COLBERT CAMPAIGN UPDATE

by Charles Bierbauer

Whereas Mayor Bob Coble declared this Stephen Colbert Day in Columbia, we resolve to treat the comedian’s campaign with a bit more respectiness.

After all, several hundred people gathered on the University of South Carolina’s Horseshoe on Sunday morning to hear the newest entrant in the 2008 presidential race.  A lot of other candidates would welcome a crowd of that size and enthusiasm.

Last week I called Colbert’s gimmick a “faux campaign.”  Perhaps he deserves a bit more credit for mobilizing public interest.

The crowd—supporters, the curious and a good number of dog walkers—had demographic breadth to make any candidate envious.  College students, university professors, the red-haired, the green-haired, the grey-haired, a young woman with a surfboard (we’re two hours from the beach), tree huggers and tree climbers (if only to get a better view), and the university mascot Cocky (Gamecocks vote!).

There were signs calling for “Colbert in ‘08”, “Truthiness and Justice for All”, and an end to global warming.  One sign took a slightly negative tone on Colbert’s political venture, demanding “Literacy, not Idiocy.”  (I’m on the literacy bandwagon.  South Carolina needs a literate population, and every child deserves that chance.  But I wouldn’t call this idiocy so much as comedic idiosyncrasy.)

It all looked like a campaign rally.  There were as many television cameras as I’ve seen at other candidates’ events, probably more.  The mayor played along, calling Colbert “South Carolina’s favorite son.”  Take that, John Edwards.  Loudspeakers played Aaron Copland’s “Fanfare for the Common Man.”  Enter Stephen Colbert.

Colbert played to the state’s strengths—peaches and shrimp, by his judgment.  He played to South Carolina sentiments.  “If elected, I will crush Georgia.”  (Good thing he is only running in the South Carolina primary.)

He played to its sense of history—first to secede.  And its sense of destiny, forecasting the state would be “first to succeed” in its visionary creation of Innovista, the university and city’s partnership in a research campus.  He extolled its innovation in creating an environment in which scientists can both live and work in the same neighborhood so that “if something goes wrong, they will be the first to mutate.”

The energized crowd launched into antiphonal shouts—Game…cocks!   Col…bert!  Just about everyone left smiling—the dog walkers, the bicyclists, a couple of folks late for church.  The candidate, too, or was that a smirk?

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