video Stephen Colbert has a plan to "refocus" the media's coverage on Afghanistan. Colbert was apparently inspired to answer Rhode Island congressman Patrick Kennedy's somewhat unhinged call for the media to pay more attention to Afghanistan instead of focusing on the likes of Eric Massa and his adventures in "snorkeling" by going Massa on Afghanistan. It sounds something like this: (more...)

Before blogging became a profession with people bickering over font size and appearance, there was a world of largely unknown bloggers — many of them struggling journalists — who helped create the blogging art form that was less about politics and celebrity than about good writing, interesting ideas, and great satire.

One of the most artful was Jon Swift, an anonymous blog that satired conservative thinking and culture.  He was the blog version of Stephen Colbert, before Colbert even existed, as James Wolcott eulogized in Vanity Fair. Swift — who was anonymous even to other sites where he contributed--has died and news of his death comes in the most fitting way: in a comment on his blog, from his mother. (more...)

video New York Times columnist David Brooks was a guest last night on The Colbert Report and seemed to relish in being back in the "conservative" media after regularly appearing in more "liberal" outlets. Brooks weighed in on Pres. Obama, health care and tea parties, coining a new term for the movement. (more...)

“So I can’t say Olympics, or Vancouver, or winter or show geometric shapes of any size or color?”

“These are not sports, these are drunken dares. Hey go down that hill on a sled. Oh, now try it on two sticks. Now do it with a rifle. I mean, you’re over thinking it.”

video Michael Bublé is not a name that should probably be making repeated appearances on Mediaite. After all, he's an adult contemporary Canadian crooner famous for singing old Frank Sinatra songs and seducing all your friend's mothers. Yet here he is again, fraternizing with another prominent American political commentator, seemingly oblivious (or slyly aware) of the position this person holds in the wide world of conservatism. (more...)

Can it be that the leader of the free world, who recently made a quick lunch out of a roomful of House Republicans, is afraid of getting nailed by Stephen Colbert? In an interview with Michael Scherer, Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said that President Obama would love to appear on Jon Stewart's Daily Show, but gave Colbert the bump. (more...)

Stephen Colbert interviewed George Stephanopoulos last night, and in between needling George about cooking segments as a path to the evening news anchor chair, he put in a good word for Jake Tapper as the next host of "This Week." Colbert isn't the only fundit® to weigh in on the subject recently. Seth Meyers, anchor of the resurgent SNL Weekend Update, also lent his support to the tenacious White House reporter. Whether ABC News taps Tapper or not, though, it's about time they make up their minds. (more...)

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At today's briefing, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs joined the ranks of comedy legends like Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, Keith Olbermann, and Andrea Mitchell when he did his own version of Sarah Palin's "helping hand." Is the Palin Hand Jive the new "I'ma let you finish?" (more...)

I've been getting pretty frustrated with the usually reliable Keith Olbermann's inability to nail Rush Limbaugh and Sarah Palin on Limbaugh's use of the term "retard." Sure, he has posited Palin as a hypocrite, but several times he has repeated Rush's and Palin's dueling assertions that he was "quoting" Rahm Emanuel, or that he was being "satirical," without really challenging it. Luckily, Stephen Colbert actually knows what the word "satire" means, and deployed a pile of it on Palin and Rush last night. (more...)

After Keith Olbermann's post-SOTU j'accuse of a bevy of conservative talking heads, in which he equated their cries of "arrogance" with the racially inflammatory "uppity," many thought Keith was overreaching at best.

Be that as it may, both The Daily Show and The Colbert Report covered a case of the pot calling the kettle "arrogant," as they reported on the unprecedented bit of reverse-place-putting that was the Republicans' Mini-me SOTU. It's not that Obama is "uppity," it's that the Republicans have been too "downity." (more...)

For many TV viewers, the most eagerly anticipated post-State of the Union remarks were neither the GOP response from newly-elected Virginia governor Bob McDonnell, nor reactions from any of the various TV reporters and pundits covering the proceedings - they were jokes from the fake reporter/pundit team of Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert. The two tape their shows in advance, so they couldn't offer their full remarks until last night - and they said largely the same thing (at least about McDonnell's rebuttal), though Colbert had a more inventive way of doing it. (more...)

Who: Jeffrey Toobin, Calvin Trillin, Janeane Garofalo and Jonathan Alter, moderated by Andy Borowitz What: The Andy Borowitz Report: Obama’s First Year Where: 92nd St. Y When: January 27, 2010 Thumbs: Up Host/moderator Andy Borowitz set the tone for the evening with ten minutes of stand-up comedy at the top of the event. It sent the message that this wasn’t going to be the same old discussion evaluating the president’s first year in office. It was a night with more laughs than sharp critique. And that’s just what the crowd was looking for on the night of the president’s State of the Union address. (more...)

