And Nothing but the Truthiness: The Rise (and Further Rise) of Stephen Colbert

Excerpted from the Introduction from And Nothing but the Truthiness: The Rise (and Further Rise) of Stephen Colbert by Lisa Rogak. Copyright © 2011 by the author and reprinted by permission of Thomas Dunne Books, an imprint of St. Martin’s Press, LLC. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or printed without permission in writing from the publisher.

I used to make up stuff in my bio all the time, that I used to be a professional iceskater and stuff like that. I found it so inspirational. Why not make myself cooler than I am? I once told an interviewer that I’d been arrested for assaulting someone with a flashlight. And I said that I drove a Shelby Cobra. They totally swallowed it, and I felt bad. Then I thought, it doesn’t matter. It’ll make a better story.

— Vanity Fair, October 2007

I’m a super straight guy. I grew up in Charleston, South Carolina, and I am perfectly comfortable in blue blazers, khaki pants, Brooks Brothers suits, and regimental striped ties. It’s just genetic. I love a cocktail party with completely vacuous conversation, because I grew up in it.

— Campus Progress, October 2005

Will the real Stephen Colbert please stand up?

Colbert has been messing with the truth for years now, both in and out of character. This hugely popular comedian with a biting wit and rapid-fire skill for calling up obscure figures and events in everything from Greek history to light opera has largely built his career on messing with people’s minds. And most of the time, they don’t even know when he’s doing it.

No other comedian has so blurred the line between his real character and his onscreen character.

“My name is Stephen Colbert, but I actually play someone on television named Stephen Colbert, who looks like me and talks like me, but who says things with a straight face he doesn’t mean,” he said in his commencement address at Knox College in 2006. “I’m not sure which one of us you invited to speak here today. So with your indulgence, I’m just going to talk and let you figure it out.”

Good luck with that. Even his own mother knows that’s an impossible task: “I can never nail him down as to exactly what he is,” said Lorna Tuck Colbert when her son was well into his forties.

Stephen Colbert grew up in a large tight-knit Catholic family, essentially as part of a tribe where he was the youngest of eleven children. “His humor is an accumulation of the eccentricities, mannerisms, and jokes of his ten older brothers and sisters, a medley that trickled down,” said one Colbert staffer.

The constant bantering endemic to his family often assumed a slapstick quality, as evidenced in a 2009 interview with Stephen, his mother, and several of his siblings when asked about their name’s pronunciation:

Elizabeth Colbert-Busch: What did I say my last name was?

Margo Colbert Keegan: Coal-bear.

Elizabeth: I did? No, that’s not my name.

Margo: Yes, you did. You said Coal-bear Busch.

Elizabeth: That’s not my name.

Margo: You said Coal-bear Busch.

Elizabeth: Roll that back. That’s not my name. My name’s Elizabeth Coal-bert Busch, and I’m not telling y’all how old I am.

Lorna: Oh, I have no idea what my name is.

Margo: What?

John A. Colbert: You’re Mom.

Lorna: Well, I don’t know.

Elizabeth: You have a vague inkling, okay?

Margo: You’re Coal– bert or Coal-bear?

John: You’re Coal– bert.

Stephen: You’re Coal-bear, you’re Coal-bear. Come on.

Elizabeth: Well, I was Coal-bear until I was twenty-three. It followed me all the way through college. I finally gave up. I was intimidated.

Margo: Tom claims he was the first to go Coal-bear, is that true?

Lorna: Who was?

Margo: Tom. He was the first to go Coal-bear, he claims.

Lorna: Oh, I don’t know.

John: He might have been.

Elizabeth: I think it would be Dad.

Margo: Yeah, but it didn’t stick.

Stephen: [To interviewer] Have you any questions?

Margo: Oh, yes, Brooke.

John: [To interviewer] See, this is what happens…

Obviously, the rapier-sharp wit that Colbert demonstrates regularly on The Colbert Report had its roots early on.

Like virtually all comedians, his humor developed in the face of tragedy, and Colbert’s great tragedy is that his father and two older brothers were killed in a plane crash when Colbert was just ten years old. His tribe was smashed apart, and he’s spent his life trying to recreate it. At first, he found it in high school, then at Second City with his friends Paul Dinello and Amy Sedaris, and again with Jon Stewart on The Daily Show. But try as he might, he has never been able to exactly replicate it. He has admitted that he has never completely dealt with their deaths, and he’s said that he sometimes expects the three to walk right back through the door.

An Everyman In a Brooks Brothers Suit

Unlike many other comedians and celebrities, Stephen Colbert is a genuinely — perhaps shockingly — good person. Time and again during my research, friends, colleagues, as well as complete strangers have told of his generosity when it comes to his time, spirit, and money. Above all, he’s never been shy about proclaiming his love for his mother, both on camera and off. “She’s bright, not just intelligent but bright,” said Colbert. “She shines. She’s hopeful, indefatigable, and has great faith. And she’s tough: she raised eleven kids, and she raised me after my father and two of my brothers died. And she’s Irish, so Irish.”

