Well, the Democratic Party and liberal Hollywood finally joined forces to stick it to Stephen Colbert. First came word, delivered to Colbert on The Colbert Report itself, that he had been rejected from the Democratic primary ballot in South Carolina:
Then the Writers’ Guild announced that it was going to go on strike, which will most likely throw the Report into reruns immediately. (I half-expected Colbert to jujitsu the strike, by calling on TV and movie writers to walk off the job in support of his ballot rejection.) The man’s getting it from both coasts. He’s just too scary to them!
It was a dark day for Colbert’s campaign–not to mention his book and DVD sales. And a disappointing day for the rest of us, since Colbert was really just getting started, using his campaign as a means to satirize campaign fundraising (Doritos) and the media (Meet the Press), in the process teaching his audience more about the primary process and ballot requirements than I suspect their high school civics classes or newspapers ever did. But thank God we can still vote for serious candidates, like Mike Gravel.
So where does this leave the Colbert campaign juggernaut? South Carolina may have pushed its favorite son from its bosom, but this is a golden opportunity for another state, pushed out of the spotlight by Iowa and New Hampshire, to gain some free media by making Stephen Colbert its adopted favorite son. Opportunity is calling, Illinois!