Colbert Builds 'Report' with Viewers, Readers

DATE October 9, 2007 ACCOUNT NUMBER N/A
TIME 12:00 Noon-1:00 PM AUDIENCE N/A
NETWORK NPR
PROGRAM Fresh Air

Interview: Stephen Colbert, host of "The Colbert Report" and
author of "I Am America (And So Can You!)" on his book, his speech
before the president, satire, Bill O'Reilly and working nonstop
TERRY GROSS, host:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross.

Stephen Colbert delivers his truth to the nation on "The Colbert Report," and
today he's going to lay some of that truth on FRESH AIR. The occasion is his
new book, "I Am America (And So Can You!)" What Jon Stewart's "Daily Show" is
to news, "The Colbert Report" is to conservative punditry. The shows are on
back to back on Comedy Central. Colbert got his start in fake news as a
reporter on "The Daily Show." Here's the opening of last night's "Colbert
Report."

(Soundbite of "The Colbert Report")

Mr. STEPHEN COLBERT: Tonight, Rush Limbaugh's criticized for his comments
about soldiers. If only he had some way to kill the pain of these attacks.

Then, Bush vetoes children's health care legislation. Hey, if kids want
health care, they should become congressmen.

And, my guest George Saunders says TV news commentators are making America
shrill and divided. I'll tell him, `You're welcome.'

It's Columbus Day, but I won't rest until all the state capitals are
recognized.

This is "The Colbert Report."

(Soundbite of music)

(End of soundbite)

GROSS: Stephen Colbert, welcome back to FRESH AIR. It's great to have you
here. I'd love to have you do a reading from your new book, "I Am America
(And So Can You!)."

Mr. COLBERT: OK.

GROSS: And this is from the chapter called "Homosexuals."

Mr. COLBERT: (Reading) "So how did this happen? Where did all of these `the
gays' come from? Well, there are those who argue that some people are born
gay, but this is just silly because we are made in God's image, so if someone
were born gay, that would mean God is part gay, and he is definitely not. He
is 100 percent hetero. God is all man.

"Now, the man huggers are there are saying, `Mary, please, what about the Iraq
war? Surely that's a bigger threat than gay marriage.' Yes, Iraq is the
central front on the war on terror and we're fighting them over there so we
don't have to fight them over here, but consider this. Who other than
terrorists wants to destroy our way of life? The gays. Allowing them to
marry would be like strapping on a suicide vest with a matching cumberbund.

"When I married my wife, she became Mrs. Stephen Colbert. Likewise, I became
Mr. Stephen Colbert. We went from being two autonomous individuals to a team
whose sole focus was winning the game of life. By winning, of course, I mean
procreation. And we have won. We have procreated. And I mean no disrespect
to those readers who have not had children. There is no shame in being a
genetic dead-end."

GROSS: That's really great. That's Stephen Colbert reading from his new
book, "I Am America (And So Can You!)." How in the world did you have time to
do this book and a CD version of it. I remember the last time you were on the
show, and you were talking about how you were trying to make the show less
about the character and less scripted. You said it was an unsustainable level
of script output and that your head writer had been there 4 in the morning
writing, and you've not succeeded in that one thing. The show is not less
about you...

Mr. COLBERT: No, it's not, is it?

GROSS: ...and there's still this unsustainable level of writing and of
you-ness, and yet you've added to that with all this stuff. Do you know what
your children look like anymore?

Mr. COLBERT: I do, I do. I have a sketch artist come in every so often and
give me renderings of what they look like now. No. What--are there parts of
your body you're not supposed to bleed out of? Because we're all undergoing
some unusual symptoms over at the show, and I just--I don't know if you're a
licensed medical practitioner, but we still work really hard on getting the
show out every day, and the book was on top of that. You know, we had a
really--from last September essentially until the end of May, we worked on the
book and then very intensely from Christmas to May. And we had some really
fun, intense shows in that period of time. And we wrote the book at night and
we wrote the book on the weekends. And I don't entirely know how we did it.
You sort of get into a zone where adrenaline's pumping through your body, and
I would call Jon Stewart, or he would call me and say, `Are you OK? I know
you're writing a book at the same time.' And I would say, `I don't understand!
I'm not tired! I feel fine!"

And then, the day the book was over he wrote me a really nice, long letter
saying, `Look, I want you to prepare yourself for what it's going to feel like
to not work 24 hours a day,' because he had the same experience with "America:
The Book." And it was actually much tougher to not write the book. It's been
tougher since the beginning of the summer when the book's been done to not
work 24 hours a day, because you get addicted to the adrenaline.

GROSS: Well, you know, one of the things you've done is challenge The New
York Times liberal economics columnist Paul Krugman to...

Mr. COLBERT: Yeah.

GROSS: ...a duel over your book. And I want to play that excerpt...

Mr. COLBERT: It's very much like 50 and Kanye.

GROSS: Right. You refer to the 50 and Kanye, a feud about--what? Who was
going to sell more records?

Mr. COLBERT: Yeah, yeah.

GROSS: OK. So let me play this excerpt from your show, "The Colbert Report."

(Soundbite of "The Colbert Report")

Mr. COLBERT: The title fight is coming up one week from today, Tuesday,
October 9th, when my book, "I Am America (And So Can You!)"...

(Soundbite of cheering and applause)

Mr. COLBERT: Mm! Drops in bookstores wide. Now, you're probably asking,
`Who has the balls to release a book the same day as Stephen Colbert? Well,
it's New York Times columnist Paul Krugman.

