There is something remarkable here just beneath the surface, that prevous generations find difficult to grasp. The generations of viewers who "get" Colbert's satire are entirely without precident in American history (in terms of their sense of humor).

While parody has been a vital part of American humor at least as far back as Lincoln and Tyler, satire has always been regarded as a little too considered, and a little too clever for American tastes. But, parody has been under attack since that fatefull day in Dallas when something to terrible happened that it required a cover-up (The Warren Commission and the 911 Commission smell very similar). Over time it has become increasingly difficult to parody a reality that has become a parody. You cannot parody a parody; and that has been a very bad thing for comedy in the U.S.

The adaptations that Daly and Colbert have made are a savvy response to a sea shift of values, beliefs, and expectations. These generations with no memory of Vietnam or Watergate are born of parody. This life experience prepares them to embrace satire as an affirmative part of their lives, much more centrally than my generation with it's Mad magazine and National Lampoon.

For my generation satire was considered marginal and slightly naughty, but then we had Walter Cronkite on the nightly news, Howard Cossel on Monday night, and lived in a time when 2 newspaper towns were the rule. Subsequent generations had blow-dry pretty-boy announcers, former players as sportscasters, and newspapers sans reportage... all form and little substance.

The hope is that there is something fundamentally generative in this taste for satire. Much more so than the previously prevalent taste for sarcasm (Seinfeld). Fundamentally, you cannot parody Fox news, and you can't be synical about a network so bent on pushing propaganda and mind control without ending up on medication or cutting your wrists. The basic optimism of the National character is still intact, and satire represents the only path out of this valley of death, this desert of humorless nascient fascism being constructed by the pigs currently feeding at the trough of government largess.

Thank you Mr. Colbert for permitting us to laugh again, and thank you for properly "roasting" the pigs. Humor may be the only antidote to fascism left to us. No other form of dialogue can limbo under the bar of "patriotism" erected at every opportunity by the current regime.

I recall the line from George Orwell's Animal Farm, "All animals are created equal, but some animals are more equal than others". I have a vague memory that it wasn't always so. I have a distant memory of a time when the Constitution wasn't, "just a piece of paper". And, I seem to recall something unfortunate about the Farmer. Oh yes, he was a drunk and a slackard too. He took everything for himself, he sent the old ones to the glue factory or for processing as dog food. He sold our children and the strong ones to slaughter for whiskey money (or was it oil?) and so we got together and threw him out.

Language matters. And, there is such a thing as truth. At this dark time in the history of this Republic we can only speak of the truth by cloaking it in the language of the Regime, all other language is labelled "unpatriotic" and results in censure, abuse, or the intervention of "National Security". I say, support the troops. Send them care packages chock full of satire to quench their thirst, from our political desert, to their geographical desert.

Mr. Colbert is double-plus good! I nominate him for designation as "national treasure".

Oh, Stephen, if you could loan a nut to Nancy Pelosi for a week or two, future generations would be in your debt.