Thursday, April 10, 2014

My 15 Seconds Of Fame With Stephen Colbert

Now that he's to be the next David Letterman, I have to tell this story about being a foil in a little Stephen Colbert skit.

A few years ago, we were allotted two show tickets by entering a drawing for them on his website and flew to New York City to be in the studio audience.

Colbert had just returned to New York from DC after performing at a correspondents' dinner, where, with then-Pres. George Bush in attendance, and seated just a few feet away at the head table, Colbert had bravely addressed a long and excoriating stand-up routine, in his right-wing character, directly at a not-amused Commander-in-Chief and First Lady.


During the warm up just before air time at his studio, Colbert took audience questions and someone asked, "What did President Bush say to you when you were done?"

Everyone laughed, and Colbert said, "Well, I could tell you, or I could show you," and he picked me from the audience to come up for the demonstration."

Then he said to me, "Now you play me, I will play Bush, and you shake my hand and say, "Thank you, Mr. President."

So I shook Colbert's hand, and said "Thank you, Mr. President," and as Colbert-as-Bush said, "thank you, Stephen," he crushed my hand in a long, message-sending, mission-accomplished handshake.

So congratulations to Colbert, and I am looking forward to his new show, and to see who will be the replacement.

Larry Wilmore would be my choice.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Noice.
I always wondered.

zombie rotten mcdonald said...

John Oliver would have been an obvious choice, had the timing been different. Larry is a good choice; would also be nice to see a woman take one of those chairs for a change; Samantha Bee anyone?

A. Wag said...

You 'da man!

Betsey said...

Is that your hand in the picture, holding the flag? Is that before the Bush/Colbert hand-crushing? Or after recovery?

James Rowen said...

@Betsey. Nope. Too bad no photos.