(Soundbite of booing)

Mr. COLBERT: Apparently--yeah, ooh, indeed. Apparently he wasn't happy with
the 22 books he's already written. I say, `You make the first one good
enough, you don't have to write another,' and I never will. If you're not
familiar with Krugman's work, he's the author of such illuminating editorials
as "All the President's Enablers," "Department of Injustice," and "A Gay
Marine Should Marry Your Only Son." A bold stance. The book is called "The
Conscience of a Liberal," so I assume it's a pamphlet. Or maybe it's a
bookmark to put in the Communist manifesto while you and the other members of
your drum circle go outside and hug a piece of grass.

Krugman, you have been on my show. I gave you the Colbert bump! Let me put
this in terms a writer for The New York Times will understand. Paul Krugman,
or Paul "Betray Us," here's the deal. If your book outsells mine, I will stop
doing my TV show.

(Soundbite of oohs and ahs)

Mr. COLBERT: But don't--don't worry. But if I outsell you, you have to eat
your precious liberal conscience, symbolized, as it was for Pinocchio, by a
cricket.

(End of soundbite)

GROSS: That's Stephen Colbert from his show, challenging Paul Krugman. So
what happens if Paul Krugman sells more books than you? I know that doesn't
seem...

Mr. COLBERT: I'm a man of my word.

GROSS: ...likely to happen.

Mr. COLBERT: I stop doing my show. That's it.

GROSS: I don't know if you were watching Bill O'Reilly a couple of years ago
when one of his books came out and he was doing the same thing with Hillary.
Hillary had had a book, and he was basically saying, `This is a battle in the
cultural wars, and if she sells more book, then they win. But if I sell more
books...

Mr. COLBERT: No, I actually did not know...

GROSS: ...than we win.'

Mr. COLBERT: ...he did that. That's fantastic.

GROSS: Yes, he did it. He did it many nights.

Mr. COLBERT: Wow, so I emulated his behavior just with our imagination.
That's fantastic.

GROSS: You're there. You're in the zone.

Mr. COLBERT: I'm in the no-fact zone.

GROSS: Feuds have become very important to you, feuds and challenges.

Mr. COLBERT: Yeah. Well, I like to take everything personally. My
character--there's nothing too large that doesn't involve him. Every news
story is really about him. As, you know, as we said when we first started the
show, is that, you know, everything he cares about is a news story, because he
cares about it, no matter how petty in his life. And no matter how large that
it can't be reduced to something in his life. And so, yeah, everything gets
very personal. And that's what cultural wars are about. They're very
personal. Because it's all just opinion. Culture is a series of agreed
opinions, and so of course it's got to get personal.

GROSS: Now, your new book is written in persona. How has your relationship
to your alter-ego changed in the past couple of years now that, like, you've
done the show, you know, a lot? You know, like, when you were starting...

Mr. COLBERT: Well, we...

GROSS: ...it, you had to like figure out what your character was and flesh
him out, but now you've lived that character...

Mr. COLBERT: Right, when we first started it...

GROSS: Yeah.

Mr. COLBERT: When we first started it, it was, well, I--you know, it's an
amplification of the character I do on "The Daily Show" who, even then, was,
you know, as I said, a well-intentioned, poorly informed, high status idiot.
And then we said, `Well, let's pick some specific models,' so we picked guys
like Billy O'Reilly or Anderson Cooper for his slickness or Sean Hannity for
his just bullet-headed incuriosity. And we thought, `Well, OK, I'll be kind
of tied to these guys,' and obviously O'Reilly is the greatest. He's the king
so he's the clearest figure for any of that.

But then, as the show's progressed, we've done things like the Green Screen
Challenge or we've done trying to get a Hungarian bridge named after me, or
challenging Sean Penn to a metaphor-off, or Willie Nelson to an ice cream-off.
And those things really aren't political. They're really not--they're not
something O'Reilly would necessarily do, and so I've found that at the base of
it is still that character from "The Daily Show" who is well-intentioned,
poorly informed, high status idiot that I can apply to other issues.

GROSS: Well, one of the things now is that we're facing the possibility of
going to war with Iran, and that's one of the things that you've been talking
about.

Mr. COLBERT: Yeah.

GROSS: Do you feel like you have, like, a real role now in the debate, like,
through humor or know about what's happening in Iran?

Mr. COLBERT: No. I have no role in the debate. I really don't. I don't
think anybody pays any attention to what satirists do. For all the media
criticism that goes into the idea that young people get their news from us, I
think--listen, people who actually make decisions don't pay any attention to
what people who have real ideas say. And why would they listen to something
that we say, or even the influence that we may or may not have over a young
generation. I just don't buy that we're a legitimate part of the debate. I
don't want to be part of it.

GROSS: My guest is Stephen Colbert He has a new book called "I Am America
(And So Can You!)." More after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

(Announcements)

GROSS: My guest is Stephen Colbert, and he has a new book now and an audio
version of the book, and it's called "I Am America (And So Can You!)."

Now, I haven't seen Better Know a District for a long. Better Know a District
is when you have on, usually a lesser-known congressman...

Mr. COLBERT: Yeah.

GROSS: ...and do an interview with him. And you explained the last time...

Mr. COLBERT: We would do better known congressman if they would talk to me.

GROSS: Exactly.

Mr. COLBERT: But that's always been a problem. Yeah.

GROSS: Right. And you explained the last time on the show that you did
Better Know a District because the only politicians willing to come on the
show were lesser-known congressmen. But are they not willing to come on now,
too? I mean, wasn't there like a directive from, like, top Democrats...

