Opinion: Breaking News: And who cares?
This article was originally on a blog post platform and may be missing photos, graphics or links. See About archive blog posts.
Bad news for the humor quotient of the 2008 presidential campaign this afternoon.
Both the Republican and Democratic parties of South Carolina declined to include comedian Stephen Colbert on their primary ballots for Jan. 19 and 26, respectively.
Colbert, as described this morning by The Times’ James Rainey -- who is not a comedian but has said some funny things over the years -- plays a faux-rightwing commentator on his own Comedy Central show.
Colbert had brightened the autumn political scene in recent days by announcing he would run in both parties’ primaries in his home state and in that state only, making him something of a certain longshot to win a presidential nomination but a definite sureshot to boost sales of his new book, which we won’t help him do by not mentioning its funny title.
In a shocking turn of events, initial reaction on the Colbert Report’s Message Board was supportive of the would-be candidate with comments like ‘democrats are idiots.’
The South Carolina Democrats’ executive council did vote to put on the ballot real politicians named Joseph Biden, Hillary Clinton, Christopher Dodd, John Edwards, Mike Gravel, Dennis Kucinich, Barack Obama and Bill Richardson.
The Republicans set their ballot as: Hugh Cort, John Cox, Cap Fendig, Rudy Giuliani, Mike Huckabee, Duncan Hunter, John McCain, Ron Paul, Mitt Romney, Tom Tancredo and Fred Thompson.
What a laugh riot these 19 campaigns will be!
--Andrew Malcolm