Stephen Colbert

Dr. Stephen Tyrone Colbert, III (born May 13, 1964) is a news reporter and anchor known for his romantic style and witty delivery. He is most famous for his work on The Daily Show, and as the star of its spin-off, The Colbert Report. The latter is a hard-hitting editorial show that frequently targets the liberal media elite and other enemies of truthiness.

As well as being a former member of the Marine Corps, founder of the Stephen and Melinda Gates Foundation and commentator of The Colbert Report, he is the inventor and owner of the terms wikiality and truthiness.

Personal life
Colbert was born in Charleston, South Carolina on James Island, where he grew up as the youngest of 23 children in a Catholic family. On September 11, 1974, when Colbert was ten years old, his father, James Colbert, the vice president for academic affairs at the Medical University of South Carolina, and his older brothers, Peter and Paul, were killed in the crash of Eastern Air Lines Flight 212 while it was attempting to land in Charlotte, North Carolina. They were reportedly en route to Connecticut to enroll the two boys in the Canterbury High School. Shortly thereafter, Colbert's mother Lorna Colbert relocated the family downtown to the more urban environment of East Bay Street. By his own account, he found the transition difficult, and did not easily make new friends in his new neighborhood. Instead, he developed a love of science fiction and fantasy novels, and became an avid fan of the fantasy role-playing games, especially Dungeons & Dragons, a pastime to which he would later partially attribute his interest in acting and improvisation.

Colbert attended Charleston's exclusive Episcopalian Porter-Gaud School. He attended Hampden-Sydney College before transferring to Northwestern University, where he took journalism courses. While there, he became involved in the school television news program "A Moment for Truth". After college he went to work at local news affiliate KTRU, as a field reporter.

He is married to Evelyn McGee-Colbert, and has three children: Madeline, Peter, and John; all of whom appeared on The Daily Show during his tenure. Although not particularly political before joining The Daily Show, Colbert is a self-described Defender of Truth, and finds that supporting our president is the most effective way of protecting the truth.

He is also a practicing Roman Catholic, and a Sunday school teacher. Bill O'Reilly jokingly called for a boycott of The Colbert Report during an interview on The Daily Show, because he assumed that the name Colbert was French; which is believed to be a friendly inside joke, considering their obvious close relationship.

Early career
Colbert first worked at South Carolina new affiliate KTRU, working as a field investigative reporter, where he garnered great success for such investigative reports as: "How Liberal Local News is Destroying America, Bears: A Study of Evil, and Charlene: Portrait of Beauty".

In the early 1980s, Colbert briefly left the news industry to persue a lifelong dream of a career in music, becoming frontman for the band called Stephen and the Colberts. They mostly did love songs and power ballads. On the February 9, 2006 episode of the Report, Colbert unveiled a previously unreleased music video as a special Valentine's Day treat. The song was dedicated to his ex-lover Charlene and apparently does not violate the restraining order she has against him. The title of the song is "Charlene (I'm Right Behind You)" and was recorded for the album The Charlene Collection, Volume 1.

After leaving the music scene after being disenchanted by the liberal bias, Colbert returned to news in an anchor position in Arizona, where he developed his well-renowned ability of gravitas, as well as a dashing mustache. He then took a job filming correspondent segments for Good Morning America. Only two of the segments he proposed were ever produced, and only one aired, but the job led his agent to refer him to the Daily Show's then-producer, Madeline Smithberg, who hired Colbert on a trial basis in 1997.

Colbert on The Daily Show


Stephen Colbert joined the cast of Comedy Central's daily-news series The Daily Show in 1997, when the show was in its second season. Originally one of four "correspondents" who filmed segments from remote locations, Colbert was referred to as "the new guy" on-air for his first two years on the show, during which time Craig Kilborn served as host. When Kilborn left the show prior to the 1999 season, Jon Stewart took over hosting duties, also serving as co-executive.

From this point, the series gradually began to take on a more political tone, and began to increase in popularity, particularly in the latter part of 2000, during the U.S. presidential election season. The role of the show's correspondents was expanded to include more in-studio segments, as well as international reports.

Some memorable segments Colbert has appeared in for The Daily Show have included "Even Stevphen" with Steve Carell, and "This Week in God," a weekly report on topics in the news pertaining to religion, presented with the help of "The God Machine". Memorable reports include the 2001 "break-up" of the Republicans "Singing Senators" following the defection of Jim Jeffords, and the report on Prince Charles and the British media reporting of royal family scandals through suggestive innuendo. In a few episodes of The Daily Show, Colbert filled in as anchor in the absence of Jon Stewart, including the full week of March 3, 2002 when Stewart was scheduled to host Saturday Night Live. On one occasion, guest interviewee Al Sharpton failed to arrive for the taping, so Colbert filled in as Sharpton.

Since Colbert left the show, the duty of filling in for Stewart has been assumed by Rob Corddry. Corddry has also taken over the "This Week in God" segments. New episodes of The Daily Show still occasionally reuse older Colbert segments under the label "Klassic Kolbert".

The Colbert Report
Since October 17, 2005, Colbert has hosted his own television show, The Colbert Report, a Daily Show spin-off which is a personality-driven news show, that has been emulated particularly by shows such as The O'Reilly Factor and Scarborough Country.

