The Harvey Dent Awards: Stephen Colbert
You either die a hero or live long enough to become the villain.
I am ecstatic to welcome you to the third annual Harvey Dent Awards! Glamour and glitter, fashion and fame… The Harvey Dent Awards have it all!
Named for the two-faced Gotham district attorney, the illustrious Harvey Dent Award is bestowed upon exceptional individuals who best exemplify both:
Dent’s dualistic character
The ideal expressed in his famous aphorism: “You either die a hero or live long enough to become the villain.”
The recipients must be people who have gone from a champion of freedom to an instrument of oppression. And, they must be woefully, or even willfully, ignorant of any hypocrisy, any change, any contradictions in their ethos or behavior. They will be a hero who has, indeed, lived long enough to become the villain.
Now, without further ado, I have the distinct honor and pleasure to present the latest recipient of the prestigious Harvey Dent Award1…
[I produce an envelope from the interior pocket of my suit jacket. I delicately open the envelope and pull out a small, white card. My eyes widen.]
Mr. Stephen Colbert!
To quote comedian and political podcaster, Jimmy Dore, “I can’t think of a bigger letdown in my life than Stephen Colbert.”
Me neither, Jimmy. Me neither.
As Jimmy goes on to rightly point out: “[Colbert] made fun of George Bush to his face, and now he became one of those George Bush enablers.” More on that later.
First, let’s take a trip down memory lane and admire how far Colbert has come on his path to being a Harvey Dent Award-winner…
After graduating with a theater degree at Northwestern University back in the 1980s, a young Colbert found himself performing with the legendary Second City comedy troupe alongside other up-and-comers like Steve Carell, Amy Sedaris, and Paul Dinello. After stints on short-lived comedy programs Exit 57 and The Dana Carvey Show, in 1997 Colbert’s charmed career led him to the role that would establish him as a media mainstay playing… Stephen Colbert… playing a parody of a right-wing political commentator on a quirky new comedy-news chimera called The Daily Show.
Colbert would go on to win plaudits (and three Emmy Awards) for his work on The Daily Show, but it was actually a couple of years into his run that he did his best work, and it wasn’t on the The Daily Show. In 1999, he once again joined with Second City’s Sedaris and Dinello, this time to co-create, co-write, and co-star in the hysterical, cult-classic, “afterschool special” satire Strangers with Candy, with Colbert wielding his now-signature deadpan in the role of Chuck Noblet—a obtuse, self-serious, openly-closeted gay history teacher. (It was a fitting follow-up to another of his early roles voicing Ace of The Ambiguously Gay Duo).
In 2005, Colbert left The Daily Show—but not his Stephen Colbert “character"—and began hosting a spin-off show called The Colbert Report. A year later, Colbert would become the stuff of legend to snarky (and, perhaps, naïve) anti-establishment types like me and the aforementioned Jimmy Dore when he attended the White House Correspondents' Association Dinner. There he drolly lampooned then-president George W. Bush, to his face, about a range of topics from his poor polling to the Iraq War catastrophe. It was glorious, if a bit bittersweet looking back on it now that Colbert’s duplicity has earned him a Harvey.
However, Colbert didn’t just go after G-Dubs, Darth Cheney, and the rest of their ignominious ilk. Often lost in those headlines was another group that Colbert eviscerated that evening, a group that the press was a bit less eager to beleaguer: the press itself. Having only recently graduated with a journalism degree at the time, this wasn’t lost on me. Take the following withering attack:
But, listen, let's review the rules. Here's how it works: the president makes decisions. He's the decider. The press secretary announces those decisions, and you people of the press type those decisions down. Make, announce, type. Just put 'em through a spell check and go home. Get to know your family again. Make love to your wife. Write that novel you got kicking around in your head. You know, the one about the intrepid Washington reporter with the courage to stand up to the administration. You know—fiction!
”You know, the one about the intrepid Washington reporter with the courage to stand up to the administration. You know—fiction!”
”You know—fiction!”
Absolutely devastating.
Old Colbert delivered gut-punch lines like that to corrupt elites in the highest positions of politics and media. New Colbert, who would go on to replace David Letterman as the host of The Late Show in 2015, became the epitome of everything he once ridiculed.
For example, in 2020, Colbert sat down to interview former-president Barry “I’m Really Good At Killing People” Obama, affording the courageous Colbert a chance to be that intrepid Washington reporter standing up to the establishment.
Would he challenge Obama on the cages he had built for prospective immigrants, a supposedly appalling policy for which Colbert and his liberal pals had demonized Donald Trump for years?
Would he criticize Obama for his persecution of whistleblower Edward Snowden?
Would he confront Obama on his unconstitutional use of drone strikes, including the extrajudicial murder of an American teenager?
I’m sure Colbert will mercilessly mock Obama just as he did Bush! Let’s take a quick look at the comedic carnage that must have ensued. Cue the the clip!
[The stage dims and a video plays on the jumbo screen behind me.]
