TELEVISION REVIEW Comedy Central's 'The Colbert Report

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http://www.calendarlive.com/printedition/calendar/cl-et-colbert21oct21,0,6240044.story?track=tottext

TELEVISION REVIEW
Committed to 'truthiness'
Comedy Central's 'The Colbert Report,' a spinoff of 'The Daily Show,' starts off delivering zingers.
By Paul Brownfield
Times Staff Writer

October 21, 2005

<snip>In the run-up to the show it all sounded a bit hard to get your head around, but in the flesh the show zinged, at least this first week. Colbert, with his young Republican haircut and dead-serious eyes, is a terrifically artful speaker; there may be no better reader of writing on TV than him. He is not doing a version, exactly, of O'Reilly, with his aggressive populism. He is Colbert, punching up O'Reilly's had-it-up-to-here shtick with more descriptive imagery and better grammar. "Put some pants on, America, the truth is knocking at the door!" Colbert intoned Tuesday night. He's rounded out the character with a dash of other influences from the whole up-for-grabs world of broadcast news. Wolf Blitzer's alarmism is probably in there, Anderson Cooper's feel-ism — and the whole lot's me-ism.

Also, Colbert's green screen talks to him. This week each "Colbert Report" began with a takeoff on O'Reilly's "Talking Points Memo" segment; on "The Colbert Report" it's called "The Word." It's so far the strongest element of the show, skillfully blending media satire and political commentary, a seamless marriage of writing and character.

The word the first night was "truthiness." "Now I'm sure some of the word police, the word-a-nistas over at Webster's are gonna say, 'Hey, that's not a word,' " Colbert said. He deemed this intellectual elitism, a pet O'Reilly theme. "Who's Britannica to say the Panama Canal was finished in 1914? ... I don't trust books. They're all fact, no heart." The joke became a riff on a country divided between "those who think with their head and those who know with their heart," which opened up onto President Bush's "I know her heart" comment about his Supreme Court nominee, Harriet E. Miers.

"Notice how he said nothing about her brain," Colbert said after showing the president's sound bite. The green screen echoed: "No thinking."<snip>