Stephen Colbert processes his sister’s Congressional campaign loss

Stephen Colbert started his Wednesday night episode of The Colbert Report with news about his sister.

He had to. “Tonight, I am angry,” Colbert said. “And for once, that doesn’t make me happy.” Former South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford, who resigned following revelations he had skipped office and skipped out on his wife for an adulterous affair, won a special Congressional election wherein his Democratic challenger was Elizabeth Colbert Busch.

If there are five stages of grief, Colbert chose to go through them by first abdicating South Carolina to declare himself a North Carolina native, then wondered what went wrong? “This was the first political campaign where I knew and cared about the candidate before they got into politics,” he said of his sister. “I saw firsthand how her opponent smeared her with outrageous accusations I knew to be untrue. And that has made me wonder if other campaigns have done this as well.”

Roll the clip!

A little bit later, he segued into a report on how hopelessly deadlocked Congress is, anyhow. Republicans don’t want to say yes to anything for fear of making Democratic President Barack Obama look good. Using balloons as a prop to talk about a voice vote regarding helium, Colbert took an opportunity for a quick aside. At the expense of Sanford.

Sean L. McCarthy

Editor and publisher since 2007, when he was named New York's Funniest Reporter. Former newspaper reporter at the New York Daily News, Boston Herald and smaller dailies and community papers across America. Loves comedy so much he founded this site.

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