The White House Correspondents' Association is apparently not on team CoCo. The WHCA, which hosts the popular annual dinner where the press corp and various celebs get to mingle with the President, announced today that Jay Leno would be emceeing this year's dinner. Not great timing to be sure: an unpopular comedian joking about a suddenly unpopular President. Probably not the sort of mood lightener Obama was hoping for. (more...)

While hosting fellow Fox star Glenn Beck Friday night in a session of heavy mutual back-patting, Bill O'Reilly made his usual show of offhanded braggadocio, and took yet another opportunity to declare the dreaded "left wing media" irrelevant, if not dead in the water. Beck admitted that his M.O. is targeting progressives, to which O'Reilly responded, "I did that before you came to Fox. I stopped doing it because we became so successful." (more...)

video Sometimes it's just too easy for television's punditocracy. In yesterday's speech regarding the failed terrorist attack of Christmas Day, Barack Obama admitted that there was a failure "to connect the dots," a clean, honest and trite acknowledgment that mistakes had been made. Also, a perfect soundbite for TV pundits eager to simplify a complex narrative into a few, easy-to-understand words, almost like a puzzle designed to quiet children on a restaurant placemat. Speaking of which... (more...)

video Thanks to the 'Underwear Bomber' and his Yemeni-based al Qaeda connections the country of Yemen is getting a lot of attention in the press these days. A lot. Depending on where you get your news Yemen is either filling the role in the Axis of Evil left vacant by Iraq says Stephen Colbert (video below), or beautiful but troubled according to NBC's Richard Engel, who also says the media may be blowing the threat out of proportion (along with Canadian airlines!). Or, alternately, our most fragile ally. (more...)

video On the heels of Erick Erickson's Colbert Report appearance, in which he alleged that White House Director of Communications for Health Care Linda Douglass had referred to opponents of reform as "brownshirts," the conservative fundit did a little bit of ex post facto-checking last night. Apparently, Colbert somehow came to doubt Erickson's account (you're welcome, Stephen. Again.) Douglass appeared on the show last night, but was it to nail, or be nailed? (more...)

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When I heard that Redstate Chief Editor Erick Erickson was going to be on The Colbert Report (4 minutes before the show), I tuned in expecting to see copious nailage. The mixture of master satirist Stephen Colbert and hard-right loose cannon Erickson is a match made in nail heaven.

The outcome wasn't what I expected, and at one point, I even found myself in agreement with the face of conservatism's Markos Moulitsas.

'Tis the season for Christmas classics on Hulu! Since he's one of our Mediaite 50 and the top magazine mover of 2009, we thought we'd present his star-studded song-littered bear-fighting Christmas special from last year called A Colbert Christmas: The Greatest Gift of All. Hulu is amazing for this sort of thing. Here's A Christmas Carol, here's The Nutcracker, and here's, um, Holiday in Handcuffs. Hey man, the holidays are what you make them. (more...)

The year 2009 had many media bright spots, break-out stars, dominating networks and game-changing technologies.  The Mediaite 50 collects the finest, most exemplary innovators and influencers of the year, defining a media moment in time and setting the agenda as we move forward. (more...)

The Atlantic's Jim Warren, former managing editor and Washington bureau chief for the Chicago Tribune, attended the Second City 50th anniversary event in Chicago, which featured alumni of the comedy institution — including a very forthcoming Stephen Colbert. Colbert, who sat for a panel discussion with writers of "The Colbert Report," moderated by NPR's Peter Sagal, talked about the jokes he held back at the 2006 White House Correspondent's Dinner, what he thinks of Glenn Beck and why he couldn't help himself from liking Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. (more...)

Verena von Pfetten is Air America's Senior Lifestyle & Entertainment Editor, and the former Living Editor at the Huffington Post, which makes her my former colleague and great friend. (She is also Canadian, as well as the former Verena van der Woodsen to my Blair Sklardorf). Verena had the good fortune, or misfortune, depending on how you look at it, to run into me at a moment of inspiration, during which I suggested we experiment with a new form of our traditional 5QQ — the impromptu video. Verena gamely gave it a whirl, and what followed was about as informal and off-the-cuff a rendering of the 5QQ as we have ever done (usually we email the questions to our quarry, who then have time to think about the answers. Not so today with Verena. Lucky her!). (more...)

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"I think this has been a wonderful decade for civility. And anyone who disagrees with me can gargle my man-sack."

