Rahm Emanuel to freshman House Democrats: "Steer Clear of Stephen Colbert"

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/?last_story=/politics/war_room/2007/03/15/colbert/

Warning to Democrats: Steer clear of Colbert

Rahm Emanuel's advice to new House Democrats: Stay away from Stephen Colbert. As Tennessee Rep. Steve Cohen tells the Hill, the chairman of Democratic Caucus is telling his new charges that the publicity to be won by appearing on "The Colbert Report" isn't worth the risk that one will end up looking like a fool in the process. "He said don't do it ... it's a risk and it's probably safer not to do it," Cohen says.

Cohen ignored the advice -- a number of the new Democrats have done the same, apparently -- only to have Colbert ask him whether he's "the first Jew from Tennessee" and whether his claim that he has "the voting record of a black woman" means that he is, in fact, a black woman.

-- Tim Grieve

but everything Rahm touches is tainted with DLC crap anyway.

Colbert will have a field day with Rahm, who deserves every bit of it.
watch for Colbert to do an interview to Rahm, but using a cut out of Rahm, interlaced with public speaches and interviews by Rahm. It will be hillarious and devastating.

That's right rahm, all we need to do is show even less of a spine than you and your DLCers have to date. Iraq is bad and getting worse, and you caused the House to cave.

It's still great PR for any guest, especially if they know how to play with Stephen. Rahm is an asshole.

.

Far as I'm concerned, if you say they shouldn't, then they should find time to go on there :P

"steer clear of" Fox or is it just Colbert and his ilk that bothers Emanuel? I think Colbert should invite Emanuel to come on his show to explain his fear of satire.

But I'd definitely give the new members of my caucus a heads up, maybe even offer a lunch tutorial on the schtick that Colbert works so they can be prepared. Because for sure a lot of people go on the show and come off looking like dummies, but mostly it's the self-important blowhards that get that.

If I were to tell new Democratic congressmen to steer clear of something, it would be anyone from Faux.

Or maybe as far as Rahm is concerned......

A man with two countries ...

C'mon Stephen someone is desperately crying out for satire!

Go Stephen!

How about just doing what's right instead? Then you wouldn't have to hide from Colbert.

Colbert is always supportive of the dems even though it looks, in the beginning of the interviews, that he is not. He has never made them look as bad as he does the republics. That is part of his brilliance.

Both democrat and republican because for the most part they can handle the back and forth with some humor. It's when they treat it too seriously or allow themselves to get nailed like Westmoreland on the 10 Commandments is when they come off as stupid. The mainstream media tried to make a big deal out of that one democratic representative from Florida who was running unopposed when Stephen suggested he say some things that would lose him the election if he had a challenger. So with Colbert's prompting he said cocaine and prostitutes were fun things to do, but it didn't gain any traction because they couldn't edit the clips enough to get rid of Colbert's prompting so anyone with a brain could see it was a joke.

Colbert even broke character on the show to smack the media down over that.

Besides, Colbert is a bit of a king-maker. When a New York republican rep refused to meet with him, he interviewed her challenger (that one singer from that one band... can't remember). He showed old album covers where one looked like the band was naked, and they sang a duet of the Star Spangled Banner, and he came off looking pretty good. He probably got a big bump out of that.

TlalocW

Rahm's predecessor as Representative of the IL 5th is now Governor Rod Blagojevich. Blago appeared on The Daily Show a couple years ago.

He had never heard of The Daily Show before. Nor, apparently, had any of his advisors. He actually thought it was a real news program (what part of Comedy Central did they not get?), and ended up making a complete fool of himself.