Stephen Colbert Character
The Stephen Colbert character is a fictional character portrayed by comedian and actor Stephen Colbert. The character is a caricature of news pundits such as Stone Phillips, Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, and Geraldo Rivera, whose shows focus on "bluster and personality". Colbert's character, a "well-intentioned, poorly informed, high-status idiot", is right-wing, egomaniacal, fact-averse ("factose intolerant"), God-fearing, and hyper-patriotic. He claims to be an independent who is often mistaken for a Republican, but uniformly despises liberals and generally agrees with the actions and decisions of George W. Bush and the Republican Party. This is evidenced by one of the questions that he asks of many of his guests: "George W. Bush: great President, or the greatest President?"
The character's self-aggrandizing style includes frequent promotion of an extensive range of fictional merchandising and products, including perfumes, sci-fi novels, medications, his own "man seed", and other products, all of which are either produced or endorsed by Colbert. He has also convinced his viewers, whom he addresses as "the Colbert Nation", to vote for him in various public naming polls: the mascot of the Saginaw Spirit, an Ontario Hockey League team has been named after him.
Colbert's character holds a recurring grudge against everything related to France and the French language. Ironically, he pronounces both his Irish last name "Colbert" and the word "Report" in "The Colbert Report" with an elided "t" in accordance with French pronunciation. In an interview on NPR's "Fresh Air" Colbert acknowledged the pronunciation of report referring to the word "rapport": A close and harmonious relationship in which the people or groups concerned understand each other's feelings or ideas and communicate well.
Colbert's character has been described as a "caustic right-wing bully". On the interview segment of the show, Colbert frequently attempts to nail his guest by using various rhetorical devices and fallacies to prove them wrong. Despite his bluster, Colbert's character suffers from "arctophobia", the fear of bears, which he refers to as "giant, marauding, godless killing machines". This bear phobia was inspired by Colbert's real-life fear of bears as a child. Colbert refers to Bill O'Reilly as "Papa Bear", a title with a double meaning, considering Colbert's fear of bears. Colbert displays fear and suspicion of nearly any animal and is quick to declare they are "training" to attack humanity. He is also highly distrustful of technology, particularly robots. Over the months of May and June in 2007, Colbert begged Apple to give him a free iPhone, and finally received one in July. Once he received it, however, he claimed the phone knew so much about him that he had become virtually dependent on it, and that the iPhone itself was a threat. Colbert was one of the first public figures to receive a pre-production iPad, which he used in a joke at the 2010 Grammys.
Read more about this topic: The Colbert Report
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