So what do you think is the issue that people will end up voting on?
STEWART: Whatever happens that week. It all depends on when that Michelle Obama ''I hate whitey'' tape comes out. If it comes out now, it could dissipate by the election. But if it comes out a couple days before, that could be dangerous.
COLBERT: Jon? I have it.

There are a lot of issues in this election. The biggest one right now is the economy.
STEWART: We were in this huge credit crisis, out of money. Then the Fed goes, We'll give you a trillion dollars, and all of a sudden Wall Street is like, ''I can't believe we got away with it!'' Can you imagine if someone said, ''I shouldn't have bought that sports car because it means I can't have my house,'' and the bank just said, ''All right, you can have your house. And you know what? Keep the car.'' [He throws up his arms joyfully and shouts] ''Yeaaaaah, I get to keep the car! Wait, do I have to give the money back?'' ''No, it doesn't matter.'' ''Yeah, I'm gonna get another car! I'm gonna do the same thing the same way, except twice as fucked up!''
COLBERT: The idea that Lehman Brothers doesn't get any money and AIG does reminds me very much of ''Iran is a mortal enemy because they have not achieved a nuclear weapon. But North Korea is a country we can work with, because they have a nuclear weapon.'' The idea is, Get big or go home. How big can you fuck up? Can you fuck up so bad that you would ruin the world economy? If it's just 15,000 who are out of jobs, no. You have to actually be a global fuck up to get any help.

Can any [politician] break through this mess?
STEWART: I worry that those people are there, but we won't recognize them — or we'll destroy them so thoroughly that their voice won't be heard. I just imagine Lincoln out there, and people throwing the gay stuff at him. ''And what about depression running in his family?''

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: You guys regularly make a mockery of the 24-hour news networks. Do you see anything good about the format?
JON STEWART: It's Muzak now. You ever walk into a clothing store in New York City and they're not playing music? And you go, ''What's going on here? Did a virus hit? This doesn't seem right.'' Twenty-four-hour news now is this weird companion to my life.
STEPHEN COLBERT: There's not more news now than there was when we were kids. There's the same amount from when it was just Cronkite. And the easiest way to fill it is to have someone's opinion on it. Then you have an opposite opinion, and then you have a mishmash of fact and opinion, and you leave it the least informed you can possibly be.
STEWART: We've got three financial networks on all day. The bottom falls out of the credit market, and they were all running around. On CNBC I saw a guy talking to eight people in [eight different onscreen] boxes, and they were all like, ''I don't know!'' It'd be like if Hurricane Ike hit, and you put on the Weather Channel, and they were yelling, ''I don't know what the fuck is going on! I'm getting wet and it's windy and I don't know why and it's making me sad! Maybe the president could come down and put up some sort of windscreen?'' By being on 24 hours a day, you begin to not be able to tell what's salient anymore.

Read the whole interview here.

"While developing a spin-off based around this character, Colbert and his writers took great care in honing his on-screen persona to fit what they saw as a glaring gap in the comedy market for an obnoxious, editorialising political host just like the ones who had come to dominate the US airwaves.

"'What the character expresses in specific reference to American television is the post evening-news, personality-driven, single-camera shout-fest interviews,' says Colbert. He's referring to hosts such as Fox-bred entities like Sean Hannity and Joe Scarborough, and mildly less offensive CNN presenters Lou Dobbs and Anderson Cooper among many others.

"Colbert's clearest role model would be Fox News figurehead Bill O'Reilly, who takes great pride in shouting down 'unpatriotic' (dissenting) guests and occasionally having their microphones switched off mid-sentence. 'The emotion of the moment is assumed and amplified by a single voice and regurgitated back to the country at the lowest common denominator,' says Colbert. 'It can be swathed in idea, but it's essentially an emotional event. I'm regurgitating back to you how you feel about it - I am you. I am you!'

