You know, why don't you just give Colbert his own section? This is not a complaint but an honest to goodness suggestion. He's posted practically every day, deservedly so.

The big question is how much longer he can get away with this? Of course, I've been asking the same thing since Barney Frank.

That was by far his funniest one yet!!!!

Can I vote for her?

I can only guess that the Democrats actually might watch Comedy Central occassionally and get the shtick. That's two in a week (Wexler was one) who I'd vote for simply on the basis of their performance in his interviews. It's really sad that she doesn't get a vote given how little shit she's willing to take.

Humor, that's what. Dems appear to have one, at least moreso than Republicans. This was hysterical, and it raises a good point: Democrats should fight the GOP with blistering sarcasm and verbal contempt for their failed ideas, not joust on the same field of "I'm more American than thou!". When you want to destroy your enemy, belittle him and make him irrelevant.

Obnoxious is more like it, unless she realized she was essentially in a performance piece, but that didn't come across. So fuck the bitch.

sorry, it was very funny, but EHN clearly had no idea that Colbert was in character; the thing I don't understand is why the staff doesn't know about him or his show - even after the WH Correspondents dinner??

Too bad she's too ballsy and quick on her feet to get elected to the Highest Office in The Land.

...Colbert usually let's an interviewee know that he's bgoing to be in character. I thinkNorton remembered this.

Colbert deserves every bit of praise he receives; he is truly a modern comedic genius. I wish all his HoR interviews were as "sassy" as Rep. Holmes Norton. Colbert shines when he is ad-libbing. This installment was classic.

Dem black wimmens sho nuff be sassy.

(Is this word EVER used about white men?)

The "vanilla - French vanilla" comeback was great! Most of us would be driving home before we thought of that comeback. Colbert rolls it off his tounge without thinking. I hope he is well paid for that show. He is worth it.

It seems highly unlikely that Rep. Norton did not know who Stephen Colbert is. That she asked him, seemingly out of the blue, about the pronunciation of his name -- French or Anglicized--suggests that she got the joke; "Colbair Repore". Why would she care? Knowing that people were going to be watching her in this bit of business, she did the most effective thing that can be done against Colbert's schtick-- be as aggressive and random as he is. That was the point of the mildy nasty, "Civics lesson number one" and so on. She had to go toe-to-toe with him, and stake out her place on the field if she did not want to look the fool. Being passive gets you killed in the kind of joke situation that Colbert has constructed, as the experiences of many of his other "interviewee/victims" show. Norton was (is?) a longtime law professor at Georgetown, and is a graduate of Yale Law School. She was engaging in exactly the kind of verbal sparring and head game stuff that gets played out in those kinds of places all the time, and law professors are especially adept at doing it. As one would expect from someone with her background, it was an extremely smart performance-- way more than merely "sassy".

Elenaor Holmes Norton has been a great Rep. for the District of Columbia, which has no vote in Congress. She has to work Rep. Tom Davis (R-VA) of the D.C. Congressional Committee to get anything on the House floor. The Republicans under Newt Gingrich took away the 'Committee of the Whole' vote for D.C. So D.C. has no effective say in their governing - Congress does the budget and enacts the laws.

So Rep. Norton has to be forceful, tactful, and get her point across in a direct manner. Sassy has nothing to do with it. She is a capable woman who has worked for D.C. Statehood since she was elected. When the Crime Emergency was declared in D.C., she was on the front lines walking the Mall at night checking to see if the Capitol Police (under Congress) was working with the D.C. Metro police. They hadn't at the time. So she was in effect putting herself in danger to help the citizens of D.C. You can't ask for a better Rep. than that.

'Sassy' to describe a black woman... yikes.

I thought Norton handled it horribly and were she a Republican your respectful opinion would differ drastically. FOr one, Colbert was more persistant and, well, funny, than usual. But Norton took nothing in stride and then went down in the end trying to look string but close to spouting racial epithets. What a dumbass.

Of course she was in on the joke--the whole "what part of France are you from?" thing is a dead giveaway. Easily the funniest interview I've ever seen on the Colbert Report.

P.S. I hate the "sassy" thing too. Try strong, unyielding, hilarious.

That was cute and enterntaining, which frankly I needed very much after all the crap that went down worldwide this week. Norton isn't nearly as quick on her feet as Colbert (a couple of logical fallacies there, whereas Colbert's logical fallacies are part of his schtick) but it was banter and neither of them were taking it too seriously (and I'd ONLY bitch about a Republican in the same situation if they *did* take it seriously.)