Mr. COLBERT: Nancy Pelosi gave a directive to Democrats not to come on my
show, not to do Better Know a District and that it actually didn't work all
that well. She gave the directive, you know, a year ago and we've done a ton
of them since then. And then after the election when the freshmen came in for
the 2006 class, Rahm Emanuel, who was, you know, their scout master, said no
freshmen go on my show, but even they did, you know. We managed to corral a
bunch of them. I don't know. We're having a real dry spell right now. I
think something like Robert Wexler, who said on camera that he enjoys
prostitutes and cocaine because they're fun to do, I think it's got people
skittish, but I don't really understand why because...

GROSS: Well, you told him to say that.

Mr. COLBERT: I said, you know, `Would you be willing to say this?' and he
said it, and there was no trickery. I didn't--there was no editing. He just
said it, so that's the sort of thing that any congressman really could prevent
themselves from doing by saying, `No, I prefer not to say that.' But we still
have congressmen who are willing to talk to me. Actually, when we were
writing the book I had no time to talk to them, so hopefully the congressmen
who are still wanting to talk to me, we can get to this fall and then, you
know, re-encourage the rest of Congress to not see me as some sort of assassin
but as a--more of, you know, I'm a comedian.

GROSS: But it shows you are having some kind of impact with people who are
afraid to come on the show and talk to you.

Mr. COLBERT: Not the impact you really want for a talk show.

GROSS: Not the impact they really want, apparently.

Mr. COLBERT: Exactly.

GROSS: I love the way you incorporate bad things that happen with you...

Mr. COLBERT: Mm-hmm.

GROSS: ...on your show. Like when you broke your wrist. You had such great
bits after that. The movies with wrist violence and the red bracelets for
wrist awareness.

Mr. COLBERT: Well, that's a pure expression of what I was talking about
before is that anything that he cares about is news...

GROSS: Mm-hmm.

Mr. COLBERT: ...and so he sees this one thing that happens to him as--well,
it's a sign, you know, of what's going on in the larger culture, and my wrist
became part of the culture war, that this is what Hollywood does, they glorify
wrist violence and we made that blanket statement, and then lo and behold,
there are tons of movies that glorify wrist violence. I guess it's an easy
special effect to achieve, to show a broken wrist. There's a fantastic one in
"The Fly," where Jeff Goldblum nearly rips a guy's hand off in an arm
wrestling match. Ah, we got a lot of mileage out of that.

GROSS: How soon...

Mr. COLBERT: But that's no different than, you know, O'Reilly, you know,
playing any kind of culture clip.

GROSS: How soon after you realized you broke your wrist and you were in pain
did you think, `I know we can make this work on the show'?

Mr. COLBERT: Leaving the doctor's parking lot. In the summertime there's
not much to talk about because Washington is really out of session and the
president is on vacation and, you know, the summer, the end of the summer, the
story was the war and the continuation of the war and what are the statistics
of the war and how will that inform Petraeus' testimony on, you know, on
September 11th and September 12th about whether we should continue the surge,
you know. That's all that we're talking about. And that ends up being tragic
statistics for a month, and we just couldn't go on noodling around that.

And so we were looking for like, what is something that could be large enough
in my life that would occupy my mind during this time. And I had broken my
hand early in the summer and didn't know it. I had broken my wrist and didn't
know it. It had just gotten puffier and puffier and worse and worse and then
finally, I said, `I got to go'--I was pretty sure it was broken but I didn't
want to give in to having a broken wrist in the summertime. And so I went to
the doctor. He goes `It's broken.' And so he wraps it up, he puts the cast on
it and as I leave the driveway, I thought, this is a life-changing experience
for my character. This is a real wake-up call. And it needs to be one for
America.

And I called on the way in, I called our booker and I said, `See who you can
get to sign my cast. I'm going to be in DC tomorrow to do a Better Know a
District. See who you can get to sign my cast while I'm down there.' And
turned out to be a lot of people in DC who were willing to sign my cast.

GROSS: Didn't Nancy Pelosi sign it?

Mr. COLBERT: Nancy Pelosi signed it, and Tony Snow...

GROSS: So she won't let guests on your show...

Mr. COLBERT: Tony Snow signed it.

GROSS: ...but she'll sign your cast.

Mr. COLBERT: Right. She said when she signed it, `I still won't come on
your show,' and I said, `Well, I think you are right now.'

GROSS: Well, there was this great like video on your show, you know, of you
falling in the warm-up to your show and breaking...

Mr. COLBERT: That was real. I actually--a camera ...

GROSS: That's what I wanted to know.

Mr. COLBERT: A camera happened to be on and it really is like the Zapruder
film from my character's point of view, you know. Nothing is more important
than what happens to him. It shows me running around the studio, because I
was just--that kind of gets the audience's, you know, energy up so you realize
this is not a news show, it's a comedy show, and I ran around my desk and I
always take these leap off of the podium that my desk sits on and leap out
toward the audience and high-five them. And I just--it was the day before the
book was due...

GROSS: Oh no.

Mr. COLBERT: ...and I was so tired, and all I could think was, `God I'--I
literally had to stay up all night proofreading the book, making sure it's all
done. And I said, `Well, I'll just go out there and with all the energy in
the world,' but I had no more control, no more muscle control than I normally
would. I was so exhausted, that I just (snaps fingers) went--my feet came out
from underneath me and I left the screen, you know, in the frame. The frame
is still, and I leave frame like I'm on an invisible gurney. Just absolutely
sideways and then I landed on my wrist then got to the other side.

GROSS: Were you embarrassed when you fell and was there part of you thinking,
well, Patti Smith fell off a stage. These things happen.

