Funny Business as Usual

Review by Bruce Collier November 15, 2007 Issue

I have only seen Stephen Colbert once on television, and have never watched The Colbert Report, so this review is based just on the book itself. I Am America (And So Can You!) lists three co-editors (aside from Colbert) and 10 co-writers. It shows.

The book is divided into 14 chapters, with introductions, notes, and an appendix (of which more later). It’s full of photographs — mostly of Colbert — along with graphics, charts, and a couple of peel-off sticker sheets you’ll just have to look at yourself to understand. The text contains numerous footnotes and marginal comments. The overall tone is that of sustained facetiousness. That is not to say that Colbert and company aren’t informed, literate, and steeped in pop culture. They are, in the way that college students who spend a lot of time watching television and surfing the Internet are.

The subject of the book is Stephen Colbert’s America — “My American Childhood,” “My American Adolescence,” and “My American Maturity.” Each chapter is a subject: family, old people, animals, religion, sex, sports, race, the media, and so on. Each subject is given similar treatment, that is, examined from Colbert’s viewpoint and humorously picked apart. At the end of each chapter is “Stephen Speaks for Me,” in which a “representative” person sums up Colbert’s point of view. After the first few chapters, the book settles into a pattern. It’s a quick read, but I got the feeling I’d read it all before. Sort of.

There are any numbers of writers of Colbert’s ilk — social and political critics who use humor to make their points. If you have read Al Franken, Joe Queenan, or P.J. O’Rourke, you will see faint elements of their style in Colbert. Colbert’s writing is a kind of shadow of theirs. Occasionally he achieves Franken’s grasp of meaty issues, Queenan’s cultural vigor, and O’Rourke’s wicked turn of phrase, but only occasionally. I kept thinking, “More than ten writers and this is all they can do?” Of course, the question may contain the answer.

Take the chapter on religion, for example. Writing humorously on religion, especially the Christian religion, has become formulaic in America. It’s simply a matter of mocking the obvious targets — greedy televangelists, homophobic anti-evolutionists, etc., and dismissing it all as ignorant hypocrisy. There’s little new here. Colbert goes down the list of world faiths — Christianity and its main sects, Judaism, Shinto, Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, and fringe faiths like Scientology. He cracks wise on all of them, except for Islam. That he succinctly describes as “A great and true religion revealed in the Holy Koran which was dictated by the angel Gabriel to the final prophet Mohammed, Blessing and Peace Be Upon Him.”

Either Colbert agrees with this — unlikely in this kind of book — or he is deliberately keeping his hands off a touchy subject. Fear of offending, or simply fear? I would expect more from someone billing himself as a satirist. Especially a $26.99 - a - copy satirist. Sorry, Stephen, if one religion is fair game, they all are.

The other chapters, on gays, class war, immigrants, the media, Hollywood and other subjects are mainly a recap of what you will find on most political comedy shows or blogs. It’s standard issue stuff: America should seal off its borders, Hollywood liberals are phonies, sports fans are morons; all presented with rather monotonous sarcasm. Colbert — or whoever — pads the book with pages of surveys, puzzles, questionnaires, and fake self-help solicitations. Knitting it all together are plugs for the book and shameless promotions for Stephen Colbert. All of which are — you guessed it — ironic.

All that said, I smiled — and occasionally laughed — at much of what I read, even the stuff I didn’t agree with. The appendix comes close to justifying the rest of the book. It’s an account of Colbert’s speech at the 2006 White House Correspondents’ Dinner. In what appears to be a verbatim transcript of the speech, made to President Bush and assorted dignitaries, Colbert finally steps up. He gets off some fine one-liners and pulls few punches. According to Colbert, the speech was received with “respectful silence.”

Now that’s satire.

I Am America (And So Can You!), 227 pages, Grand Central Publishing. Available at bookstores and online booksellers.

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