If you haven’t seen Stephen Colbert’s legendary 2006 White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner appearance where, playing his right-wing blowhard character “Stephen Colbert,” he roasts President George W. Bush to his face, then stop reading and immediately go to the bottom of this post and watch the whole thing. We’ll wait. It’s amazing.
If you have seen it, you’ll know there’s no one better to come to the defense of Michelle Wolf, the Daily Show alum who provoked glee, outrage, and an endless cycle of news-takes ever since she headlined DC’s Saturday night “nerd prom.” Most notably, Wolf was criticized (and praised) after she compared White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders to “Aunt Lydia,” the anti-feminist villain of The Handmaid’s Tale, calling her an “Uncle Tom, but for white women who disappoint other white women.” Wolf also joked that Sanders used the ashes of burned facts for eye makeup.
Colbert received a similar (albeit pre-Twitter) level of invective and controversy after his own performance 12 years ago. And so on Monday night’s The Late Show with Stephen Colbert on CBS, Colbert switched up his eyeglasses, camera angles, and attitude to give viewers some pure vintage The Colbert Show-style Colbert.
“Look, you didn’t like it? You have that right,” Colbert said. “Don’t invite her back again—but grow a pair. This is a roast and you’re the ones who hired Michelle Wolf! Being mad at her for doing her job is like accusing the valet of briefly stealing your car.”
“Stop acting like you’re surprised,” he continued. “I thought news people did research, but you’re telling me you couldn’t spend 90 seconds on YouTube to find out what her act was like? As a great man once said: fake news.”