Mr. COLBERT: I thought of myself as Ann-Margaret. No, I wasn't embarrassed
at all. I was in--it's very hard to be embarrassed if you do what I do for
this long. I was in a tremendous amount of pain. I actually thought I'd
shattered my hip, and...

GROSS: Oh god, really?

Mr. COLBERT: ...and for a moment it hurt so much, the way I landed, I
thought maybe I'd shattered my hip the way an old woman does, where like the
hip breaks and then she falls.

GROSS: Mm-hmm.

Mr. COLBERT: Because I was so calcium depleted from writing a book and doing
a show for the last nine months. I thought, `This is it. I've actually--I'm
rotting from the inside and that's why I fell down.' And I crawled into the
front row and lay across four people in the front row. And they were so
sweet, they pet me while I lay there and moaned. And the best part was I had
a mike in my hand so I was just going, `Oh, oh, I have a book due tomorrow.
Oh. Are there any questions?' So...

GROSS: Did you do the show after that?

Mr. COLBERT: I did. I did. If you watch that show, it's like June 27th or
something, I--my hand's underneath the desk for most of it because I have an
ice pack down there.

GROSS: Were you in pain or did adrenaline like quell the pain?

Mr. COLBERT: I was in a tremendous amount of pain, Terry. The courage it
took to go on at that moment, I think, is something that my children will be
able to look to and say, `Yes, Dad did this.' I was in a little bit of pain.

GROSS: So you did some really funny things about being addicted to pain
killers where you'd just like take a bottle and pour it down your throat...

Mr. COLBERT: Yes.

GROSS: ...then chew it.

Mr. COLBERT: Yep.

GROSS: Especially since...

Mr. COLBERT: That was coming at a nice time, because there were several
starlets who were having problems at that moment. And so that...

GROSS: Oh, and there's Rush Limbaugh's problems, too, of course in the
not-too-distant past.

Mr. COLBERT: Not-too-distant past. No. Hopefully he's kicked that. I
don't want his hearing to go away again. Do you wonder how much drugs you
would have to take for your hearing to go away?

GROSS: Oh, is that what he said, that his hearing's going away because of
the...

Mr. COLBERT: He started to go deaf. That was the first warning. Because if
you take too much OxyContin you lose your hearing.

GROSS: Oh.

Mr. COLBERT: And he got all this sympathy for having gone deaf, and it turns
out that if you just lay off snorting the prescription drugs, your hearing
comes back. Maybe he was blowing in his ear, I don't know.

GROSS: So you probably had to take some painkillers.

Mr. COLBERT: I took--my doctor prescribed a generic painkiller called--and I
kid you not--called Flurbiprofen. Flurbiprofen. F-l-u-r-b-i-profen. And I
thought, this has got to be a joke. This has got to be a joke. Can you
imagine like committing suicide with flurbiprofen and having your loved one
call the poison control center and going, `He's just taken'--`Ma'am, what is
it? Tell us what he's taken. We need to know.' `It's Flurbiprofen.' `OK,
ma'am, this is not a joke line.' Click.

GROSS: Stephen Colbert will be back in the second half of the show. His new
book is called "I Am America (And So Can You!)" I'm Terry Gross, and this is
FRESH AIR.

(Announcements)

GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross back with Stephen Colbert. His
program "The Colbert Report" is on Comedy Central right after "The Daily Show
with Jon Stewart." What Stewart is to fake news, Colbert is to conservative
punditry. Colbert has a new book called "I Am America (And So Can You!)."

You know, we were talking about O'Reilly and how he started off as one of your
role models for your character.

Mr. COLBERT: Mm-hmm.

GROSS: I just want to play a brief clip of when you were on O'Reilly's show
and then he was on your show.

Mr. COLBERT: Mm-hmm. I better like this clip, Terry, or I will cut off your
mike. Are you clear? This is your show but I know a lot of people in
broadcasting. All right, watch it.

GROSS: All right. So this is an excerpt of O'Reilly on "The Colbert Report"

(Soundbite "The Colbert Report")

Mr. COLBERT: Please welcome Papa Bear Bill O'Reilly! Bill!

(Soundbite of cheering and applause)

(Soundbite of music)

Mr. BILL O'REILLY: Thank you.

Mr. COLBERT: Welcome to you. You hear that booing? No, that's not--that's
not booing.

Mr. O'REILLY: You hear that booing? No, that's just...

Mr. COLBERT: That's the bear call going, they're going `Boo, Papa Bear.

Mr. O'REILLY: No. No. No.

Mr. COLBERT: No, that's `Ooooh, Reilly.'

Mr. O'REILLY: That's booing. That's Stewart. That's Jon Stewart in that
plaid shirt.

Mr. COLBERT: No, no. I have a restraining order against Jon Stewart.

Mr. O'REILLY: That's what he's doing.

Mr. COLBERT: He's not allowed in the building.

Mr. O'REILLY: He's jealous. He's jealous of you, Colbert.

Mr. COLBERT: The man is a sexual predator. I mean, that's why I had to
leave, Bill.

Mr. O'REILLY: Is that right? Yeah?

Mr. COLBERT: You have--you have no idea what that's like.

(End of soundbite)

GROSS: I thought it was so amazing that you did that because you're saying
about he was a sexual predator and `Bill, you have no idea what that's like,'
and of course...

Mr. COLBERT: Mm-hmm.

GROSS: ...everybody knew that O'Reilly had been accused of sexual harassment
at that point.

Mr. COLBERT: I don't know what you're talking about.

GROSS: Yeah. I thought that was so brave to do that. I mean, so--because
it's like taking that kind of satire to somebody's face. Was it hard to
actually do that in the room with him to his face?

