By the Pocket’s Red Scare
http://thecolbertreport.cc.com/videos/cmpb1d/kucinich-s-pockets
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Kucinich on The Colbert Report: Helpful or Harmful?
By Manila Ryce
Published Tuesday, October 16th, 2007, 4:15 am
Regular readers to the blog know I’m unapologetically pro-Kucinich, but after watching the candidate who’s most in sync with America willingly make an even bigger clown out of himself, I wanted to journey to the nearest daycare center with a strand of piano wire. If you thought Kucinich would actually be allowed to engage in genuine political discourse with Colbert, you too will be asking yourself afterwards, “Did I really just witness a presidential candidate miss his opportunity to connect with the demographic most receptive to his message in favor of doing over 5 minutes of prop comedy?”
Kucinich was seemingly forced by Colbert’s writing staff to be a poor man’s Carrot Top. Sure, being the butt of jokes has gotten Kucinich a fair amount of media attention in itself, but once you get that attention you’re supposed to step out of the caricature and address real issues. I use to think any publicity was good publicity for Dennis, but now I’m not so sure. I don’t have a problem with the gnomish typecasting, but I think there’s a serious problem when that’s all you’re brought on for. What do you think?
see
Colbert Challenges Kucinich: Redux By Manila Ryce (link)
Dandelion Salad 
Colbert for President! I love the guy and even though he’s wacky and wierd, he’d be better than any of the other candidates.
Pingback: Kucinich Campaign update 10-22-07 (video) « Dandelion Salad
From a slightly more visceral perspective, well, all that pure coolness in the same room at once is enough to set a poor married-not-dead gal up for an epileptic seizure, really. I keep having to remind myself that I’m already married to a guy who’s as brilliant as Kucinich and as gorgeous as Colbert. I mean, it’s retarded. One part of the brain is like, LOOK! PURE GENIUS, SHINING LIKE UNTO A STAR IN THE FIRMAMENT! and the other part is going YO! OVER THERE! SERIOUS EYE CANDY! My mind felt like a Reese’s peanut butter cup by the end of it. I think if Jon Anderson had walked onto the set, my head would have just exploded.
Great points, Eileen.
Hoping that Kucinich will be invited back for a more in-depth interview in the near future. But this was a good start, getting his name out to the general public (three different shows, two leading up to this one).
It was actually pretty clever in spots – the part where Kucinich explains that Bush has already shrunk the Constitution, the part where he pulls out the mini-Magna Carta (a gratuitous opportunity to mention Habeas Corpus), Obama’s flag pin, and the part where he pulls a certain voter out of his pocket. The humor was very highbrow and subtly sarcastic, which – ok, let’s go for yet another gag here, is just my cup of tea. ;-7
I think they could have done a few more political gags, but it was clear that they were also having entirely too much fun with the whole thing. It’s pretty obvious to me that they worked on the material together. I could have watched another entire hour of that. I hope he has Dennis on the show again.