Read Stephen Colbert: Beyond Truthiness Online
Authors: Bruce Watson
Stephen Colbert: Beyond Truthiness (9 page)
After deliberating, the FEC ruled, by a five-to-one vote, in favor of Colbert. Colbert Super PAC, later re-named Americans for a Better Tomorrow, Tomorrow, began soliciting funds. The solicitation began on the sidewalk outside the FEC’s office. Standing on a platform, Colbert told a few hundred fans that he was not joking. Participating in democracy was not funny. But he did have one Super PAC joke.
“Knock knock!”
“Who’s there?” the crowd responded.
“Unlimited union and corporate campaign contributions.”
“Unlimited union and corporate campaign contributions who?”
“That’s the thing,”
Colbert
said. “I don’t think I should have to tell you.”
Why form a Super PAC? Colbert was asked. His answer: the American Dream. “And that dream is simple. That anyone, no matter who they are, if they are determined, if they are willing to work hard enough, someday they could grow up to create a legal entity which could then receive unlimited corporate funds, which could be used to influence our elections.”
Wrapping up his talk, Colbert said, “I don’t accept the status quo, but I do accept
Visa, MasterCard,
or American Express.” He then circulated through the crowd gathering credit cards that he swiped into an iPad. “Anybody else got a credit card?” he asked. “Is there any more cash? Just ball it up and throw it at me!”
Come August, when GOP candidates began stumping Iowa for its upcoming straw poll, Colbert was toying with reality as no comedian ever had. First, Americans for a Better Tomorrow, Tomorrow funded a TV ad urging Iowans to write in “Rick P
a
rry, P
a
rry with an ‘A,’ not Rick P
e
rry, the Texas governor that other PACs were supporting. The ‘A’ stands for
A
merica and for Iow
A
,” the ad said. Replete with images of dollar bills raining down on cornfields, Colbert’s faux ad ran on two TV stations in Des Moines.
No one knows how many write-in votes Rick P
a
rry got, but Colbert’s Super PAC rolled on into the fall with 165,000 members.
“I know of some of my peers whose first political contribution (and probably last) was to Colbert’s Super PAC,” a student in Florida said.
Taking the absurdity up a notch, Colbert formed a Citizens United hybrid that allowed him to accept anonymous donations. According to the latest campaign laws, “Colbert Super PAC SHH” could even divert anonymous donations into his regular PAC. Colbert insisted that his super mockery was “
100 percent legal and at least 10 percent ethical,” but to make sure, he hired an actual campaign finance lawyer. Trevor Potter, former FEC chairman, began consulting Colbert on and off camera.
The press, as disgusted as Colbert by the billions flowing through campaign coffers, lapped up his every move.
“
It’s as though Jonathan Swift took his satirical suggestion about Irish babies one step further and actually cooked one,”
The New York Times
wrote
.
Media analysts were amazed that anyone could make politics seem more transparently absurd than it had become. “I am much taken by this and can’t think of any real parallel in history,” said
Stephen
Hess of the Brookings Institution. “Yes, comedians have always told jokes about elections, but this is quite different. This is a funny person being very serious, actually talking about process. What comedian talks about process?”
In January 2012, as the primary campaign loomed, Colbert again targeted South Carolina. First, he offered a half-million dollars to the GOP if it would re-name the primary, “The Colbert Super PAC South Carolina Republican Party.” No one took him seriously, so he upped the ante. He entered the primary. This time he was allowed into the game, but with a catch. “You cannot be a candidate and run a Super PAC,” his lawyer told him on the show. “That would be coordinating with yourself.” “Right,” Colbert responded, “and I’d go blind.”
Needing a new Super PAC coordinator, Colbert turned to Jon Stewart. Early in January, Colbert traveled the few blocks from his studio to Stewart’s to make the move. Seated across a desk, the two men bumped fists, then pressed them together. Both shuddered as glowing, green dollar signs passed from Colbert’s body into Stewart’s. An announcer boomed, “Colbert Super PAC Transfer –
ACTIVATE
!” The “Definitely Not Coordinated with Stephen Colbert Super PAC” was open for donations.
For the next two months, Stewart and Colbert shredded Super PACs and their supposed independence. Appearing again on
The Daily Show
, Colbert called his lawyer. “Hello, Trevor,” Colbert said. “I’m sitting here with Jon Stewart.”
“Oh, but don’t worry,” Stewart chimed in. “We’re not . . . “ and both men chorused, “coordinating!” Stewart began suggesting campaign strategies. To each, Colbert, grinning or frowning, repeated, “I cannot coordinate with you in any way.”
The spoof concluded with the men agreeing it had been great “NOT coordinating with you.” The ongoing joke even charmed candidates – one, at least. GOP candidate Herman Cain did not mind when Colbert hopped on his bus to tour South Carolina. “Anyone who finds what Mr.
Colbert
is doing offensive should simply lighten up,” Cain said.
When Cain later withdrew his candidacy after charges that he had had an affair, Colbert became Cain. Americans for a Better Tomorrow, Tomorrow ran ads in South Carolina, featuring Colbert campaigning as its voiceover and urging viewers to vote for Herman Cain.
By the end of January, Colbert’s Super PAC had raked in a million dollars in contributions. “To all the worrywarts out there who said Super PACs were going to lead to a cabal of billionaires secretly buying democracy,”
Colbert
said, “Wrong! They are
publicly
buying democracy.”
Evolving daily, Colbert’s Super PAC took political satire to new heights. Colbert, wrote
Ad Age
, had become the “greatest living cultural/media critic. . . . There is no funnier or smarter (or more heartbreaking or depressing) deconstruction of the American scene - particularly our fatally flawed political process, as signified by
Colbert’s
Super PAC - to be found anywhere else in the culture right now.”
When it was all over, Colbert got serious. Even after buying ads for Herman Cain, Americans for a Better Tomorrow, Tomorrow was left with more than $700,000. Colbert did what he always does with excess money, he gave it away - dividing the fund equally among Hurricane Sandy relief, Habitat for Humanity, Donors Choose, and two other charities. And in April 2012, Colbert’s spoof won the Peabody Award.
Stephen Colbert is contracted to continue his show through the end of 2014. By then, he will be a fifty-year-old father of three, patron of the arts, philanthropist, bestselling author, and New Jersey commuter who, for just twenty-two minutes a night on cable, is changing the way Americans perceive the truth. What then, is truthiness? Is it just, as Colbert once said, “a word I pulled right out of my keister?” Is it the human weakness of believing whatever half-truths one finds convenient? Is truthiness personal reality? Hyper-reality? Whatever becomes real because enough people say it’s real? Or are all attempts to pin down truthiness rendered futile by its nature?
Truthiness, it turns out, really did come from Colbert’s keister, because it describes his life. No ordinary word could sum up a life that turned tragedy into fantasy, fantasy into improv, improv into parody, parody into satire, and, finally, satire into comedic super-stardom. Likewise, no reality-based lexicon could explain how a kid from South Carolina could go from brooding nerd to comic foil, and from “high-status idiot” to “greatest living cultural/media critic.” Nothing but truthiness could do justice to the contradictions within Stephen Colbert. Nothing else could span the gap between his egomania on camera and his gentleness off, nor highlight the contrast between the tight-fisted politics he pretends to embrace and the generous principles he lives by.
Truthiness is not just the “Word of the Day.” It is the word of Stephen Colbert’s life. But let’s give him the last word.
“
Knock, knock
. Who’s there? The Truth. No joke.”
AdAge,
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