Mr. COLBERT: The entire interview was hard. I was expecting him to come on
in his persona from the show...

GROSS: Mm-hmm.

Mr. COLBERT: But he immediately dropped it. You know, we cut out almost two
minutes of that interview because he dropped it so fully that there was
really--the game was completely gone, and I didn't want to just attack a human
being. I just wanted to have a tennis match with his public persona, and he
dropped it. So we ended up--we had like a seven and a half-minute interview,
and if you time it with a stopwatch--and I know a lot of my viewers do, that
was shorter than a normal interview on our show. I don't think he
necessarily--you'd have to ask him, but I don't think he enjoyed facing a
doppleganger.

GROSS: It must have been pretty odd for him, and he was saying to you things
like, you know, `That's just a character.' `I'm really nice.' `I'm a really
nice person.' `That's just an act.' And then you said...

Mr. COLBERT: Look, if you're an act, then what am I?

GROSS: Yeah, I thought that was such--do you--was that just like an
improvised line?

Mr. COLBERT: Well, yeah, I was just startled that he would go on air and say
that he doesn't mean the things he says. I think he was joshing to deflate a
moment, but it was surprising.

GROSS: My guest is Stephen Colbert and he has a new book and a new audio
version of the book, and they're called "I Am America (And So Can You!)."

Now, we have been talking about things that have happened that were bad in
your life and making them work for you...

Mr. COLBERT: Mm-hmm.

GROSS: ...and under that category is losing the Emmys two years in a row,
first to Barry Manilow and then to Tony Bennett, and you had so much fun with
it. Both years, yeah.

Mr. COLBERT: You know, I think at this point, I think my real enemy is the
"Great American Songbook." I'm really, I'm most upset at Ira Gershwin...

GROSS: Yeah.

Mr. COLBERT: ...and Irving Berlin. Those are the guys who really piss me
off at this point. Because they're the ones putting the words in the mouths
of these people. It is amazing to lose two years in a row to great American
song stylists, which is...

GROSS: Well, you...

Mr. COLBERT: ...why I've got to do a special. I've got to do my own
"Stephen Colbert and Friends" special.

GROSS: Well, this is the closest you've come to it so far. You did a
duet--you invited Tony, just as you did with Barry Manilow, you know.

Mr. COLBERT: Yeah.

GROSS: You invited Tony Bennett on the show.

Mr. COLBERT: Mm-hmm.

GROSS: And after comparing his strengths to yours as a performer--but
anyways, you invited Tony Bennett on the show, and after your interview, he
sang and then there was a little surprise. So let's hear an excerpt of that
and then we'll talk about it.

Mr. COLBERT: OK.

(Soundbite of "The Colbert Report")

(Soundbite of "They All Laughed")

Mr. TONY BENNETT: (Singing) People laughed at Rockefeller Center
They're fighting to get in
People laughed at Whitney and his cotton gin
People laughed at Fulton and his steamboat
Hersey and his chocolate bar
Ford and his Lizzie
Kept the laughers busy

Mr. COLBERT: Tony, that's how people are!

(Singing) They laughed at me wanting you
Said it would be `hello, goodbye'
But, boy, you came through
Now they're eating humble pie

Mr. BENNETT and Mr. COLBERT: (Singing in unison) They all said we'd never
get together
Ho, ho, ho
Who's got the last laugh
Hee, hee, hee
Let's at the past laugh
Ho, ho, ho
Who's got the last laugh now?

Mr. COLBERT: Beautiful! Oh, beautiful! Tony Bennett, everybody!

(End of soundbite)

GROSS: Bravo, sir.

Mr. COLBERT: Thank you. I know, I just--what would you rather have? Would
you rather have a golden statue or to be able to sing for two minutes with
Tony Bennett? I'd say I won. I think I say I won that one.

GROSS: Oh, yeah. Who chose the song, you or he did?

Mr. COLBERT: He did.

GROSS: Did you know the lyrics already?

Mr. COLBERT: I knew the song, I didn't know the lyrics. And I wasn't
actually--I kind of wanted to sing with him, and then we were so just--you
know, every day is like a mad rush to get the show done and this was no
exception. And he came on, and they said, you know, `If you're going to go
sing with Tony, you've got to go down there right now.' And I said, `Oh, I'm
not going to do it. I'm not going to do it. I just can't. There's no time.'
And I said, `Well, I've got to go say hi to him.' So I went down there just to
thank him for coming on because I'm a long-time fan. And he said, `So I
understand you want to do a song with me?' And I said, `Yes! Yes, I do.' You
know, I tried to demur for just a minute, then what am I saying? Tony
Bennett's willing to do a duet with me. I'd be an idiot to not say yes. And
we noodled around for about, you know, 15 minutes, as to when I would jump in,
and then, oh, that's the right spot. That's right. That's right.

GROSS: The perfect spot. The perfect spot.

Mr. COLBERT: Yeah.

GROSS: My guest is Stephen Colbert. He has a new book called "I Am America
(And So Can You!)." More after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

(Announcements)

GROSS: My guest is Stephen Colbert, host of Comedy Central's "Colbert
Report." He has a new book called "I Am America (And So Can You!)." The book
includes a copy of his famous 2006 address to the White House Correspondents
Dinner, in which he appeared in character and satirized President Bush, who
was seated just a few feet away. Here's an excerpt from the opening of
Colbert's speech.

(Soundbite of White House Correspondents Dinner speech)

Mr. COLBERT: Wow. Wow, what an honor. The White House Corespondents
Dinner. To actually--to sit here at the same table with my hero, George W.
Bush. To be--to be this close to the man! I feel like I'm dreaming.
Somebody pinch me. You know what, I'm a pretty sound sleeper. That may not
be enough. Somebody shoot me in the face. Is he really not here tonight?
Dammit. The one guy who could have helped.

