I enjoyed this Kathleen Parker column on Stephen Colbert taking over for David Letterman. Probably I liked that she said that “heartlanders” have the best sense of humor. When I hear “heartland,” I think “Midwest.” Colbert is from South Carolina, so Parker calls “heartlanders” those who are “devoted to family and devout of spirit.” So, that’s kind of weird. Aside from geography, I guess my sense of “heartlanders” has to do (at least in the context of personality and humor) with a self-deprecating modesty that stems from a perspective of one’s place in the world. An awareness of one’s relationship to others and theirs to you is a fertile source of humor. Colbert clearly doesn’t take himself too seriously, nor is he overawed by those who have an overblown sense of their own importance. In that, I think he’ll be an excellent successor to David Letterman.
I always think of it in the words of Sinclair Lewis: “the sly cynicism of the country store.” Granted, that was used to describe a blatantly pandering presidential candidate, so…
They should have taken Conan. Colbert is not a stand-up comic. Letterman was.It will be difficult for large portions of America to view Colbert as anything but a continuation of his hard-Left Comedy Central show.
Colbert’s shtick is getting three-hour interviews and chopping them into 30 second bits that makes the interviewee seem as if he said something entirely different. If he pulls that crap at CBS, the head of CBS News will be in the president’s tearing apart his show, letting the network know that Colbert is jeopardizing the integrity of the entire network.
Is he still going to push his Colbert Super PAC while at CBS?
CBS should have picked a more general comedian. Conan could pull off 30 minutes at a local comedy club and have everybody laughing.