPISODE NUMBER: 6030 (March 2, 2010)
GUESTS: David Brooks
SEGMENTS: The WØRD: Kid-Owe, Colbert Platinum
VIDEOS: Tuesday, March 2, 2010
It’s the little details about the show that sometimes make me smile the hardest. For example, in tonight’s show, I loved the kid’s version and the “rich” version of the ‘Colbert Report’ theme [Baby Mumbles, for those of you who wondered]. I also loved the comment that one of my Twitter friends made that tonight’s WØRD was brought to you by Elmer Fudd.
I know I’ve been hit by the recession, just like many of you. But Frugal Fatigue? My idea of defeating Frugal Fatigue is to splurge and get both candy and popcorn at a movie that is not a matinee. I sure wish I could scale down to a Bentley. Right now, to scale down, I’d have to go to a 1996 Ford Taurus with no roof liner.
I gotta be honest about the interview – I zoned out about a third of the way through it. Nothing irks me more than a guest who tries to outfunny Colbert. Stephen was actually asking serious questions, and Brooks felt the need to respond by adding his own witty colloquialisms, and calling Stephen out on his character. Not cool, Brooks, not cool. And not good television either. Stephen tried to get more serious as the interview went on, but Brooks kept trying to outsilly Colbert and it was just friggin’ annoying.
What did you enjoy about the episode tonight?
- This is a warning bell so loud and clear that only conservative pundits can hear it.
- We’ve ignored all the warning signs. Beer summit? Hello!!
- That means Obama is obese and has rabies.
- Everyone goes up a notch, which I believe means I become a character on South Park.
- Now what’s Wells Fargo supposed to do with 500,000 branded “water pipes”?
- Carpe Diem = “Seize your House”
- See, he’s making a pledge to repay the loan, So help me Jesus Chwist. [That's bwasphemy!]
- What happens if a kid doesn’t repay their Qwedit? [They Bweak his wegs?]
- That’s very pretty, look at that light in there. This is like the midnight Pink Floyd laser show.
- I mean, if we’re not allowed to blow it, why did we work so hard to inherit it?
- I wouldn’t drive that car with *your* chauffeur!
- The right roads, okay? [whispers] No blacktops!
- There’s a conservative puffed corn chip and liberal puffed corn chip.
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For those of us who primarily watch the ‘Colbert Report’ and the ‘Daily Show’ on Hulu, today is a sad day. Hulu’s Senior VP of Content and Distrubution, Andy Forssell, made an announcement on the Hulu blog that as of next Tuesday, March 9, Hulu will not be carrying any Comedy Central shows. Now, granted, people in the US can continue to watch both clips and full versions of shows on ColbertNation.com and TheDailyShow.com. But for months now, virtually the only whole shows that I would watch of the ‘Colbert Report’ were on Hulu. And I have to be honest – I’m a bit peeved about this decision.
But why, you may ask, would this rub me the wrong way so much if I have access to the show via the official sites? Well, let me tell you. Are my reasons selfish? You betcha. Am I being whiny? Yeah, probably. But I got something to say! Which leads me to my first reason …
1) No more free ‘Strangers With Candy’
On occasion, I want to do a screencap of ‘Strangers With Candy’ for the site, or maybe just sit down and have a mini-marathon of some of my favorite SWC episodes. Now, I have the DVD’s, but sometimes, it’s nice to just be able to watch the shows on the computer. Plus it also allowed us to embed relevant clips here on No Fact Zone as the need would arise. Well, we can say goodbye to the pole and the hole … no more full episodes of one of my very favorite Stephen Colbert projects.
2) The viewing experience is smoother and the ads more relevant on Hulu than on ColbertNation.com
Trust me when I say I have watched a lot of videos, both full episodes and segment clips, on Hulu and ColbertNation.com. And I choose Hulu 95% of the time. The only time I ever watch full episodes on ColbertNation.com is when I want a particularly large screencap. The main reason for this is the ads.
Now, I’m not adverse to ads. People have to pay the bills, and I can respect that. But Hulu gives me multiple options for viewing ads, and once I’ve seen an ad for a particular segment of the show, I can watch that segment repeatedly without being bombarded with ads. Each break comes with a different ad, and sometimes I am even given the option of watching a full 2 minute ad and then the entire show is ad free. This is an excellent opportunity, and I really like it when the ads are movies because I actually enjoy watching the trailers.
