I realize that he may have bombed at the recent White House Correspondents’ Association awards dinner, but I’m still a big fan of Comedy Central’s Stephen Colbert. Here is the recent 60 Minutes segment on Colbert (segment 2 and segment 3), which includes a good dose of Colbert’s hilarious interviewing techniques.
By the way, one thing that I’ve always wondered about Colbert — but that Morley Safer did not ask him in the 60 Minutes piece — is whether the pronunciation of Colbert’s name (prounouced “Cole-bear”) on his show is a play on the wonderful Hyacinth Bucket character (pronounced “bouquet” by Hyacinth and “bucket” by everyone else) in the equally hilarious BBC comedy show, “Keeping Up With Appearances“? Anyone know the answer?
Update: In the small world department, turns out that Jeff Skilling’s law firm — O’Melveny & Myers — has a Colbert connection. One of Colbert’s older brothers is Jim Colbert (who pronounced his name with a good, hard “ert”), who was a litigation partner at O’Melveny for approximatey 30 years in Los Angeles. The elder Colbert was known at O’Melveny as a brilliant litigator with — you guessed it — a sharp wit.
Houston's Clear Thinkers
Longtime Houston attorney Tom Kirkendall's observations on developments in law, business, medicine, culture, sports, and other matters of general interest to the Houston business, professional, and academic communities.
He’s always pronounced it with the original French pronunciation. The only joke is in pronouncing “Report” the same way. As one of the early promos said, “It’s French, bitch.” The idea of an O’Reilly clone proudly embracing his French heritage…
Bombed? He did an amazing job. Simply fantastic.
Perhaps blogcritics said it best:
“Itís one thing to march into the lionís den and yank a fistful of hairs from his mane. Itís quite another to march into a den full of people who think theyíre lions and rub their noses in the fact that theyíre nothing more than fat, spayed tabby cats who are less interested in exposing the powerful than they are in curling up by their feet.
ìThatís what Stephen Colbert did at the White House Correspondents Dinner, and for his perfidy he will now be subject to their endless mewling and kitty-kat clawingÖî
Tom, I don’t understand why the conventional wisdom is that he bombed. I saw a NY Times story that said this. I probably got 50 emails yesterday about it, and the consensus was that it was hilarious and smart.
Dan and Will, I understand the context in which Colbert was performing at the dinner was not the most accomodating, but objectively, I agree with the critics who thought that it was not his best stuff. This is not a comment on the underlying political commentary; I just didn’t think his comments were up to Colbert’s normal level of wit.
I see your point. I’m not a television person (much to my wife’s chigrin), and I didn’t even know who he was until I saw the clip on the internet. I’ll have to get her to DVR some of his stuff and see for myself. Thanks & keep up the great work. – Dan
Perhaps Colbert takes he pronunciation cues from Brian Pinhead (pronunced Pen-AYD) in The Tick.
“Dan and Will, I understand the context in which Colbert was performing at the dinner was not the most accomodating, but objectively, I agree with the critics who thought that it was not his best stuff. This is not a comment on the underlying political commentary; I just didn’t think his comments were up to Colbert’s normal level of wit.”
Maybe not his best stuff, but remember, he had to tone it down a bit. 😉