Stephen Colbert Eating Things

Stephen Colbert Eating Things

Stephen Colbert Eating Things

Brow Beat has moved! You can find new stories here.
Brow Beat
Slate's Culture Blog
Nov. 17 2011 2:49 PM

Stephen Colbert Eating Things

Stephen Colberts eats a ham loaf dressed up as Karl Rove in a still from 'The Colbert Report'.
Stephen Colberts eats a ham loaf dressed up as Karl Rove in a still from 'The Colbert Report'.

Stephen Colbert has built his considerable following in large part on a studiously maintained, deeply ironic persona. Pretending to be the “arch-conservative blowhard,” he “lampoons the pretensions and hypocrisies of modern American society,” as Seth Mnookin wrote in Vanity Fair a few years back. He has been hailed as an astute media critic; his comedy has been called a “parody of the postmodern.”

But he also knows how to look plain ridiculous. Indeed, his continued popularity depends equally, if not more, on his utter mastery of old-fashioned slapstick humor than on his sophisticated satire. And he has a regular, go-for-broke, fallback option when it comes to physical humor: eating things.

Advertisement

This is a venerable comic activity: In The Gold Rush, for instance, Charlie Chaplin famously ate his shoe. And this particular form of slapstick also reinforces Colbert’s carefully crafted conservative character: He puts his money where his mouth is, so to speak, by ingesting food—and other items—that the people he’s skewering are too hypocritical, or too scared, or too senstive, to eat themselves.

In any case, with Thanksgiving on the way, we thought Stephen Colbert deserved some tribute as the modern master of madcap mastication, so we put together the clips below. Enjoy:

Colbert Eating Food

Colbert tempts vegan Jonathan Safran Foer with some sizzling bacon—then eats it in front of him (fast forward to minute 4:58):

Advertisement

Colbert proves that a little bit of beef mixed with sand, isolated oat product, and anti-dusting agent makes for a tasty burrito:


Ben and Jerry’s brings on a brain freeze that launches Colbert and Jimmy Fallon to a psychedelic Vermont:

Colbert Eating Non-Food

Colbert reneges on his promise never to eat an Ewok (“It’s true. They do taste like wookie”):

Advertisement

Stephen Colbert is more sophisticated than most Americans, who can’t distinguish pâté from dog food; when he eats pâté, he likes Fancy Feast brand only:

Appalled by the allegations against Herman Cain, Colbert eats the $10,000 personal check he wrote the candidate:

Colbert Eating People (More or Less):


When food falls on Martha Steward’s blouse, Colbert is there to lap it up (fast forward to 7:40):


Colbert makes sure things are kosher between him and Karl Rove by taking a bite out of “Ham Rove with Glasses” (fast forward to 5:00):