The Colbert Report

Last night I tuned into the first episode of "The Colbert Report" (both Colbert and Report have silent "T"s), and I enjoyed it. It is different from "The Daily Show" in that where Stewart plays himself, openly mocking TV news and its personalities, Colbert becomes one of those personalities to satirize TV news. Last night, he assumed a Bill O'Reilly persona, mocking "elitist" tools like dictionaries and reference books. There were less visuals than in Stewart's show, and though Colbert was quite funny, there's only so much one man can say for 15-minutes. The second part of the show was great. Stone Phillips of Datline NBC, who Colbert seems to have modeled his style after, was interviewed in the second half of the show which was very funny. In Colbert's moment of tough journalism (when he wasn't talking about his tie), he asked Phillips which three nights of the week neither "Dateline" nor "Law and Order" are on NBC. While I still enjoy "The Daily Show" more, "The Colbert Report" does a good job poking fun at the self-important TV news profession.