Stephen Colbert: Beyond Truthiness (4 page)

Both Groucho Marx and French diplomat
Jean Giraudoux
have been credited with saying
that the key to success is sincerity: “Once you can fake that, you’ve got it made.” In developing his
Daily Show
persona, Colbert took the adage a step further. Nodding, pausing, then drilling the camera with his gaze, he seemed professional and so, so sincere. Yet once the viewer saw that he was covering another Bigfoot story, sincerity became the joke. Moving further into the piece, Colbert amped up the gravitas, dipping an eyebrow, adjusting his glasses to become the dead-on parody of a news correspondent. Geraldo Rivera without pants. Anderson Cooper on Red Bull.

It took Colbert a while to warm to
The Daily Show
and vice versa. Tensions on the set were high as host Kilborn joked about the “bitches” behind the scenes, and no one on either side of the camera seemed sure when fakeness was funny or when it was just fake. Colbert appreciated the steady pay but later lamented, “You wanted to take your soul off, put it on a wire hanger, and leave it in the closet before you got on the plane to do one of these pieces.” Not expecting the show to last, he continued to seek other work but came up empty. Then, in December 1998, as he and Evie celebrated the birth of their son Peter, “The Three Idiots” struck again.

As children of the 1970s, all three remembered watching smarmy after-school specials about troubled teens. All that angst begged for mockery, and Colbert, Dinello, and Sedaris were ready to take aim. They pitched a pilot to Comedy Central, entitled
The Way After School Special
, that portrayed Amy Sedaris as a former “user, boozer, and loser” who returns to high school as a creepy, clueless, middle-aged woman. Faculty at the fictional Flatpoint High consisted of angry, hair-triggered teachers, screaming or bursting into tears in front of their classes. Comedy Central bought ten episodes and gave the show the best slot on the network, right after
South Park.
Colbert, Dinello, and Sedaris got busy writing.

A month after they sold the idea, a new host appeared on
The Daily
Show
. Together with Colbert, he would pave a third path for young comics, satire.

“
I tried to be like Jon
Stewart,
a
nd by trying to be him, I found myself.”

On a warm mid-August day in 1998, while Americans reveled in the latest dirt from the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal, Comedy Central held a press conference in Manhattan. Beneath the network’s globe-shaped logo, executives told reporters of a forthcoming change at the anchor desk of
The Daily Show
. Host Craig Kilborn was jumping to the CBS
Late Late Show
,
leaving Comedy Central moguls miffed. Like jilted lovers, they did not want to talk about it. How could they possibly replace Kilborn?

In answer, their new host stepped to the podium. He was short, as he was quick to note, nearly a foot shorter than Kilborn. He was also handsome, affable, and eager to take the tired show in a fresh direction. Younger reporters may have recognized him from his MTV late night show, canceled four years earlier. Since then, he had struggled to stay afloat, taking bit parts in movies, guest hosting, and continuing to do stand-up. Ladies and gentlemen, meet Jon Stewart.

Responding to questions, Stewart dismissed the change as “musical chairs,” but when pressed, he promised changes. “When you go into a show, you want to establish your own identity,” he said. Another reporter raised his hand. Aside from the steady income, why had Stewart, often rumored to be courted by major networks, signed onto cable? “I value my anonymity,” he quipped. Then came a question from the back. The reporter identified himself. “Stephen Colbert, Mr. Stewart. What I want to know is how does this announcement affect
my
chances of becoming host of
The Daily Show
?” Stewart turned to his new boss and said, “I thought you said he wasn’t funny.”

Later that day, Colbert told his wife about the new host of
The Daily Show
. It turned out she knew him. Back in the early 1990s, when Colbert was courting Evie long distance, her roommate was dating Stewart. Evie had often seen the young comedian sitting alone at parties, nursing a beer. “Jon Stewart?” she said incredulously. “He’s not funny.”

That evening, Colbert went to a Manhattan bookstore where Stewart was signing his book,
Naked Pictures of Famous People.
Chances are, no one noticed when the two men stood face-to-face at the book table. Stewart wrote: “To Stephen, Please don’t hurt me - Jon Stewart.” And as Stewart later said, “after that it was all magic.”