Colbert continues: "At the heart of this is America as the chosen country of God. It's a conflation of the Statue of Liberty and the crucifix: American religiosity and American destiny are one and the same. That's why George Bush was chosen by God to lead the world. Manifest destiny is an old idea, but now it's just expressed in different ways." [Telegraph]

In fact, Mr. Carlos auditioned for the [30 Rock] Toofer role five times with NBC producers, but Keith Powell, a graduate of New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, landed the part. "I heard later there was some regret about that," Mr. Carlos said with a shrug. "The character now dresses the same way I do, and they kind of used the template I had in my audition tapes to make the character. I was like, that sucks. I mean, I would kind of like to make some money off of that." (NBC representatives declined to comment on Mr. Carlos's observations.)

Well, maybe he can get a job writing for the Daily Show?

Mr. Carlos spoke at a panel on race and comedy in Chicago with Lizz Winstead, the co-creator of The Daily Show. "She said, 'Well, in a perfect world I would hire staff writers of color.' I was like, 'Well, it is your perfect world; you can do whatever you want.' But it's the nature of the biz for people to hire their friends, hire whoever they want."

[NYO]

Here he is doing [UPDATE: Some recent stuff]. Decent!

He's a great boss, too. When monologues go particularly well, he calls writers to thank them personally. Once, when calling New Zealand "Diet Australia" got a lot of laughs, he gave the author a bottle of wine. Barry was responsible for "The Word" when John Edwards took it over this past Thursday, and the reaction was so good that Colbert said, "What White House correspondents dinner?"

[Comedy Central]

So last year Rain won — because the community members on my site all voted. Now we're voting for him again. He is the biggest guy in Asia, like Michael Jackson and JT rolled up into one. Mega mega star in Asia. But people here don't know him because he doesn't sing in English.

Stephen Colbert got all pissed that he came in #2 last year, and he did this really funny skit with a Korean music video. He was literally singing in Korean. And this year, when the voting started again, he did a show last week saying "Go vote for me, so I can beat my arch rival Rain." So his ColbertNation.com fans got on it.

Then Digg.com starting voting for Miyamoto — the creator of Mario, Donkey Kong etc. at Nintendo — and put him on #1.

You win by ranking, not number of votes. So you see how Rain has the most votes. It's because the Colbert folks are organizing in their forums to vote him down.

I'd guess there are a good dozen other communities with several million members that could push a star into the top ten. Of course our own weak attempt to get votes for Gawker publisher Nick Denton didn't do much, because Gawker isn't a cult of personality. But a community like 4chan or a dedicated group of top YouTube users could pick a candidate. And it sounds so dorky to say this, but that kind of shows who's really influential: you. And by "you" I mean losers in Internet forums with no larger life goal.

My friend Alexis (a huge Colbert fan) sent me an e-mail predicting how Colbert might respond to my argument that Chinese food is more American than apple pie given how much we eat apple pie versus Chinese food, and how I should recover from that.

Colbert : "I eat apple pie every morning - with a jack and coke - and a bald eagle egg omlette."

Jenny: Well, there are exceptions - and you are clearly an exceptional American - for most would say Chinese food.

Other things he might do:
* Introduce the idea that the Chinese are taking over the world, starting with the restaurants. ("If that happens, I'm hedged. I speak Chinese, what about you?" or "That might happen. I suggest that your kids learn to speak Chinese. My mom's a tutor.")
* Bring up any comment about the fact that fortune cookies were copied from the Japanese by the Chinese ("We don't feel so bad about it, they've been copying us for centuries.").
* Of course, ask about the middle number as initial. ("The Chinese love the number 8. The Beijing Olympics are starting at 8 p.m. on August 8, 2008. They really wanted this Olympics.")

Lee's friend was right about the apple pie thing. All the studying seemed to leave Lee looking just a tad over-prepared and stiff, but it's hard to fault her when she kept the discussion focused on her book and scored the requisite-but-never-guarnteed book plug from the host at the end.

Huffington Post: Preparing For "The Colbert Report"

Via Crooks and Liars, which has the full five-minute segment.

GUARANTEED FUNNY

Clinton and Cruise on the Campaign Trail: A mashup of Tom Cruise and Hillary Clinton's eerily similar viral videos. OMG Hillary is OT Level 8!

Craig Ferguson on CBS's Late Late Show: A series of unfortunate laughs.

Stephen Colbert vs. Xenu vs. Cruise: "This guy was like...psheeew!"

Eugene Mirman: Scientologist: "I'm tasting meatloaf. You know why? Because I want to."

