Comedian Colbert throws his hat in presidential ring

By Andy Goldberg Jan 14, 2012, 2:06 GMT

Los Angeles - More than 30 years after former B-movie actor Ronald Reagan became president of the United States, another entertainer is trying to emulate the icon of the American right wing.

Comedian Stephen Colbert's relentless skewering of the American political system has made him almost as big a star as his Comedy Central colleague and collaborator Jon Stewart. He announced his entry into the presidential race Thursday night amid the obligatory cacophony of bombastic statements and a hail of red, white and blue confetti.

Colbert made the presidential announcement on his popular nightly show, The Colbert Report, in which he plays a bellicose, self-important right-wing news anchor. He takes the Republican mindset ad absurdum, and never lets facts get in the way of opinion.

'If our founding fathers wanted us to care about the rest of the world they wouldn't have declared their independence from it,' is one example of his way of thinking.

On Thursday he announced he was taking the first steps to enter the Republican presidential primaries, his boldest move yet in a long-running campaign to mock the absurdities of the country's political system, by actually participating in it.

'For over a day now, the people of South Carolina have been crying out for someone to restore our nation's former greatness to its current perfection,' Colbert, a native son of the state, said.

He announced an exploratory committee for the 'presidency of the United States of South Carolina' - where primary elections are to be held January 21.

Joke candidates are nothing new in western politics, yet Colbert is unprecedented in managing the tricky job of injecting his faux news character into the real life political scene.

'It's bizarre,' said Jon Stewart, whose Daily Show on Comedy Central has redefined the influence of political comedy. 'Here is this fictional character who is now suddenly interacting in the real world. It's so far up its own rear end,' Stewart said in a recent New York Times magazine profile of Colbert.

Colbert started developing the persona as a contributor to Stewart's program. Then in 2007 he got his own show, and has stayed in character ever since, even when he lampooned his 'hero' President George W Bush, to his face, at the 2008 White House Correspondents Dinner.

The same year he briefly ran in the Democratic primary and in 2010 he and Stewart organized a Washington rally that dwarfed the Tea-Party inspired rallies it was meant to lampoon.

Colbert began focusing on the dark comedic intricacies of US campaign finance laws following a 2010 Supreme Court ruling. The court, dominated by right-leaning judges, allowed unlimited contributions from anonymous donors to so-called Super Political Action Committees, which can support any candidate they like as long as they do not directly coordinate with that candidate.

With barely a nod and a wink, critics say, the nation's highest court allowed political candidates to get unlimited finance from anonymous donors that the court said could even include corporations. The judges justified the decision in the name of the US First Amendment to the Constitution, which guarantees free speech.

On Thursday Colbert invited Stewart into the studio together with his lawyer to give his audience a hilarious lesson on the loopholes of campaign finance, legally signing over to him control of the Super PAC he formed last year named Citizens for a Better Tomorrow, Tomorrow.

'Can we do this?' Stewart asked incredulously. 'Because you and I are also business partners...'

Colbert's lawyer assured Stewart that it was legal as long as the PAC's work was not coordinated with Colbert.

Now the Super PAC is called the Definitely Not Coordinating With Stephen Colbert Super PAC.

Joking aside, the Comedy Central duo are 'public intellectuals of significant value,' says popular culture professor Bob Thompson of Syracuse University.

'Their comedy has become the Trojan horse by which they sneak in complex analysis of the political system,' he told dpa. 'What they are doing is really important to the civic discourse of this country. His political satire is ultimately very serious.'