(End of soundbite)

GROSS: Now, I have to ask you about the White House Correspondents Dinner.
That was...

Mr. COLBERT: All right. Do I have to answer?

GROSS: That's in your hands.

Mr. COLBERT: OK.

GROSS: That was such an act of comedy and bravery. I mean, you were at a
table just a couple of seats away from the president and then you had to walk
a few steps over to the microphone and you really took the gloves off. I
mean, you said some really...

Mr. COLBERT: I would say I put the gloves on.

GROSS: Mm-hmm.

Mr. COLBERT: I put the comedy gloves on.

GROSS: OK.

Mr. COLBERT: You know, like one thing that we always make sure is to always
keep the gloves on.

GROSS: You mean, not really make it personal? Make it comedy?

Mr. COLBERT: Yeah, because it'd be very easy to do--and I think a satirist
can fall into this is to get angry about the things that you're talking about.
Or to get, you know, emotional about what you're talking about, and the job is
not to come in the morning and have, you know, a shout fest over can you
believe this thing was being done? Or, OK, can you believe what's being
ignored? Or what's being purported to be the truth? Or what particular
moment of BS that is, you know, so redolent in the air that's not being
sniffed? You can do that at the morning meeting, but that's not your job.
Your job is then to take what happens in that morning meeting and then take
the next six hours to distill that into something that's comedy, and I would
say those are the gloves. You put the comedy gloves on, and people allow you
to throw punches at them or to receive the punches at home because you've got
the gloves on. If you just took the gloves off, then it would be too harsh
all the time.

GROSS: I want to play a brief excerpt of what you said that night at the
White House Correspondents Dinner with the president sitting just a couple of
chairs away.

Mr. COLBERT: Mm.

GROSS: And so here's a little excerpt.

(Soundbite of White House Correspondents Dinner speech)

Mr. COLBERT: The greatest thing about this man is he's steady. You know
where he stands. He believes the same thing Wednesday that he believed on
Monday, no matter what happened Tuesday. Events can change. This man's
beliefs never will.

(End of soundbite)

GROSS: That's pretty funny, and I think that cuts pretty deep. Did you have
any sense before you got onto stage what it would feel like to say this kind
of thing with a lot of Bush administration people in the audience and the
president, you know, just a little more than an arm's distance away? Like,
was it hard to actually do it?

Mr. COLBERT: Saying the words was pretty easy because I really liked all the
jokes, and I got to--you know, there's the pit that you're walking over, `Are
the people who I'm doing this kind of thing for going to like it or not like
it?' That's the pit of fear that's below you, but I felt like I had such a
solid bridge of jokes that I had no fear in walking across it. You know, it's
difficult. It takes sweat, and it takes stick-to-itiveness in focus as a
performer to do the whole thing in character and to keep driving forward in
moments of silence. Though I have to say, you know, people say that it bombed
in the room. There were 3,000 people in the room, and--it's an enormous
room--and, you know, when it bombed--if you hear the recording, you go, boy,
nothing's happening there, 1,000 people are still laughing, but they're
laughing in the back of the room. They're not laughing up by the president's
table--where the mikes are.

And so for me, at the center of 1,000 people laughing, that still feels pretty
good. You didn't really get a sense that I'm tanking. You never really had
that sense up there. You had a sense like, well, that one worked better. I
kind of like that one. Maybe that one more than that response got, but you
never got a sense that something's wrong. I don't really think anything was
wrong. But I didn't get a sense that there was anything in particularly
different about it until I sat down and then people were conspicuously not
meeting my eyes.

GROSS: When leaving the table--a few people seemed to flee the table after
you sat down.

Mr. COLBERT: Well, the evening's over.

GROSS: The evening was over, true, true.

Mr. COLBERT: To be fair to the people around me, the evening is over at that
moment. But I don't know, maybe I had sort of a vaguely radioactive quality
at that moment. I don't know. But I...

GROSS: The president patted you on the back and kept walking.

Mr. COLBERT: He said, `Well done.' He said, `Well done.'

GROSS: Oh, OK. You couldn't hear that on my--but then after nailing the
president, you nailed the press. And I think they weren't expecting that.
And I want to play a short example of what I mean.

(Soundbite of White House Correspondents Dinner speech)

Mr. COLBERT: But listen, let's review the rules. Here's how it works. The
president makes decisions. He's the decider. The press secretary announces
those decisions and you people of the press type those decisions down. Make,
announce, type. Just put them through a spell check and go home. Get to know
your family again. Make love to your wife. Write that novel you got kicking
around in your head. You know, the one about the intrepid Washington reporter
with the courage to stand up to the administration. You know, fiction.

(End of soundbite)

GROSS: Do you think that the press was expecting that you'd be criticizing
them, too, and what reaction did you feel from the room when you said that?

Mr. COLBERT: You know what? I don't remember. I don't remember. It all
felt very much of a piece to me in terms of the reaction. It all felt very
much the same to me. The thing that I remember afterwards is I tried not to
read much reaction about it afterwards, and I know there was a lot of
reaction, but it didn't help me to pay attention to it...

GROSS: Right. No, I understand.

Mr. COLBERT: So I read like one really negative one and one, you know,
pretty positive one and then I read a couple people's blogs and then I cut
off. That was literally the Monday that we got back from Washington after
that. But I said, `OK. Nobody send me links. I don't--really, I can't do
this.' But in the negative one the person criticized me for, you know, letting
the press off. And I thought, gosh, the whole like...

