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Recognizing, coping with, and rooting out of ourselves harsh traits and deeply ingrained shortcomings is necessary for personal and societal moral progress. Critics of The Colbert Report who argue that it mainly fosters greater cynicism in our culture crucially fail to see how it helps us with this difficult task, often by clever subterfuges of irony. As we’ve seen, Colbert is masterful at getting us to laugh at ourselves and some of our worst tendencies and most ridiculous hang-ups, which is a less painful but still effective way of helping us not-so-rational animals have a look in the mirror.

As a final example, consider how Colbert handled the remarkable story involving the women’s softball teams from Central Washington University and Western Oregon University. In the final inning of a game between the two schools, a player on Western Oregon’s team hit a game-winning home run. However, she was unable to round all the bases after she seriously injured her knee rounding first base. Substituting in a pinch runner by rule would have reduced her home run to a single. So, several players from Central Washington decided to carry their hobbled opponent around the rest of the bases, thus ensuring their loss and Western Oregon’s victory. It was an inspiring act of sportswomanship.

Colbert introduced the story in a ThreatDown segment. Of course, the specific threat he initially invited us to see in it was a threat to the nature of competitive sports. According to Colbert, the “softball softies” demonstrated by their behavior that “women are a threat to sport.” For sexists: so far, so good. Except not a few of us were laughing at Colbert’s crass sexism and the stereotypes he proceeded to invoke.

The ruse worked. Seconds later Colbert had everyone, sexist and non-sexist alike, in stitches over the Neanderthal attitudes on display in sports—the precise attitudes that make the story of Central Washington’s sportsmanship all too unique. As he observed, sports offers us “the last socially acceptable place to express violence and blind regional hatred.” Woohoo! “Go, team that lives near me. Destroy that team from nearby town. My team is the best team and always will be the best, until I move.”175

Moving On

Here’s where I think things stand. George W. Bush claims to be a true patriot. In fact, he’s so full of it (patriotism) that his administration is able to offer authoritative judgments concerning which Americans have it and which don’t. It turns out to be a relatively simple task: everyone who agrees with Bush’s (and McCain’s) policies is a patriot. As for the rest of us: not so much.

Stephen Colbert, on the other hand, simply plays at being a patriot. He can only fantasize about dropping bombs on Iran as he flies across the Middle East on that bald eagle that swoops down each night as his show begins.

To avoid the kind of critical self-reflection that could leave him horribly depressed, perhaps suicidal (like the rest of us), Bush often has stated that history will have to be the judge of his presidency. Well, I’m not a historian or the son of one. Still, I think that when historians look back on this period in American history and culture, they will render an ironic verdict. The man who merely played the true patriot was the more authentic American.

13

Why Mr. Colbert Should Be President

NICOLAS MICHAUD

As anyone who has had the pleasure of watching Mr. Colbert on The Colbert Report already knows, Mr. Colbert is a super-man. He’s the host of his own top-rated news show, the author of the best-selling I am America (And So Can You!), and a paragon of excellence in every aspect of his life. Why else would there be both an ice cream flavor created in his honor and a Hungarian bridge named after him? Mr. Colbert’s best-selling book won the very prestigious “Stephen Colbert Award for the Literary Excellence.” And he even coined the 2006 Merriam-Webster word of the year: truthiness. Clearly,