Stephen Colbert on Glenn Beck: “He Raised the Stupid Bar and Now It’s Nearly Inapproachable.”

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.

First Glenn Beck. According to Warren’s report, Colbert talked about the paradoxical difficulty of mocking Glenn Beck’s outsize TV antics:

“I said, ‘Let’s start doing some Glenn Beck stuff but in praise of Glenn Beck,'” said Colbert. “But every time we do one, he will have done something dumber. He raised the stupid bar and now it’s nearly inapproachable.”

“I worry that if we use that as a model….if somebody doesn’t believe what they’re saying, it’s very hard to out-stupid them,” said a decidedly analytical Colbert. “Because then there’s no place to sink our hook into, there’s no mountain to climb there. I can’t climb Glenn Beck since there’s nothing there.”

Great, now I can’t get the image of Colbert climbing all over Glenn Beck out of my mind. Okay, this should help.

Colbert also talked about the chilly, chilly reception he got at the 2006 White House Correspondents Dinner (or, to many who clapped their hands in astonishment and delight when watching it on the Internet afterward, a day that shall live in awesomeness). From the Warren report:

When the dinner was over, “I don’t think I’m dying. I go to sit down and nobody’s meeting my eye. Only [the late journalist-turned-White House spokesman] Tony Snow comes over and says I’m doing a great job.” Then Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia came his way and told him he was brilliant.

“I said, oh, s-, don’t let me like Antonin Scalia!”

(Funnily, Colbert used Scalia as an example of someone who he thought might not get it when he discussed the event in the fall of 2008 at the New Yorker Festival. He also mentioned how no one would meet his eyes, saying: “I thought, ‘It’s gonna be hard to get out of this room.’ No, it was not.”)

Warren also talks about the jokes Colbert self-edited out of his speech while he was up there, assessing Bush’s reaction, and also assessed the comedic chops of Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow — but you should click through and read his report for that, and for the rest of his thoughts on it. He was there, after all.

Colbert Dishes On Bush, Glenn Beck, and MSNBC [The Atlantic]