My Quest For Fame Advances Very Slightly
On March 8, The Colbert Report featured Representative
John Yarmuth (D) of Kentucky’s 3rd in its popular and often (unintentionally) hilarious “Better Know a District” segment. (See end for link to clip.)
Back in January of this year, Joseph Gerth, the Metro Notebook writer at the Louisville, Kentucky, Courier-Journal, had reported that Yarmuth would be the featured candidate in March; and knowing that Colbert often asks his BKAD subjects to answer the question “George Bush: great president or the greatest president?” Gerth asked readers to send in their own responses to this question–and mine was one of the ones published!
Full text here (a direct link is not available but I purchased the whole article so I feel comfortable posting the relevant portion in its entirety):
The Greatest
The Courier-Journal, Louisville, Kentucky, January 8, 2007
Metro Notebook last week requested answers to the question U.S. Rep. John Yarmuth, D-Louisville, likely will be asked when he tapes a segment on “The Colbert Report” later this month: “George Bush. Great president or the greatest?”
Stephen Colbert’s show parodies conservative talk-show hosts such as Fox’s Bill O’Reilly.
The most common answer readers suggested referred to legendary Louisville boxer Muhammad Ali, who is known simply as “The Greatest.”
“When you represent a district that contains Louisville, there is only one greatest,” wrote Eric Parrish.
Daniel Sturgeon, a native Louisvillian, wrote from Tokyo: “Well, since Ali is the Greatest, then Bush … can only hope to be second best. However, I don’t think Bush flies like a butterfly and stings like a bee. Well, he is more like a bull (in a China shop).”
But Bonnie York had a different thought: “Easy. As a mother of a deployed soldier, I simply say, ‘Nope.’”
Meow House [name and location changed for this posting] wrote: “He’s neither. What he’s got is ‘greatiness.’ He’s the most greatinest president ever, definitely. That’s the greatness he feels from the gut. Even if it’s just heartburn to everyone else.”
I was officially famous on January 8 in Louisville, right up until the recycling was taken out or the bird cage needed cleaning! Woo hoo!
Apparently Yarmuth was not asked “the question”; or at least it didn’t air. So that kind of makes my response even more important–since I’m sure Stephen is kicking himself for forgetting to ask what Yarmuth thought of one of his idols. Rep. Yarmuth, feel free to call him and tell him this is what you might have answered if only he had asked! 
Please send your requests for autographs (mine, not Stephen’s or Rep Yarmuth’s) to:
1000 Great Big Thatchers Lane
Sodom & Gomorrah Estates
Boston, MA GAYSRAEL 66666
(Colbert viewers will easily get those references. Others, well you’ll have to start watching now, won’t you.)
The clip of BKAD segment that aired is available on iFilm or at Comedy Central.
Side note: (iFilm is much easier to watch–the shockingly bad MotherLoad system at Comedy Central is probably the worst video setup of any in existence–Viacom/CC must have the stupidest people on the planet working that site–it is BY FAR the worst-designed, clunkiest, least-viewer-friendly, slowest, most-confusing, most-fraught-with-bugs video-sharing site on the Web–but unfortunately iFilm videos are not embeddable. When in god’s name is Viacom going to wake up and do something about this? I bet not one in 10,000 people even knows that CC posts on iFilm. They certainly don’t advertise it anywhere. But that’s another topic for another day.)
You can go to CC’s iFilm account here or watch the clip below, if it works for you. Please note that the video will expire from MotherLoad on April 9, 2007. (That makes a whole lot of sense, doesn’t it? :rolleyes:)
EDIT: no, you can’t watch the MotherLoad clip because it will not embed no matter what I do. No surprise there. Have I mentioned what a giant fuckwit Sumner Redstone is to not make sure that their video sites work correctly, since these are the ONLY places to view clips of their golden boy Stephen Colbert’s hit show after the Viacomikaze Purge of 2007 slapped violation-of-copyright suits on everyone who even mentions the words “Colbert” or “Stewart” in any distributed video media? It doesn’t matter if neither Colbert nor Stewart appear in the video–the mere mention of their names in the description is enough for Viacom to send cease-and-desist orders! It is astounding that Viacom execs are happy to alienate current viewers and PREVENT potential viewers from accessing their content. They want to have complete control, okay fine. Then make the content easily available! I cannot believe how stupid they must be over there to not understand Marketing 101: give your customers what they want and make it easy for them to find you. Looks like Viacom needs to go back to school.
Go to iFilm for the clip; or if I’m feeling illegal I’ll upload it somewhere. Until I receive my own DMCA order.