Colbert: Going out on a slab?
by Tom Sullivan
It's been great fun watching the last episodes of the "Colbert Report." Stephen Colbert's interview with Smaug the dragon was a tour de force.
Rumor has it that Colbert has secured another rock-star celebrity for his last show:
For nine years, Stephen Colbert has relentlessly maintained his pompous, deeply ridiculous but consistently appealing conservative blowhard character on his late-night show, “The Colbert Report” — so much so that when he puts the character to rest for good on Thursday night, he may have to resort to comicide. The Grim Reaper is his last guest.
The New York Times wonders whether Colbert plans to go out on a slab. Other late-night hosts give Colbert kudos for staying relentlessly in character for so many years. Jimmy Fallon is one:
Like other competitors, Mr. Fallon professed unabashed awe that Mr. Colbert could sustain this performance at such a high level for so long. “Before he won the Emmy, I had been preaching that people had to recognize what he was doing: He’s faking a person,” Mr. Fallon said. “I was one of those who said, ‘He’ll do it for six months and then he’ll move on.’ Imagine if you were still trying to do the Coneheads on ‘Saturday Night Live.’ It’s gets old. But not this. He’s a genius.”
And former vice-president Dick Cheney is not. He's been faking a person for decades, but nobody laughs.
Mr. [Conan] O’Brien commended Mr. Colbert for breaking what he called the American tradition. “Our system is, if there’s another nickel to be found in it, you keep playing that character,” he said, “just beat it to death — and then do it another 10 years.”
As we saw just last week, Cheney is still playing his Torquemada character even though his show went off the air in early 2009. But then he's comfortable with beating things to death. Maybe his act would go over better in The Hague. Ten years would be a start.