With Comedy Central.com, I have to watch 3-4 ads before I can watch any part of the show. But let’s say I want to skip to the interview. I am forced to watch 2 minutes of ads, and often it’s the same ad over and over and over and over and over, before I ever get to any content. If I decide to rewind and go from the third section to the first, I have to watch another ad, and sometimes even two. The pause feature isn’t nearly as smooth, and it’s just a much more frustrating experience.
I know I might be an exception to how a normal user might use the site. I think I can safely say that when it comes to the ColbertNation.com videos, I’m a bit of a power user. But if I’m having this much trouble, surely others who watch the video are having the same issues.
3) Hulu gives the option of embedding only a small segment of a video.
I absolutely LOVE this feature! If I want to embed a part of the show – say, a musical number, or a snippet of dialogue – Hulu allows me to pick the exact snippet of the full episode that I want to embed, and put parameters in the code to install the code. I can also designate what size I want the Hulu video to be through a simple HTML adjustment, to best fit within the parameters of the body of the blog (although the default 512px width is a good size anyway). With the ColbertNation.com videos, I cannot embed the whole episode, and the sections of the show only allow a certain parameter of viewing experience – it tells you the size of the segment, the frame (with ads for other Comedy Central projects), and another aspect of Comedy Central videos that I simply cannot stand …
4) ColbertNation.com embed code screws up my LiveJournal feed.
About 10% of my syndicated site readers are LiveJournal users. Many of what I would call the Power User Zoners read the site via LiveJournal. But when the RSS feed syndicates code from an official Comedy Central video, LiveJournal simply cannot read the code. The Hulu video embeds lovely in any RSS feed or browser where it appears.
5) This is going to totally hose my morning schedule.
I warned you at the beginning of this post that my reasons were selfish, so let me spell this out a bit clearer. Hulu posts their videos of the ‘Colbert Report’ right around 5:45a CST or so. ColbertNation.com posts their full episode HD video around 7:30a CST. I normally start my episode guide by 6:20a so that I can have it done by 7:30a so I can get ready for work. And considering I spend over an hour a day typing and talking about and analyzing every episode of the show, I tend to only watch it once. So my options are: a) watch it on my TiVo, in standard def, and type the guide every morning on my netbook, or b) wait until CN.com posts the videos so that I can do the typing and editing on my Mac, but risk running late for work every day.
So, yes, this makes me cranky. We work darn hard around here to do the best that we can do and still have a little bit of a life away from the computer. I’ve had a very nice, smooth morning schedule for months after I started using Hulu as my primary source for shows. Also, I can watch the show in HD from Hulu on my shiny new iMac screen. But now? Phhhtt.
Thanks for listening to me rant. How many of you watch the shows on Hulu? And how will you be watching the shows now?
And, while you can, let’s pour a forty of Formula 401 on the ground to honor the death of ‘Colbert Report’ Hulu videos.
h/t to my old friend vdovault as well as MrTigger and Roland
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Episode 6029 (3/1/2010)
By · CommentsEPISODE NUMBER: 6029 (March 1, 2010)
GUESTS: Michael Bublé, Don Cheadle
SEGMENTS: Barack Obama mentions Stephen (twice!), Stephane Colbert, Vancouverage
VIDEOS: Monday, March 1, 2010
It’s good to see that Stephen is still milking the Vancouver coverage. Here’s hoping that we get to see even more goodies that we were tipped off about both on the ColbertNation.com site, and maybe even the show!
It’s so funny to see Stephen mention himself as being mentioned by someone famous. It’s so meta. And having Stephen be mentioned twice by the president’s office is quite hysterical. Stephen’s metaphor of the parties being a married couple and the “issue” being a baby was another excellent example of Stephen being able to explain any situation in the most bizarre of terms.
Is it just me, or did Stephane Colbert look like a young Jerry Lewis? Maybe it was the glasses and hair. And yay for the Michael Bublé interview! With the singing! It was deliciously awkward.
What did all of you enjoy about the episode tonight?
- You all know two things know about me. I’m not a fan of the President, and I’m not an egomaniac. But last week, the President mentioned me twice!
- But not quite as excited as I am about the most powerful man in the world saying my name in space.
- The only way it could have been more boring is if they were curling.
- And to this day, when the wind whips around the moor, you can still hear the teeth saying “Remember to floss!”
- Repeat after me: F@#k ‘em! If those “30 million people” want health care, let them get a better job, or join the Army, or go to Canada, or eat Flintstones vitamins – it’s not our problem! Stop faking caregasms!
