Friday of last week, during the heavy rainfall that hit the northeast, NBC News correspondent Michelle Kosinski filed a report for The Today Show live from Wayne, NJ. The report began with Kosinski paddling in a canoe down a
city street while telling the viewers at home about the devastation. "We're getting a nice break from the rain but not the flooding," she said. "This is essentially now a part of the Passaic River in this neighborhood." Almost on cue, two men entered the shot, strolling between her and the camera. The water she was floating in, it turned out, was only ankle-deep.
As a piece of Absurdist Theater, the report was brilliant. As journalism, it's earned a tiny spot in ever-growing Hall of Shame reserved for the likes of Jayson Blair and Stephen Glass, Armstrong Williams and Judith Miller. And who was there to call Kosinski on
her bogus report? What media watchdog seized the opportunity to pound on the journalistic standards over at NBC? In the absence of anyone else, it was The Daily Show that stepped in to hold NBC's feet to the fire, rolling the clip for its audience and mocking Kosinski's poorly staged stunt. Fake reporters taking on fake reports by real reporters. Yes, just thinking about that can make your head hurt.
But to regular viewers of The Daily Show, this kind of thing comes as no surprise. The secret to The Daily Show's success has always been its ability to exploit the absurdity of the
media and its methods, to weave criticism and comedy together to create finely drawn satire. Every night, Jon Stewart takes on a wide array of topics -- the Valerie Plame investigation, reports of violence in Iraq (the show's long-running and consistently excellent "Mess-o-Potamia" segment), the Supreme Court nomination -- and covers them more thoroughly than
some of the "real" news shows on the twenty-four hour cable networks. It's no coincidence that the average Daily Show fan is better informed than the regular Fox News viewer; to get the jokes, you have to be up on current events.
Enter the Colbert Report, a spin-off that seizes upon the inherent parody of The Daily Show and takes it to the nth degree. Though Colbert makes use of the day's headlines as Stewart
does, he approaches his own show very differently. Instead of being in on the joke and playing the straight man at the desk surrounded by a cadre of wacky correspondents, Colbert is consistently in
character as the self-absorbed, ego-driven, pseudo-populist talk show host who favors the "truthiness" he feels in his
gut over the facts. Reference books and dictionaries are "elitist" because "they're all fact and no heart." "Look it up," Colbert occasionally challenges, channeling Bill O'Reilly's blowhard swagger.
And that, essentially, is the brilliance of the show. The Colbert Report deftly parodies The O'Reilly Factor and nearly every other pundit show out there. Present are the
annoying flashing graphics with summarized commentary, the sloppy generalizing and brash "in your face" attitude. Colbert delivers paranoid rants about perceived injustices and slights, targeting specific individuals for his scorn (in the first episode, it was Reagan's former press
secretary James Brady who he characterized as "some kind of gun control nut who wants to take away our right to shoot people"). He frequently criticizes nameless "elites" who are ruining America and revels in self-importance ("On this show, your voice will be heard…in the form of my voice").
It's a testament to Colbert's skills that he's able to stay in a character this intense even during the interview portion of his show. Watching him conduct a "gravitas-off" with his first guest, Dateline anchor
Stone Philips, and poke fun at the 60 Minutes cast with Lesley Stahl the following night is fairly surreal. These are some of very same people Colbert's using as templates for his caricature of the vacuous reporter (i.e. the exaggerated gestures of Philips, the belabored
tone modulation of Stahl). Somehow, though, Colbert pulls it off and keeps it funny.
Of course, many critics who've written about the premiere seem to wonder how long he can pull it off. Will the character he's playing wear thin over time? Is there really enough material to keep The
Colbert Report from feeling like just an extended Daily Show segment? My own guess is that Colbert and company will have no trouble in either department. Just as The Daily Show has made a living off the ridiculousness of reporters like Kosinski in
her canoe, The Colbert Report will have ample material to work with from the whole host of overproduced and under-thought pundit talk shows that dominate the cable news channels.
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