The concept for The Report was first seen in a series Daily Show segment which advertised the upcoming series. The show opened to strong ratings, averaging 1.2 million viewers nightly during its first week on the air. Comedy Central signed a long-term contract for The Colbert Report within its first month on the air, when it immediately established itself among the network's highest-rated shows.

In January 2006, the American Dialect Society named as its 2005 Word of the Year: truthiness, which Colbert featured on the premiere episode of the Report. Colbert devoted time on five successive episodes to bemoaning the failure of the Associated Press to mention his role in popularizing the word truthiness in its news coverage of the Word of the Year.

2006 White House Correspondents' Association Dinner


On Saturday, April 29, 2006, Stephen Colbert was the featured entertainer for the 2006 White House Correspondents' Association Dinner, delivering a 24-minute speech and video presentation which was broadcast on C-SPAN and MSNBC. In his trademark assertiveness made famous on The Colbert Report, Colbert defended the Bush administration and chided the White House press corps with such lines as:
 * "I stand by this man. I stand by this man because he stands for things. Not only for things, he stands on things. Things like aircraft carriers and rubble and recently flooded city squares. And that sends a strong message, that no matter what happens to America, she will always rebound—with the most powerfully staged photo ops in the world."

The performance received a lukewarm response from the audience, and major media outlets paid little attention to it initially, hardly even mentioning it. On his show Hardball on MSNBC, Chris Matthews called the performance 'bad.' However, the video of Colbert's speech became an overnight internet sensation and ratings for The Colbert Report soared 37% in the week following the speech. After four days of near silence, the press began to recognize Colbert's speech with mixed reactions. Despite the media response, Colbert's speech continued to gain popularity, ultimately becoming the #1 download on iTunes.

Personal

 * Colbert is an avid enthusiast of Lord of the Rings and the fantasy game Dungeons & Dragons, a fascination that began in high school. When Viggo Mortensen appeared on The Daily Show, a sound-clip was played of Colbert reciting the detailed lineage and personal history of Mortensen's character, Aragorn. To reciprocate, Mortensen sent Colbert a platter of Lord of the Rings characters molded in chocolate. Stewart quipped that the gift would give Colbert a "four-hour erection." Later, on June 7, 2006, Colbert noticed that CNN had, in its coverage of June 6 (6/6/06) put the picture of a Balrog in place of a devil.  He spent a minute describing the difference between devils and Balrogs:  "A devil is a fallen angel who refused to follow God and followed Satan into Hell;  Balrogs are Maiar who refused to follow Eru and followed Morgoth into Thangorodrim".  This is not entirely true, however, as Thangorodrim was not actually built at the time of Morgoth's expulsion (in actuality, they followed him into Udun).  Colbert confessed his embarrassment upon realizing this on Late Night with Conan O'Brien on July 12, 2006.
 * On that same program he also mentioned attending GenCon and spending time with Gary Gygax.
 * Colbert is deaf in his right ear, as he has no ear drum in it. "I always wanted to be a marine biologist...but then I had this ear problem.  I have no ear drum. (Flicks his ear.)  So I had this operation at the Medical University when I was a kid.  Now I can't get my head wet. I mean, I can, but I can't really scuba dive or anything like that.  So that killed my marine biology hopes. He once joked to The New Yorker that "I had this weird tumor as a kid, and they scooped it out with a melon baller."
 * Stephen cannot be harmed by fire.
 * On March 16, 2006, Colbert featured a review from Orlando Sentinel columnist Commander Coconut in his "Who's Attacking Me Now?" segment. The review stated that Coconut was unable to pay attention to anything but Colbert's ears, as his right one sticks out slightly.  In a call to Coconut regarding the review, Colbert stated that the doctor also noticed it stuck out slightly when he pulled the tumor out.  Colbert continued his diatribe for several minutes to the apparent mortification of Coconut, though Coconut later revealed they had rehearsed the call several times.  After the replay of the phone conversation, however, Colbert stated that he had not in fact had a tumor in his ear.
 * The San Francisco Zoo recently named a baby bald eagle after Colbert. He features clips of the bird occasionally on his show.
 * Colbert was named Playgirl magazine's Man of the Year for 2006.

Professional life

 * Colbert was named as one of Time magazine's 100 Most Influential People for 2006. Furthermore, among those 100 people, Time's online poll of readers' picks currently rates Colbert as the 2nd highest rated.
 * Within twenty-four hours over the weekend of April 29-30, 2006, Colbert was the keynote speaker at the White House Correspondents' Association Dinner; co-hosted Saturday Night Live as the voice of animated character Ace, with Steve Carell's Gary; and was profiled on 60 Minutes.
 * Colbert was the commencement speaker for the class of 2006 at Knox College. Colbert also received an honorary Doctor of Fine Arts Degree from the college on June 3, 2006. On the June 8, 2006 show his Executive Producer credit changed to Dr. Stephen T. Colbert D.F.A.
 * Colbert performed, in his gravitas newsanchor voice, the opening narration of the play / film Hedwig and the Angry Inch ("On August 13, 1961, in the middle of the city of Berlin...") as a track for the Wig in a Box (2003) CD, a compilation of music from and inspired by the play / film. His narration segues into Spoon performing "Tear Me Down."