- Stephane Colbert: Yes. You damned pig’s vagina.
- Being in Vancouver for the last two weeks really helped me get past all the lazy stereotypes of Canadians being beaver humping moose jockeys.
- It would certainly make a lot more sense than what the Russians did last night by promoting their games with radioactive space ovaries.
- I paid my $12 bucks, you do the work.
- Why aren’t you doing heroin for Darfur?
- The nicest drug addicts you’ve ever met in your life.
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All You Need to Know: Vancouver Extravaganza Edition
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Hello Zoners! Well, the magic of the 2010 Olympics is over now, but we can use this post as an opportunity to reflect back on the amazing shows and athletic feats that happened during this time. So….who’s ready for London in 2012?
Episode Guides:
- Fantasy Colbert League Weekly
- Episode 6025 (February 22, 2010) – Ed Colbert, Ujjal Dosanjh, Shaun White
- Episode 6026 (February 23, 2010) – Lindsey Vonn, Bob Costas
- Episode 6027 (February 24, 2010) – Mike Eruzione, Scott Hamilton, Ryan St. Onge and Jeret “Speedy” Peterson
- Episode 6028 (February 25, 2010) – Shani Davis, Seth Wescott
The Olympics Tapings!:
- Our friends up north prove that the Colbert Nation defies borders with their raucous rounds of applause for Stephen.
- Eye Candy: Bob Costas rides the moose! (Oh, and Ms. I? There is now an entry on Urban Dictionary for “Ride the Moose”. Check it out.)
- Eye Candy: Day 2 in Vancouver. (I want that snowboard.)
- Eye Candy: Johnny Weir and Stephen Colbert
Mainstream Media:
- Coverage kicked off with the lovely description of Stephen as speedskating’s “sugar daddy”.
- The Vancouver Sun reports on Stephen’s welcome to the games.
- We were spoiled for opportunities to see Stephen. Here’s one of his segments from the “Faces of America” special.
- And here’s some more videos of Stephen and company leaping to Pluto’s defense for ‘The Pluto Files’.
- Ujjal Dosanjh talks about his appearance on the Colbert Report here.
Stephen Colbert in the Zeitgeist:
- Zeitgeist: February 15
- Zeitgeist: Vancouver Day 2
- And because one Zeitgeist post was not enough for the Olympics news on one day, we have Vancouver Day 2, Part 2.
- Zeitgeist: Vancouver Super Spoiler Edition
- Zeitgeist: Vancouver Wrap-Up
- And Six Degrees:Post Vancouver Edition
- Some non-Olympics news: Press Secretary Gibbs explains that Stephen is too tough an interviewer for Obama.
Who’s Honoring Stephen Now:
- The Audies are with Selected Shorts featuring Stephen reading the selection “The Veldt” being featured as a finalist.
To keep up with the latest news about Stephen Colbert and “The Colbert Report”, please subscribe to the RSS feed, via reader, e-mail, or your favorite social networking site:
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It should come as no surprise to fans of either show, but it looks like the mainstream press is waking up to the notion that the best places to catch scientific rock stars on TV are on The Daily Show or The Colbert Report. Some of my favorite guests have been science geeks (Brian Cox! Janna Levin!), and I’m already giddy with anticipation with tonight’s Daily Show interview of Neil deGrasse Tyson.
Today’s THE USA Today has a write-up of the Daily Show/Colbert Report and science phenomenon here (internal links omitted):
Best science on TV: Comedy Central’s Stewart, Colbert?
By Dan Vergano, USA TODAYLooking for science? Headed for Animal Planet or the Science Channel?
Think again, scientists say: All the cool kids want to sit across from Comedy Central’s Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert.
“Comedy Central is it, as far as science goes,” says Caltech physicist Sean Carroll, who is scheduled for a Colbert Report visit in March to promote his book, From Eternity to Here: The Quest for the Ultimate Theory of Time. “I give tremendous credit to The Daily Show and The Colbert Report for understanding that science is fascinating and fun, not off-putting and work.”
. . .
I honestly think my favorite Jon Stewart and Neil deGrasse Tyson moment was the one where Jon teased Dr. Tyson about the Rubik’s Cube, but The Daily Show’s link to that one is messed up. Still, to whet your appetite for tonight, please feel free to revisit this fun exchange instead:
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| Neil deGrasse Tyson | ||||
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