2009 has been a horrible year for the magazine publishing industry. Much has been made of the perfect storm of an ad recession (brought about by a dismal economic climate), and the growth of up-to-the-second digital media. But in the midst of this blizzard of bad news, there has been one beacon of hope for editors and publishers alike: Stephen Colbert. Vanity Fair tells us that putting Colbert on the cover leads to sales! (more...)

video Stephen Colbert took some time last night to address the phenomenon that is the conservative media's apparent support of gold: Glenn Beck, Laura Ingraham, Bill O'Reilly all shill for gold as a good investment. "Conservative talk and gold" says Colbert, "go together like Obama and a Hitler mustache." Youch! (more...)

video Stephen Colbert made headlines when he announced last month that his viewership (or, as he affectionately calls them, "Colbert Nation") would take over as primary sponsor of the United States' speed skating team in advance of the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver. And the fans have delivered, raising approximately $250,000 for the team in the time since. (more...)

It's very easy to dismiss today's journalists as high maintenance and pampered celebrity pundits, unworthy descendants of their beloved and revered Walter Cronkite. And you'd be right in most enough cases. You can blame it on their network bosses and corporate owners, who have reduced much of the "news" to easily digestible distraction nuggets for a woefully uninformed public.

But as much energy as I spend turning off my TV in disgust these days, I'm equally in awe of those who use the airwaves for good, building our understanding of a topic and sometimes even, sorry, advocacy. Good TV, as rare and oxymoronic as that may sound, can produce some of the best narrative to our world. And no matter how much more I consume online, in magazines or books, I'm still a boob tube kid.

So with the holiday festivities bringing us all around TV sets (sorry, Hulu and video streaming) in the coming weeks, this is a good time to celebrate some of the best and brightest we have at camera one. In no particular order, my 2009 media heroes: (more...)

It's no secret that grown-ups love the Harry Potter series almost as much as kids - maybe even more, based on certain grown-up references that the average 12-year-old can't quite yet appreciate. More to the point, by this time a whole bunch of Harry Potter fans who were once kids, back when the book came out, are now all grown up. Either way, that means a whole lot of us at Mediaite are unashamed, unabashed Harry Potter fans. After its worldwide record-breaking weekend (which a few of us contributed to), we got to talking about certain parallels between the magical land of Hogwarts and the equally magical land of headlines, bylines, cutlines, chyrons, blog pickup and declining ad pages. Turns out, the two have a lot in common! Before we knew it, we were shouting out names of media muggles like Hermione answering a pop quiz. After careful (and nerdily meticulous) consideration, we've come up with a few examples for you. (We like to think of the Power Grid as our own little version of the Marauder's Map.) Here below, for your edification and enjoyment, is our own version - let's call it "Harry Potter and the Media Muggles." Mischief managed!

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video Stephen Colbert became a huge star by adopting a personality radically different from his own, but since he and his fake pundit character share a name, the intertwining of the two Stephen Colberts was inevitable. Add in the high-profile public appearances he's made in character, and it's no wonder it can be a shock to the system when the real Colbert drops the blustery veneer, as he did last night on Late Show with David Letterman. (more...)

video This clip crystallizes one of the reasons why The Colbert Report is so damn good: Anything can happen, and when it does, it will happen for the right reasons. It will also be kooky, goofy, funny and hilarious — but it will be shot through with decency, charity, tolerance and warmth. You will seriously never find mean humor on the Colbert Report. It's just not what that show's about. This is what I found myself thinking as I watched Stephen Colbert shave Woody Harrelson's head just now, catching up on my DVR from Thursday night. Harrelson stars in The Messenger, about two soldiers with the terrible duty of delivering the news to next of kin that their loved ones have died. (He is also in 2012, but only one of these movies is to be taken seriously.) Colbert, as you probably already know, is a huge supporter of the troops and shaved his own head when he took his show to Iraq earlier this year. So when he asked Harrelson if he'd shave his head for the troops, he had standing to do so. (more...)

video George W. Bush, motivational speeches, and $19-an-office admission fees all add up to an irresistible cocktail of political snark. It's no great surprise that Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart each took a sip of it, ribbing the former president over his participation in the Get Motivated! motivational speaking tour, which has been his first significant public appearance since he left office. (more...)

video Our favorite book author Gail Collins stopped by to talk to (what felt like a nicely subdued) Stephen Colbert last night about her new book 'When Everything Changed.' According to Collins one of the major problems we face today is that "half the workforce is female now, and we still haven't figured out who's supposed to take care of the kids." Collins also recounts the story of the newlywed who arrived at New York traffic court in 1960 to pay her boss's parking ticket and was thrown out by the judge because she was wearing slacks. Yes that is a true story. For his part Colbert seems especially struck by the fact that in 1960 there were airline flights reserved exclusively for men...the only women on board were the stewardesses, who would bend over to light the passengers complimentary cigars. (more...)