…
Wait, what? “I just want to take a moment to drink you in!?” Did he really just say, “I just want to—”
[I frantically pull the pocket square from my jacket to cover my mouth as I turn away from the podium. Thankfully, I had only eaten a light brunch of eggs benedict and a Mimosa much earlier in the day, so after dry heaving for a moment, I compose myself and turn back to the microphone.]
Whew. So, no. No, Colbert would, in fact, not be bringing that same acerbic energy to his sit-down with war criminal Barack Obama as he did with war criminal George W. Bush.
It turned out that little Stevie C. only puffed out his chest and stuck it to “the man” when “the man” was the uncool, Republican face of the Uniparty military-industrial complex’s totalitarian surveillance state, already roundly ridiculed as a cartoonish buffoon. When “the man” was the cool, Democrat face of the Uniparty military-industrial complex’s totalitarian surveillance state, already fawningly feted as the pop apotheosis of the enlightened god-king, then Colbert basically tripped over himself in his rush to unzip Obama’s fly and get down to business.
Of course, one thing that is comedy gold (in a “Divine Comedy” sorta way) is that today G-Dubs is cool! MSM-drugged boomers and history-less zoomers smile and clap as G-Dubs takes selfies with Bono and jokes with Jimmy Kimmel. At least Colbert still found some of that old magic when Bush hilariously, accidentally admitted to his “wholly unjustified and brutal invasion of Iraq.” Sure, G-Dubs was Hitler-Satan before Trump was Hitler-Satan, but now Colbert and his apparatchik pals had a new target for Two-Minutes Hate, Donald J. Trump, as a certain intrepid Substack reporter observed back in 2021. Colbert has not told a non-Trump “joke” since.
Mainstream Media Manipulation
This nascent era of Biden apologetics and softball questions marks a good time to circle back to the Orwellian psyop that was conducted during the Trump administration. For the last four years or so, media outlets basically ran “Two-Minutes Hate" on a two-minute loop.
To be fair, Colbert has occasionally taken a break from his nightly barrage of “Trump, amirite?” clapter appeals for one reason: shilling for Big Pharma and medical tyranny, of course! His “Vax-Scene” dance number was so mind-numbingly horrible that it made me yearn for the sanity and solemnity of the kindergarten musical scene in Snowpiercer.
In fact, Colbert’s desperate bootlicking surrounding the Covid hysteria was so pathetic that he even sought to mock fellow fallen icon and Daily Show alum Jon Stewart when Stewart dared to riff on the then-verboten notion of a lab leak, joking: “Oh my God, there’s a novel respiratory coronavirus overtaking Wuhan, China, what do we do? Oh, you know who we could ask? The Wuhan Novel Respiratory Coronavirus Lab! The disease is the same name as the lab. That’s just a little too weird.”
Colbert obsequiously stammered a couple of damage-control jibes, but he immediately got Mortal Kombat fatalitied by Sempai Stewart when Stewart bulldozed on: “There’s been an outbreak of chocolatey goodness near Hershey, Pennsylvania, what do you think happened? I don’t know, maybe a steam shovel made it with a cocoa bean. Or it’s the fucking chocolate factory!”
Isn’t it funny how Colbert’s courage seems to only manifest in defense of Party-approved narratives? And I don’t mean funny like “haha;” I mean funny like Colbert.
And this is what has become of the man who once seemed poised to use his rapier wit and fearlessness to attack the establishment: he has lived long enough to see himself become a craven, humorless tool of that very establishment. Perhaps it is a cruel irony that a man who made his career playing a satirical role would end up devolving into a parody of himself.
My word, what an exciting trip down memory lane; it is almost like we were talking to two different people! And that is precisely why two-faced Stephen Colbert is our third annual recipient of the coveted Harvey Dent Award.
[I place the notecard back in the envelope, and then place the envelope back in my suit jacket pocket. I then take the award trophy off the podium and hand it to Mr. Colbert. The star-studded audience erupts in applause.]
With that, I would like to thank everyone for attending this evening’s festivities. I am humbled and honored to have been in such esteemed company. Who knows? With a little bit of persistence and a whole lot of pandering, you too could find yourself on the red carpet! But, whether you are in the audience or at the podium, I look forward to seeing you all again at the next, highly anticipated… Harvey Dent Awards!
Great piece.
The only way I can understand turns like Colbert's outside a comic book is to think he never wrote his own material and barely understood what he was doing. Like a dumb actor who, for some magical reason, is fantastic at reading his lines but has no idea what they actually mean.
Think about it: he's not a writer, never wrote his own standup routines, and apparently never had an original thought in his head.
I'm sure it's not that simple but there is some truth in it. I mean, seriously, how does a guy go from being that guy at the White House correspondents dinner to whatever the fuck he is now?
Is humanity that malleable or was he never quite what we thought he was? I think the answer is -- both.
I sincerely appreciate the restack! I hope people enjoy the gala :D