Despite his quickness to announce his love of family, Colbert guards his personal views closely, and if you watch the show carefully you’ll see subtle digs at everyone across the political map. “I’m not entirely a commie,” he says. “I don’t mind putting things in that might be perceived as conservative that I actually believe, but I don’t know if the audience needs to know which of them I believe.”

At the same time, he cheerfully admits that he’s biased. “I don’t have to pretend to be impartial. I’m partial. I’ll make fun of anybody. We’re all about falling down and going boom on camera,” he said. “I’m not someone with a particular political ax to grind. I’m a comedian. I love hypocrisy.”

In the fall of 2010, he testified before a congressional subcommittee to offer his views on migrant farm workers, where, by staying in character, he was able to show his thoughts on the subject: “Generally speaking, if you slap me across the face at 3 a.m. and say ‘What are you?’ I’d say I’m a liberal.” Some of the congressmen in attendance got the joke, while others frowned and viewed Colbert’s appearance as little more than a publicity stunt.

But after reading his prepared statement, Colbert turned serious, breaking character in response to a question about why he chose to testify on this particular issue. “I like talking about people who don’t have any power, and it seems like one of the least powerful people in the United States are migrant workers who come and do our work but don’t have any rights themselves,” he said. “Migrant workers suffer and have no rights.”

“Stephen is one of the smartest people I’ve ever met,” says Allison Silverman, the former executive producer and head writer at The Colbert Report. “He’s brilliant.” In fact, he’s eager to share his knowledge with anyone who wanders into range.

Indeed, members of the studio audience have been treated to Colbert’s warming them up by reciting poetry, singing a Gilbert and Sullivan tune, and spouting Latin epithets. His breadth of knowledge is prodigious. In a conversation with his family and in-laws, his mother mentioned that their father spent time in Beirut with the army while another sibling corrected her to say, No it was Bayreuth, a town in Germany, not Beirut. Stephen asked, “Isn’t that where the big Wagner festival is, Bayreuth?”

Unlike his more acerbic comedic counterparts, Colbert is a happy family man who completely embraces the mundane routine of suburban life. He’s not hurtling down the path of swift self-destruction like other Second City alums Chris Farley or John Belushi. On the contrary, he’s Everyman in a Brooks Brothers suit.

“His basic decency can’t be hidden,” said Jon Stewart.

“I have a boring baritone. I have boring hair. Every decision that I’ve made in my life is the middle decision,” Colbert told Morley Safer in a 60 Minutes interview.

“I have a wife who loves me, and I am oddly normative,” he said. “I live in a bubble. I go to work and then go home, and I don’t get together with people in groups that often.”

Plus, he’s probably the first hugely popular comedian who makes no secret of his deep commitment to Catholicism. “I love my Church,” he said. “I’m a Catholic who was raised by intellectuals, who were very devout. I was raised to believe that you could question the Church and still be a Catholic. What is worthy of satire is the misuse of religion for destructive or political gains. That’s totally different from the Word, the blood, the body, and the Christ. His kingdom is not of this earth.”

He even teaches Sunday school, and it’s clear that he draws some inspiration from his charges. “They immediately ask questions that you thought were so deep in college, like ‘What’s beyond time?’ ‘What came before God?’ ”

“Stephen is a happy man,” said Ben Karlin, who served as executive producer on The Colbert Report. “He goes home to a lovely wife in New Jersey, a dog, and three beautiful children, and he knows his way around the kitchen.”

“His own family is very, very important to him,” said childhood friend Chip Hill. “The typical story is a guy gets famous and loses perspective on his life. He works very hard to stay grounded.”

Fans are not the only ones who adore him. By and large, the media not only follow him but thoroughly respect him as well, even given his status as a fake newsman. “Colbert is more than an entertainer, he’s a force of nature,” said Julio Diaz, entertainment editor for the Pensacola News Journal. “He’s influenced the way we look at the news and even the way we speak. Whenever a major news story breaks, one of my first thoughts is what’s Colbert’s spin on the story.”

As a biographer, Colbert’s constantly shifting chameleon persona— both in character and in real life— created a challenge, because he even does many of his media interviews in character. “I like preserving the mask,” he said. “Stepping out from behind it doesn’t do me any good.”

“There couldn’t be a huger difference between the character Stephen and the real Stephen,” said Richard Dahm, a head writer at The Colbert Report. “The real Stephen is an amazing guy. The character Stephen—well, I wouldn’t want to be working for him.”

“He always said he was going to major in mass communications and start his own cult,” said Chip Hill.

“I drive myself home at night,” adds Colbert, who lives on a cul-de-sac in suburban Montclair, New Jersey. “The network would happily send me home in a car— after all, they don’t want me running off the road. But I’d work the entire way home, and I need more than the 30 seconds from the car to the front door to become a dad and a husband again. So I drive home and I crank my tunes. And by the time I get there, I’m normal again.”