Mon Frère Colbert

I’m looking forward to The Colbert Report with what can only be described as unhealthy anticipation. Mr. Shakes and I aren’t big TV watchers; the only shows we watch with any regularity are Rome, Curb Your Enthusiasm, and The Daily Show, our ardor for all three apparently having escaped the attention of the network executives charged with their fates, since they are still on the air, unlike every other show I’ve ever liked which has promptly been cancelled (see: Freaks and Geeks). So it’s a pretty big deal in our house when there’s a show we’re actually looking forward to.

Howard Kurtz has a good write-up of the show, and its namesake, in today’s WaPo. (One more reason to appreciate Colbert—he was the voice of Ace in one of my favorite Robert Smigel creations, The Adventures of Ace and Gary: The Ambiguously Gay Duo.)

It’s the not-funny stuff that was most interesting, however—the stuff that has made The Daily Show a good news source, even in spite of its dependable hilarity. The article starts with a quote from Colbert:

"The most common thing that real reporters say to me is, 'I wish I could say what you say.' What I don't understand is, why can't they say what I say, even in their own way? . . . Does that mean they want to be able to name certain bald contradictions or hypocrisies that politicians have?"

Then later, this:

When Colbert talks about skewering hypocrites, he makes clear that, like Stewart, he cares about politics as more than a punch line. He recalls Vice President Cheney, in a CNBC interview last year, being asked about having said it was "pretty well confirmed" that terrorist Mohammed Atta had met with an Iraqi official in Prague -- part of a White House attempt to demonstrate a link between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda. Cheney denied making the comment, but "The Daily Show" later aired a tape of a 2001 "Meet the Press" interview in which the vice president had said the Atta meeting was "pretty well confirmed."

"When Dick Cheney says, 'I never said that,' and then we play the tape, why did we do it?" Colbert says. "Why wasn't it done broadly? Because he wasn't speaking about something inconsequential. It wasn't like we were playing gotcha journalism over some quibble. It was over weapons of mass destruction. That's not advocacy journalism. That's objectivity in its most raw form."

So why don't more working journalists do what Stewart and Colbert are doing? Perhaps, Colbert says, "there's a sense that if they engaged in what we do at 'The Daily Show,' they'd be accused of being too aggressive."

Frustratingly, he’s probably right—although the who of the accusers is an interesting question. When Anderson Cooper, Shepherd Smith, and others went apeshit on air during the aftermath of Katrina, they were largely praised by the viewing audience. Reporters routinely say they don’t face pressure from within to cast stories in a particular light, but they’re clearly getting it from somewhere. That is, as they say, however, a whole other post.

In any case, I’m eagerly looking forward to The Colbert Report. There can’t be enough “skewering” of the news by offering “objectivity in its most raw form” as far as I’m concerned. Bring it on, Colbert.