GROSS: Yeah......(unintelligible)...

Mr. COLBERT: ...last 10 minutes, I think, was just about the press, so I
don't think people paid as much attention to that because I was standing next
to the president and I was doing satire about him and policies of the
administration, that's all people really remembered about the evening.

GROSS: What do you think the odds are that the president knew, or was at
least briefed, about the Stephen Colbert persona? Do you think he had any
context for how to take what you were saying?

Mr. COLBERT: I don't know. I know beforehand he said, `It's nice that we
can do this.' And then I said, `Yeah, it's an honor to be able to do satire in
front of you,' and we had a little conversation about that. So I don't think
he was completely unaware...

GROSS: Well, the other thing...

Mr. COLBERT: ...of who I was.

GROSS: The other thing that must have been strange for you is that you use
that character in the context of your show. It's a controlled environment...

Mr. COLBERT: Yeah.

GROSS: The audience has come to see the Stephen Colbert show. They get it.
They know what the show is. Then suddenly you're out in this ballroom of
3,000 people where probably a lot of them have never seen your show...

Mr. COLBERT: Yeah.

GROSS: ...and had no idea what the heck was going on.

Mr. COLBERT: I think that was very much part of it, is that people expected
stand-up and I don't do stand-up. I admire stand-up since it's a very
difficult thing to do, but I don't. I do this character. I do character
work, and I started off in improvisation doing character at Second City in
Chicago. And so I think they expected, you know, 20 minutes of jokes as
opposed to this sort of a performance piece. And not their fault, you know,
that they didn't care for it. I never want to blame the audience. But I
think you're right. I think people were a little bit surprised.

GROSS: My guest is Stephen Colbert, and he has a new book and a new audio
version of the book, and they're called "I Am America (And So Can You!)."

How old were you when you started getting interested in theater?

Mr. COLBERT: My mother had wanted to be an actress and so I heard about that
growing up. And I was in high school, I suppose. I was pretty much an
outsider in, you know, I was a nerd and not really accepted by my peers, and
you know, played a lot of Dungeons and Dragons, and there's a role-playing
aspect to that. You know, it's fantasy role-playing. And then I found out
that I could tell stories in an improvisational way, and I started hanging out
with a couple of the cooler kids who liked having me around because I told
jokes and I was silly and I did pratfalls and kind of being a class clown. It
was a classic thing. The class clown got me accepted by a broader array of
kids.

And I kind of thought I'd be a comedian when I grew up, and it wasn't until I
got to college and got all depressed--which a lot of college freshmen do, I
suppose--got a lot of personal angst that I thought, no, not comedy, you know
tragedy. Because the world has to see how I feel all the time. And then I
held the infant of my tragic career to my bosom for years until I met some
people who worked at Second City and I thought, no, I'd rather do this.

GROSS: Did you ever go through, like, a heavy rebellion period where you kind
of, you know, broke off with your mother and...

Mr. COLBERT: I had a--because some viewers would know that when I was a
child my father and two of my brothers died, and it was just me and my mom
alone in the house for years. And so, we ended up becoming like friends as
much as we were mother/son. You know, my mother was sort of deeply struck,
you know, sort of shattered by the event of my father and my brothers' death
and so we joke and say that I raised my mother. Because I was there alone
with her. And so I didn't have the same kind of rebellion because there was
this sort of shattering event at an early age that sort of changed the dynamic
of the relationship. Not that she wasn't the boss and not I didn't learn from
her and not that she wasn't sort of the moral figure. But the order of the
world didn't make as much sense to a child anymore, and so I didn't really
feel like I needed to rebel that much. I had a teenage rebellion. I smoked
dope and didn't do my homework, but nothing too dramatic.

GROSS: Just think, you can't run for president or be on the Supreme Court,
having just said that.

Mr. COLBERT: Oh? Can't I? I will make sure you eat those words some day,
young lady.

GROSS: You have three kids...

Mr. COLBERT: Well, now, I should just say I said that in character, Terry.
That could have been my character talking just know.

GROSS: That's true. Gets you off the hook.

Mr. COLBERT: It sure does.

GROSS: You can say anything and say it was your character.

Mr. COLBERT: All kinds of things are my character.

GROSS: So, you know, you satirize religious extremes so much on your show
that a lot of people assume that you're not religious, but of course, you
know, you're a Catholic. You go to church. You're raising your children in
the faith. What do you tell them about God? Like, what do you tell them God
is?

Mr. COLBERT: Hm. That's interesting. I don't know if any of them has asked
me what God is. I've taught a couple of years of CCD, Sunday School
catechism, and I think the answer that `God is love' is pretty good for a
child, because children understand love. And, you know, I don't want to get
too much more complex than that with a second grader.

GROSS: Yeah, but then there's like the plagues and stuff.

Mr. COLBERT: Well. Well. There is the plagues. There is the plagues and
stuff. My son asked me one day, `Dad, what's hell?' You know. And I remember
thinking--at first I asked, `Why do you want to know?' Because I wanted to
know whether somebody had condemned him to hell. And he goes, `I just--' he
heard the term and he wanted to know what hell was and so I said, `Well, you
know, if God is love, then hell is the absence of God's love. And, you know,
can you imagine how great it is to be loved. Can you imagine how great it is
to be loved fully, to be loved totally? To be loved, you know, beyond your
ability to imagine it, you know? And imagine if you knew that was a
possibility and then that was taken from you and know that you would never be
loved. Well, that's hell, to be alone and know what you've lost.' And that's
the best I could do.