They were an unlikely couple. Aside from losing their fathers at age ten - Stewart in a bitter divorce, Colbert in a tragic plane crash - they had little in common. One was a wise-cracking New Jersey kid raised, along with his older brother, by a public school teacher. The other came from a huge and distinguished family ensconced in the upper echelons of Southern society. One grew up reading
MAD
magazine, the other devouring Tolkien. One was Jewish, the other Catholic. One did stand-up, the other sketch comedy. One was a thirty-five-year-old bachelor living with his girlfriend in lower Manhattan, the other a married father of a growing family and living in New York’s tony Westchester County. One spiced his humor with words you couldn’t say on television, the other relied on nuance and parody.

The man who would come to know them best, writer and producer Ben Karlin, later marveled at the contrast. “Stephen is a happy man,” Karlin said. “He goes home to a lovely wife in New Jersey (the Colberts moved from New York in 2000), with a new dog and three beautiful children. He teaches Sunday school and knows his way around the kitchen. And then he has this deviously brilliant comedic mind. . . . Jon is driven by the forces of guilt and shame and fear of being on the outside that gives Jews their comic angst.” But Stewart and Colbert, Karlin added, share one important trait. “They both really just want to get a laugh.”

Until that press conference on August 11, 1998, Stewart and Colbert had never met and seemed barely aware of each other. Too old to watch MTV, Colbert had not seen “
The Jon Stewart Show
” that aired in the early ‘90s. Stewart may have watched
Exit 57
, but never having visited Second City, he was unaware of Colbert’s improv background. Stewart was intensely political, Colbert avoided politics. But over the next several years, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert would merge their respective geniuses to become the most revered comic voices in America.

The hyphenated name, “Stewart-Colbert,” now saturates American culture as if they are married. Every four years, it emerges on bumper stickers and T-shirts touting them for president and vice president. (At this writing in 2014, there is already a Stewart/Colbert 2016 Facebook page.) The duo routinely appears in gossip columns and news bites summarizing what each said on his most recent show, and pundits have written about the “Stewart-Colbert effect” on TV news. In the fall of 2010, they co-hosted the massive “Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear” on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. Barely more than a year later, they lampooned the entire election process by co-coordinating Colbert’s Super PAC. Working independently, yet in lockstep, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert have become, as “
Rolling Stone
” magazine put it, “America’s Anchors.”

They are anchors in more ways than one. Each anchors fake news programs, each is also an anchor in a culture that seems increasingly insane. Their co-anchor work began on January 11, 1999, when Stewart took over
The Daily Show
. “Welcome to
The Daily Show!
” Stewart began. “Craig Kilborn is on assignment in Kuala Lumpur – I’m Jon Stewart.” Then, after reading the usual fake headlines, he turned to the show’s chief political correspondent, Colbert, standing before a backdrop of the U.S. Capitol.

Colbert detailed the merchandising surrounding the impending impeachment trial of President Clinton. T-shirts, snow globes, corn holders - all manner of products designed to capitalize on the furor. Chili’s “El Diablo” was the Democrats’ official fajita of the impeachment process, while the GOP was sponsored by “Lying Vindictive Hypocrites.” The segment lasted just two minutes, but it was the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

Years later, Colbert waxed nostalgic about those early days, joking about how tightly he and Stewart are linked. “We live together, you know,” Colbert told Jimmy Kimmel. “We commute to work on a tandem bicycle.” But seriously, though, “I am so lucky to have Jon Stewart, of all people, call me up on a random day and say, ‘I like that thing you did last night, and here’s why. . . .’ And he’s also just a good, fun guy. I’m lucky to have him as a friend, and as a mentor.”

Throughout Stewart’s first year behind
The Daily Show
desk, Colbert continued to hone his deadpan character. As the show’s correspondent, Colbert was not the grandiose, right-wing egotist who would later lead Colbert Nation. Instead, he was that fool’s father. Grim, weighty, and melodramatic, he applied fake sincerity to one strange story after another. Masterful timing enabled Colbert to make even silence funny. The raw rookie, Stewart, could barely contain a smile when introducing the next Colbert segment. In a typical piece, Colbert traveled to Saratoga Springs, New York, “a safe, picturesque community, in reality, but on paper, it’s home to one of the most deadly accidents of our time.” Colbert then explained how 350 residents had been listed as “deceased” on W-2 forms.

Insisting there had been a mass murder, he interrogated city officials:

Later, Colbert wrapped up the ongoing Bigfoot series, reporting from central Washington State where Sasquatch had made the Endangered Species List. And on the Wall Street trading floors, Senior Financial Correspondent Stephen Colbert discussed the World Wrestling Federation’s new stock offering. Breaking into a testosterone-fed Hulk Hogan voice, he shouted: “YOU WANNA KNOW WHY THE YEN IS DOWN, YAMAMOTO? BECAUSE YOU PANTYWAISTS CAN’T HANDLE A GOLD-BACKED CURRENCY! THE NIKKEI IS FOR OLD LADIES AND BEDWETTERS!”

