Drill sergeant SFC Chantz correcting PVT Colbert at Fort Jackson.
From June 7–9, 2009, Colbert filmed a series of four episodes for the troops in Baghdad, Iraq. He had a suit tailored for him in the Army Combat Uniform pattern and went through an abbreviated version of the Army's basic training regimen. On the first of the four episodes, Colbert had his head shaved on stage by General Ray Odierno who was jokingly "ordered" to do so by President Barack Obama, who appeared on the episode via a pre-recorded segment from the White House.
Bears[edit]
Bears commonly appear in Colbert's ThreatDown segment. Colbert refers to them as soulless, godless, rampaging killing machines.
Truthiness[edit]
Main article: Truthiness
In "The Wørd" segment of the first episode of the Report, Colbert featured the term truthiness, defined as "the quality by which one purports to know something emotionally or instinctively, without regard to evidence or intellectual examination". Colbert said that, "I don't trust books, they're all fact, no heart. And that's exactly what's pulling our country apart today. Let's face it folks, we are a divided nation...between those who think with their head and those who know with their heart."[34] In December 2005, The New York Times selected truthiness as one of nine words that captured the zeitgeist of the year, and in January 2006, the American Dialect Society announced that truthiness was selected as its 2005 Word of the Year.[35]
Colbert has made frequent reference to the spread of the word truthiness since he introduced it, while carping on media accounts of truthiness that neglect to identify him as its source.[36] Truthiness has since been discussed, sometimes repeatedly, in The New York Times, the Washington Post, USA Today, the San Francisco Chronicle, The Chicago Tribune, Newsweek, MSNBC, National Public Radio, the Associated Press, Editor & Publisher, Salon, The Huffington Post, ABC NewsRadio's Word Watch with Kel Richards and Chicago Reader, and on ABC's Nightline, CBS's 60 Minutes, and The Oprah Winfrey Show. In January 2006, truthiness was featured as a Word of the Week by the website of the Macmillan English Dictionary.[37] In December of the same year, Merriam-Webster announced that "truthiness" had been voted by visitors to its website to be the No. 1 Word of the Year for 2006.[38] On August 27, 2006, the Global Language Monitor named truthiness and wikiality—both coined by Colbert on The Colbert Report—as the top television buzzwords of 2006.[39][dead link][40] It was used in The New York Times crossword puzzle in June 2008,[41] which Colbert himself mentioned during an exchange with Jon Stewart on an episode of The Daily Show.[42]
Relation to The O'Reilly Factor[edit]
The Stephen Colbert character and The Colbert Report are generally parodies of Bill O'Reilly and The O'Reilly Factor respectively. New episodes of The Colbert Report are scheduled in the same time slot as rebroadcasts of The O'Reilly Factor, while Colbert rebroadcasts are scheduled during new O'Reilly shows.[43] When O'Reilly appeared on The Daily Show before the second episode of The Colbert Report aired, he commented, "Before we get started, somebody told me walking in here, you got some French guy on after you making fun of me?", and made several references in the following interview to 'the French Guy'.[44][45] In a subsequent Newsweek interview, O'Reilly said that he "feels it's a compliment" to have Colbert parody him because Colbert "isn't mean-spirited" and does not "use [his] platform to injure people". Later, Colbert replied on-air, "I like you too. In fact, if it wasn't for you, this show wouldn't exist."[4]
The Colbert Report features a commenta
