It's Stephen Colbert (But Not Really)

“I Am America (And So Can You!)” – the first book by Stephen Colbert’s alter ego – is out now in bookstores across America. A Washington Post slightly-humorless review came out today – why even mention verifying his truthiness?

Not having read the book, I can't render judgement on whether or not I like it. But I do know there are myriad reasons why Stephen Colbert is fascinating: his razor-sharp satire; his deadpan delivery; his speed-of-light quick wit. But I’ve got my own reason for being fascinated by Colbert: He’s an enigma. That’s right. The guy who’s seemingly ubiquitous from magazine covers to ice cream containers to presenting Emmy Awards? Somehow, in the multimedia/blogistan/500 channel world, very few people know who Stephen Colbert is. Sure, everybody with a TV (or just an Internet connection, actually) and a pulse knows who “Stephen Colbert” is, but take away the quotation marks and he’s nearly an unknown. That’s completely a strategy, I understand, to maintain the persona in the public’s mind. But it’s also a shame. We’re at a curious point in Media and American culture – and postmodernism, too, but I’m not going to turn Public Eye into a grad school seminar – where Inside Jokes are becoming a genre of entertainment. David Addison turning to the camera and rolling his eyes in “Moonlighting” was groundbreaking in the mid-'80s, but commonplace now. Borat makes fools of frat boys, and the only people who don’t ‘get it’ are the subjects of the interview themselves. Stephen Colbert is taking us even deeper down the rabbit hole. “Stephen Colbert” a polemicist and we know it, he knows it, and the guest knows it. Stephen Colbert has turned the Inside Joke into an Inside/Out Joke, and we get the chance to laugh at the farce of it all.