Jerry O'Connell on Funny or Die: "They don't taunt me. Not in front of my face. But behind me, yes."

HONORABLE MENTIONS

Tom Cruise Scientology-Constipation Video: Cruise discusses how he stays regular.

Leaked Tape Parody: Terribly dry humor, with one good joke about gills.

Tom Cruise Scientology Video: "The line down the middle of the road? We came up with that."

Headzup: Only included for completeness; it's like Jib-Jab without the jokes.

MORE

Tom Cruise Is Gay: By Gawker's Richard Blakeley.

Serious Cat: Tom Cruise as a classic LOLcat.

Found a new one? E-mail tips@gawker.com.

"Reader comments, almost universally hostile, are the only thing really worth reading on Kurtz's blog," says Silverstein. It's true, the poor guy's getting hammered. Some of our own favorites include:

• "You must be kidding me. Could there be a more narcissistic, self-pleasuring blog than this one? I know all blogs have a measure of ego in them, but holy crap, Howie, reading this is like listening to you masturbate. 'Oh, Howie, you're so good ... yeah, just like that ... tell me more about your lunch with George Will.'"
• "I looked at your book and it's missing the subtitle: 'As told by Sherri Annis.'"
• "Tucker Carlson made an interesting point when I was on his show today.
  I just realized this website is 100% parody. Whoever is behind this: keep it up!
• "Not only would I not hit a dog in the ass with your lame new book, I intend to go so far as to purchase a dog, just to keep on hand, so that I can constantly fail to hit him in the ass with your lame new book."
• "Okay, this is a joke, right? A parody of a vanity blog the likes of which the world has never seen? All you left out at the beginning of each entry, Howie, is 'Dear Diary.'"
• "You suck up to really horrible people like Glenn Reynolds and Michelle Malkin and then play this false equivalency rhetorical game. It's really revolting to those of us out here sick of the media playing along with the GOP. It's been done for so long that you don't realize you're being punked any longer.

  I would suggest you spend a year outside the Beltway, away from the cocktail parties and such, and reconnect with the rest of America. Then you might realize what we're all on about."

NBC isn't the only one buying into the Colbert Craze; The New York Times lent Maureen Dowd's spot last week to Colbert, and the Atlantic's Josh Green spent 1,772 words (we know—so close!) trying to impress Colbert's "people" in South Carolina (three P.A.s and an exiled intern living it up on the College of Charleston's palm-trimmed quad, come on people) into yet more stunt-topping by hiring him as his campaign manager.

Now, we don't want to sound all imperious and shit, and we get the idea, add a little levity to the race, distract the cranky reporters, take everyone down a peg or two. It's good clean fun. But there's a $46 billion war on, we hear. And! Wildfires! Drought! Our mayor is under attack! Britney has once again taken two children hostage! Chuck Norris is voting!

So we're glad that Colbert did a brief out-of-character web extra with Russert, in which he chatted about his show and his upbringing, because we know some people who actually think he's for serious! They're total dumbasses, but still! We hope he's not still making the Sunday morning rounds come primary time. We like our candidates boring, bland, solemn—and, you know, a smidge electable, because they'll be the ones in charge of killing foreigners and stuff.

Exclusive! Stephen Colbert [Meet the Press]

Plastic surgery disaster Alex Kuczynski appeared on "The Colbert Report" last evening: here's the clip. It's amusing (or at least Colbert's end is) and nothing more, but a few things you may want to note:

Earlier: Gawker's coverage of Alex Kuczynski

He probably won't be Time's Person of the Year, and he may be the victim of vicious smears by anonymous Internet wags who dub him "a poor man's Jon Stewart with funny-looking ears," but we've got a special place in our hearts for Stephen Colbert, and apparently he has one for us. Merry Christmas, Stephen. Thanks for giving voice to the voiceless.

Earlier: 'Time' Person of the Year: Not Stephen Colbert

Gawker Media polls require Javascript; if you're viewing this in an RSS reader, click through to view in your Javascript-enabled web browser.

[Photo: Getty]

On Notice! Stephen Colbert Steals Rightfully Stolen Video, Jalopnik Demands An Apology [Jalopnik]