Colbert: AP is America's 'number 1 threat'

MSNBC ^ | 1/13/06 | AP Staff

[ChuckShick]

Comedian wants credit for coining ‘truthiness’

Joel Jeffries / AP file

NEW YORK - Stung by a recent Associated Press article that didn’t credit him for coining the word “truthiness,” Comedy Central’s Stephen Colbert has struck back.

The world’s oldest news organization, Colbert says, is the “No. 1 threat facing America.”

On Wednesday evening, Colbert placed the AP atop the Threat Down segment of “The Colbert Report” show. What was No. 2?

Bears.

In October, on Colbert’s debut episode of the “Daily Show” spinoff, the comedian defined “truthiness” as truth that wouldn’t stand to be held back by facts. The word caught on, and last week the American Dialect Society named “truthiness” the word of the year.

When an AP story about the designation sent coast to coast failed to mention Colbert, he began a tongue-in-cheek crusade, not unlike the kind his muse Bill O’Reilly might lead in all seriousness.

“It’s a sin of omission, is what it is,” Colbert told The AP on Thursday. “You’re not giving people the whole story about truthiness.”

[ChuckShick]

Funny.

[Wiz]

from msmbc...

[M203M4]

Michael Adams, a visiting associate professor at North Carolina State University who specializes in lexicology, pointed to that definition and has said Colbert’s claim to inventing the word is “untrue.” (Adams served as the expert opinion in the initial AP story.)

“The fact that they looked it up in a book just shows that they don’t get the idea of truthiness at all,” Colbert said Thursday. “You don’t look up truthiness in a book, you look it up in your gut.”

LOL

[sully777]

'Mazing! All the news that exists in the world, MSNBC has to run a story about a show that parodies another show that parodies the media.

Glad this is more important than Able Danger, Sandy Burglar, the flawed 9-11 commission report, and the like.

[Sender]

I actually saw the Colbert Report yesterday, right after the Daily Show. Both were just a series of nonstop juvenile bashes of President Bush and everyone in his administration. I found it interesting that the live audience in both cases only shouted and howled when the host mimicked smoking pot or on some particularly odious smear of the President. Jon Stewart's guest of the day was the author of a new book, "The Osama Bin Laden I Know", who went on to proclaim that the Iraq war was the best gift to al Qaeda they ever received, and that poor misunderstood Bin Laden was real tight with President Bush.

The sad thing is that the DUmmies see these shows and think they are watching the news.

[aynrandfreak]

Colbert is a liberal, but he's funnier than John Stewart. His schtick of trying to mock O'Reilly may end up being too subtle to change any minds. His question to Carl Bernstein; "Does Bush have the right to eavesdrop on American phone calls, or the duty"

[JustAnotherOkie]

When is GWB going to be looking for another press secretary??

[Great Communicator]

What was No. 2?

[metesky]

The least funny program on TV.