Steven Colbert

There is so much hot truthiness to this man, it is hard to quantify. What makes Stephen Colbert great?

In a way very few others have achieved, he has mastered the art of modern viral impact. Some of his feats of media ascension:

• Getting the most votes for a segment of the International Space Station to be named "Colbert" (NASA settled on a treadmill)
• Getting many celebrities and prominent figures to wear his "Wrist Strong" bracelets
• Getting the most votes for a bridge in Hungary to be named after him
• Raising the majority of sponsorship money for the 2010 U.S. Olympic Speed Skating Team
• Having a Canadian Junior League Hockey Team mascot created in his likeness (Stephen Colbeagle the Eagle)
• Having his own Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream flavor (Stephen Colbert's Americone Dream)
• Getting a Virgin Airlines Jet named after him
  

And yet these egocentric achievements are done because he can pull them off, not for any personal glory. Colbert has managed to satirize everything he touches, including his own ego.

Stephen Colbert has balls. He got the most "balls-points" for eviscerating George W. Bush in a long roast at the height of a time when critics of the administration were being publicly humiliated and silenced. This act won the hearts of progressives, and made many people wonder if he wasn't actually conservative after all...

...Because Colbert confuses the humorless with an unrelenting form of satire. Of course he's not conservative, but only someone taking things a bit too seriously would ever think he was.

However, he is a brilliant performer. Only when he himself can't hold back laughter does he show any crack in his intense, ultra-conservative caricature. And only by taking sides with the most crackpot right-wing positions can the absurdity of its discourse be truly illuminated.

As a humorist, Stephen Colbert has made himself an important historical figure, for strange times in America.