Colbert for President!

Satirist Stephen Colbert announced last week that he would run for president in the South Carolina primary as both a Republican and Democrat. He appeared this morning on Meet the Press with Tim Russert and engaged in a bizarre interview according to the New York Times. Editor and Publisher also covered it, mostly by a transcript. Obviously these publications serve different purposes. IN this case what I'm more interested in is how the media covers this fake campaign.

Russert uses his interview technique of bringing up quotes from the past and comparing them to the present. He treated it like it was real interview, and the Times covered it like one. The media has trouble dealing with a satirist, on one hand not being sure how serious he is, and on the other wanting to include all the jokes he makes. It leads to some very strange mixtures of style, essentially they disembody and decontextualize the jokes, they just come off as strange. I think in this case you'd want to include more context, not really the transcript, but more information, set-up and background.