GROSS: My guest is Stephen Colbert. His program "The Colbert Report" follows
"The Daily Show" on Comedy Central, and he has a new book called "I Am America
(And So Can You!)." More after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

(Announcements)

GROSS: My guest is Stephen Colbert. His program "The Colbert Report" is on
Comedy Central. His new book is called "I Am America (And So Can You!)."

You've become so popular there have been things named after you, including a
plane, ice cream. It was a bear in a zoo, right, that was named after you,
like a baby bear?

Mr. COLBERT: I think, we didn't talk about that, but I think there's been a
bear in a zoo--oh, there's an eagle. An eagle...

GROSS: The eagle! The eagle! I'm thinking of the eagle, yeah, yeah. Like,
what's that like for you and also do you get freebies? Like, do you get as
much Stephen Colbert ice cream as--do you get free rides on the Colbert plane?

Mr. COLBERT: I get some stuff like that, yeah. I get some stuff like that.
I mean, I've got a lot of Ben & Jerry coupons at home. You know, I've got a
stack of coupons is what I got. You don't really want them to ship you, you
know, 1,000 cartons of ice cream...(unintelligible)...

GROSS: That's a good point.

Mr. COLBERT: Yeah. No, it's great. And the ice cream...

GROSS: They can ship it on the Colbert plane.

Mr. COLBERT: They should. One of the nicest things is being able to go into
a supermarket and send your kid over to the freezer case to go get you.

GROSS: Right.

Mr. COLBERT: I mean, that's big up in the kid's minds...

GROSS: Absolutely.

Mr. COLBERT: ...if like their dad--I mean, TV show's nice. Ice cream?
Nicer.

GROSS: What's next after "The Colbert Report," Stephen Colbert? What do you
see when you look into the distant future? Is there another kind of
performance that you want to do at some point?

Mr. COLBERT: I'm an actor. Sure, I'd like to do something else. But I
really like what I'm doing right now, and it asks of me everything I know how
to do...

GROSS: Mm-hmm.

Mr. COLBERT: ...which is to perform and to write and to edit and produce
and, you know, if I want to I could sing a duet with Tony Bennett. And so
it's very hard for me to imagine anything I would do after this. Not that
there wouldn't be something after this. But it's hard for me to imagine what
I would enjoy more, you know.

GROSS: Heck, you get to ask Henry Kissinger...

Mr. COLBERT: Yeah.

GROSS: ...to be a judge on the Countdown to Guitarmageddon. I mean...

Mr. COLBERT: You know, there was...

GROSS: Pretty odd, pretty odd.

Mr. COLBERT: We wanted Dr. Kissinger. He was one line. I thanked him for
trusting me with his dignity, you know...

GROSS: Right, yeah.

Mr. COLBERT: But there was one line he wouldn't say.

GROSS: What was that?

Mr. COLBERT: The line that I wanted him to say was, `Where are my pancakes?
I was promised pancakes.' Because we were trying to figure out why would Henry
Kissinger do this? So we needed to come up with a justification as to why
Kissinger showed up to do this. So we wanted to go back him and say, `Dr.
Kissinger, is there anything you'd like to say?' And we wanted him to say,
`Where are my pancakes? I was promised pancakes.' And he wouldn't do it. He
wouldn't do it. I did a full-court press, and somewhere there exists a
recording--because they did it on camera. There's a recording of me trying to
convince Henry Kissinger to say the line, `Where are my pancakes? I was
promised pancakes.' But we just couldn't get him to say it.

GROSS: Oh...

Mr. COLBERT: So, yeah, I get to do things like that, too.

GROSS: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And I just want to say, I love it when you insult
NPR.

Mr. COLBERT: My pleasure.

GROSS: Or, as you describe it in the book, Nancy Pelosi Radio...

Mr. COLBERT: Mm-hmm.

GROSS: ...or Nazi Palestinian Radio.

Mr. COLBERT: Mm-hmm.

GROSS: And you have this great pie chart of the content of "Morning Edition."

Mr. COLBERT: Yeah, I just--my character finds it offensive that NPR doesn't
have to compete in the general marketplace with actual radio. As it says
here, "What's wrong with NPR? Just listen to `Morning Edition.' This is by
far the least zany morning zoo ever to hit the airwaves. Instead of the
get-up-and-go-larity provided by your local Scott and Tom, or Ted and Zeke, or
Denise and Santana, or Coyote Mike and the Beamer, `Morning Edition' presents
NPR's measured, barbiturate vibe." And then it has the content of Morning Zoo
and the content of "Morning Edition," two different pie charts. And, you
know, 57 percent of a morning zoo is sound effects or prank calls. And 39
percent of "Morning Edition" is sedition, wry essays by New Englanders and the
color light gray.

GROSS: Oh, and 15 percent glowing descriptions of fund-raising gift mug.

Mr. COLBERT: And the balance is just word jazz.

GROSS: Stephen Colbert, thank you so much. It's really been great to talk
with you.

Mr. COLBERT: Thanks for having me back.

GROSS: Stephen Colbert's new book is called "I Am America (And So Can You!)."

You can download podcasts of our show by going to our Web site,
freshair.npr.org.

(Credits)

GROSS: I'm Terry Gross. We'll close with the guy Colbert lost an Emmy to,
the great Tony Bennett.

(Soundbite of "In a Mellow Tone")

Mr. BENNETT: (Singing) In a mellow tone
Feeling fancy free
I am not alone
I got company

Everything's OK
The live-long day
With this mellow song
I can't go wrong

In a mellow tone
That's the way to live
If you mope, and if you groan...

(End of soundbite)
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