Feeling more in tune with Stewart than Craig Kilborn, Colbert put his own stamp on
The Daily Show
. When other correspondents left, he was quick to recommend his old Second City foil, Steve Carell. “There’s nothing he can’t make funny,” Colbert told the
Daily Show
producers. Carell offered his own reports, and teaming with Colbert, the two mimicked the shouting matches of 24/7 cable in their debate segment, “Even-Stevphen.” The first topic was “Weather: Good or Bad?”

COLBERT: “Every time a Floyd or a Girt lifts their skirt and relieves themselves on the East Coast, Uncle Sam feels obliged to crawl under the plate glass coffee table and throw twenty-dollar bills around. Well, I say ‘show’s over, folks.’ It’s time to pull the plug on weather.

CARELL: “Balderdash! The federal government should stay out of the natural disaster business. Today, they’re controlling the weather, and tomorrow, who knows? Federal income tax! I’ll bet you and your friend Stalin would like that!”

COLBERT: “You, sir, are an idiot, and I’ll tell you why: It’s time for those fat cats in Washington to get off their keisters and pass legislation outlawing these hurricanes and tornadoes forever. Or maybe, you just hate . . .
children
.

CARELL: “Noooo, I hate you. If tornadoes are outlawed, only outlaws will have tornadoes.”

COLBERT: “I’m curious Steve. What’s the weather like up your own ass?”

The segment ended with Colbert shouting, “shut up, Shut UP, SHUT UP!” and Carell plugging his ears, chanting “puppy dogs and ice cream!” It soon became a regular feature.

Having brought this little piece of Second City to television, Colbert was planning another transplant. Shortly after Stewart took over, Colbert cut his
Daily Show
appearances to just twenty a year. The extra time allowed him to help Sedaris and Dinello create
The Way After School Special
. In April 1999, “The Three Idiots” debuted the re-titled work,
Strangers with Candy.

A stranger sitcom has rarely been seen. With footage shot in New Jersey high schools,
Strangers with Candy
featured Jerri Blank, a forty-six-year-old ex-addict who returns to school to get her degree. Sedaris, wearing raccoon eye-makeup and a twisted frown, portrayed Jerri Blank as a warped naïf. Striving to be popular, Jerri sells drugs to classmates, struggles to lose weight, and tries out for homecoming queen. Every episode closed with one of Jerri’s moralistic statements, such as:

“I guess what I learned this week was:

• “If you’re going to reach for a star, reach for the lowest one you can!”
  
• “Only losers do drugs, unless it helps you win, and in that case, only winners do drugs!”
  
• “You never really lose your parents unless, of course, they die, and then they’re gone forever, and nothing will bring them back.”
  

Dinello played Geoffrey Jellineck, an insecure art teacher who wants to be as cool as his students. Colbert was Chuck Noblet, a raging, uptight history teacher based on Colbert’s former prep school teachers “who wanted to do anything other than teach.” And to thicken the melodrama, Noblet and Jellineck were closeted gays. Even Evie Colbert got in on the act, her gentle demeanor adding class to a few cameo roles.
Strangers
got stranger with each episode, drawing cultish fans whom Colbert assumed were “damaged people,” but they alienated the critics.

“The show lands with a thud,” wrote
The New York Times
. Jerri’s blunt lines such as:
“I’ve got to leave early today. I’m having my uterus scraped” were too much for
USA Today
, which found
Strangers
“virtually comedy-free.” But the ratings were good enough to get the show renewed for two more seasons. Weirdness, however, has a short shelf life, and
Strangers with Candy
was canceled in October 2000.

With a new century underway, the two sides of Stephen Colbert stood at a crossroads. Looking down one road was the sketch comedian, drawn to performing in skits of Sedaris-style oddity, but he was tiring of snide jokes about small-town eccentrics. Looking down the other road was the faux journalist covering tabloid stories with all the self-importance of CNN. A decade with Dinello and Sedaris had run its course. The “Idiots” were still good friends, but with little to show for their collaboration other than cancellations and mixed reviews. They eventually made a forgettable movie version of
Strangers
,
but Colbert was finding
The Daily Show
the better road ahead.