Stephen Colbert: Beyond Truthiness Read Free

blamed “poor cockpit discipline” and a crew that “did not follow prescribed procedure.”
    Stephen Colbert still mourns. “Grief,” he said, “will always accept the invitation to appear. It’s got plenty of time for you.”
    The list of comedians who have lost their fathers through death or divorce is a long one. It ranges from Lucille Ball to Mel Brooks, Lenny Bruce, Drew Carey, George Carlin, Charlie Chaplin, Louis C.K., Eddie Murphy, Richard Pryor, the Smothers Brothers, and Jon Stewart. What is there in tragedy that turns to humor? The need to cheer up a grieving mother? The need to cheer oneself? The drive to create a world where laughter trumps silence? Whatever the motive, ten-year-old Stephen Colbert did not find it at first. “Nothing made any sense after my father and my brothers died,” Colbert said. “I kind of just shut off.”
    Colbert found his escape not in MAD magazine or television sitcoms, but in books. Alone with his mother in a house where “the shades were down and she wore a lot of black,” he read, on average, a book a day for eight years. He plowed through science fiction and fantasy, quickly finding favorites. In the Chronicles of Thomas Covenant series, he found his staunch Catholic faith tested but triumphant. In Fritz Leiber’s Lankhmar series, he discovered swordsmanship and heroism. And when he could tear himself away from reading, he found a parallel world in the new role-playing game, Dungeons & Dragons, a.k.a. D&D.
    “I started playingDungeons & Dragonsthe first week it was introduced to the market,” Colbert recalled. Whether as Cleric or Druid, Paladin, Ranger, or some other D&D role, Colbert was “hooked.” In 1977, when he and his mother moved from rustic James Island to the city of Charleston, Colbert felt even more of an outsider. Sent to the prestigious Porter-Gaud prep school, he clung to fantasy, reading book after book, rolling D&D’s polyhedral dice, living life as a Dungeon Master. Homework? “I put more effort into that game than I ever did into my schoolwork.”
    Absorbing hit points, performing feats, reveling in each revised version of the game, Colbert moved on into high school. There he discovered more literate fantasy in the works of J.R.R. Tolkien. Like many a lonely dreamer, Colbert saw Tolkien’s Middle-earth not as a mere setting for a novel but a refuge. Gandalf and Frodo, Mordor and Gondor, and The Shire - he devoured Lord of the Rings again and again. Colbert estimates that he read the trilogy forty times. His office at Comedy Central, filled with Tolkien memorabilia, has been described as “a shrine to all things Lord of the Rings .” In 2011, when director Peter Jackson invited Colbert to New Zealand to watch the filming of The Hobbit , Colbert took on Jackson and others in a Tolkien trivia contest. Colbert won.
    Throughout his first two years of high school, Colbert was harassed and ostracized. Short, quiet, nerdy - he was the perfect target for the once-and-future bullies who stalk every prep school. Then, in his junior year, as if assuming the role of a new character, Colbert blossomed. Perhaps all that fantasy was wearing thin, or maybe it was the young woman he had a crush on and for whom he wrote short vignettes describing the grisly deaths of her most-hated teacher. Or credit the comedy albums he played so often that he memorized them – Bill Cosby, George Carlin, Steve Martin. . . .
    Whatever the reason, suddenly the short, quiet, nerdy Stephen Colbert became the most popular funnyman in his prep school. Joining the debate team and the glee club, winning the lead in school plays, he charmed teachers and students alike. He was, one teacher remembered, “brilliant, a little naughty, and supercharged with energy.” He was, in short, the Stephen Colbert we see on TV today - minus the seasoning.
    The seasoning began in college. Most of the Colberts attended the University of South Carolina, but Stephen’s mediocre grades kept him