The latest issue of the UK edition of Esquire features actor/comedian Ricky Gervais shot with arrows. It's a visual reference to the famous Muhammad Ali Esquire cover from April 1966, art directed by George Lois. And that cover is, of course, a clever visual nod to the famous paintings of St. Sebastian. Our pal Jeremy Leslie at Magculture.com suggests it's time to give that particular homage a well-deserved rest. We agree; but all this homage-ing got us thinking about other magazine covers that have referenced magazine covers. So here's a brief recent history. Our rule here is that the covers had to be a direct reference to another magazine cover; we're saving record album, posters, etc. for a future post. We know there are a lot more of these out there, so please send us your favorites. (more...)

Over the last few months of political madness, a teary-eyed, raving Glenn Beck has outdone even Stephen Colbert, the comedic master of faux punditry and slippery rhetoric. But who would Colbert be if he didn't fire back, unloading over six minutes last night on the media's current court jester? As soon as Colbert announces that he is going to take a minute to "defend the mainstream media's favorite punching bag Glenn Beck," it's clear that you should strap in because this one is quite a ride. (more...)

video Conan O'Brien suffered a concussion Friday night after hitting his head during a segment with Teri Hatcher. After O'Brien played the footage of the incident last night (the show never aired Friday because O'Brien was taken to the hospital), the TV world has been covering the story thoroughly. (more...)

video Today we launch a new column: Do-Gooder, which will highlight all sorts of do-gooding initiatives by the kind of people who oughta be inscribed in The Book of Life on this Yom Kippur. I love this under-the-radar video from the Emmy red carpet, where director Jason Pollock asked Emmy-goers to step up and pledge their participation to public service in the name of iParticipate, a public-service initiative from the Entertainment Industry Foundation meant to encourage and promote service and volunteerism (that's Michelle Obama kicking it off). The collection of people proclaiming “I participate” here is pretty awesome, and sets a terrific example — fan faves no doubt include Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, but there's also John Oliver and Rob Riggle, Tony Shalhoub, Sally Field, Padma Lakshmi,that Olivia Wilde that everyone’s so gaga for, Billy Bush, Ed Helms, Kate Walsh, Larry Wilmor, a towering and beefy Jimmy Smits, Dianne Wiest, Kevin Kline, Adrien Grenier, Phyllis and Angela from The Office, and Judah Friedlander as the French say, en chapeau. (more...)

David Javerbaum is the "Consulting Producer" of The Daily Show, which is what they call you when you've been writer, Head Writer, Supervising Producer, tried to quit to write the lyrics for a Broadway musical, got called back to be Executive Producer, did that for a few years, got nominated for a Tony for that musical, wrote for the Oscars, collected a few Emmys and Peabodys, consulted on The Colbert Report, wrote the lyrics for A Colbert Christmas, got nominated for another Emmy, joining yet another Emmy nomination for The Daily Show, which is evidently pretty hard to leave. (Confused? Follow along here.) He is also the author of the new not-related-to-the-Daily-Show-at-all book, What To Expect When You're Expected: A Fetus's Guide to the First Three Trimesters, which will be released next month by Spiegel & Grau. Clearly, in addition to being very funny, he is also very potent. How potent? Judge for yourself in this latest installment of 5QQ - Five Quick Questions. (more...)

By virtue of being Alan Colmes, you know that Alan Colmes has to be a bit of a masochist. For more than twelve years, he endured the unenviable 'liberal whipping boy' slot on Hannity & Colmes -- and, by extension, on all of Fox. (more...)

VIDEO The birther movement discussion popped up again last night, and this time on a network that hasn't given them a platform in the past: Comedy Central. Stephen Colbert, who announced he was a "birther" himself, despite the fact he's not a fan of the name, interviewed Orly Taitz, a lawyer for the movement, on The Report last night. Is was predictably ridiculous. (more...)

In one of the most comprehensive Freedom of Information Act requests, The Charleston Post & Courier released the entirety of Gov. Mark Sanford communications director Joel Sawyer's emails from the time Sanford went missing until after his surprise news conference. The decision to release them all, complete with zero redactions (find out Stephen Colbert's email address!) is rare. But when viewed in its entirety, it provides a revealing look at a complete journalistic -- and public relations -- storyline. The main problem? It's 570 pages. But don't cry for us Argentina - we dug through the mess to find the 10 most interesting parts in the Sanford Files. (more...)