Brilliant Not Manipulative

Tonight it seemed like the show was an hour long. There was lots of stuff!

So far, 53,000 people have responded and told Stephen what the Colbert Super PAC stands for. And because Stephen believes that Democracy stands for one man, one vote, and one dollar, Stephen had all the results compiled that took into account how much money people had donated. Some of the important things people think the Colbert Super PAC stand for are:

Health
Education
People
Government
Rights
Care
Tax

Stephen needs to incorporate all those ideas into advertisements and so he turned to Dr. Luntz, or Frank, as Stephen called him. If you choose your words correctly, you can influence how people think. For example "energy exploration" not "oil drilling". And "climate change" not "global warming". Stephen was impressed and said it is "brilliant" and not "manipulative."

Frank has a lot of practice using just the right word to get people to think or believe what he wants them to. (Or what Frank's clients want people to believe.) Here's the list of Eleven Words for 2011 that you probably will hear as we head into the 2012 elections:

1. Imagine
2. No excuses
3. I get it
4. If you remember only one thing
5. Uncompromising integrity
6. The simple truth
7. Believe in better
8. Real-time
9. You decide
10. You deserve
11. Let's get to work

Go read the article "The Eleven Words for 2011" to find out which one is all about truthiness! (I did notice that "I am Not a Witch" was NOT one of the Eleven Words.) And someone should tell Frank that "If you remember only one thing" is actually six words, not one word.

Frank told Stephen some important things to do to communicate with the people. Number one is Listen. And then for Stephen's benefit, he repeated it. Number one is Listen. He also told Stephen to focus, but not so much that he looked scary. It didn't take very long before Stephen had mastered how to pretend to look really sincere.

Another important lesson for Stephen to learn is what to do if he makes a really big mistake or does something wrong. (Never mind that Stephen does not make mistakes and that he does not ever do something that is wrong.) The advice from Frank is to say these three things:

1. I'm sorry.
2. I made a mistake.
3. Forgive me.

Dr. Frank Luntz has written books, the latest one being "Win." His parting words to Stephen were:

"You're dangerous."

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Moving on. > > > > > > >
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The guest tonight was actually four people who are just out of this world. Well they were out of this world when the were the crew of the last Space Shuttle mission. That's right, none other than Commander Chris Ferguson, Colonel Doug Hurley, Colonel Rex Walheim, and Dr. Sandra Magnus. With the Space Shuttle program ending, we will have to hitch a ride with Russia if we want to go to outer space. The cost of that is around $63 million! Stephen recommended that they check with Priceline. After all, it's Captain Kirk on those commercials.

So, wow, a really interesting show tonight and you might want to go look at it online over at Colbert Nation. You can see NASA's Greatest Moments which had very little to do with NASA and more to do with science fiction and popular culture. Plus you could find out what gift Stephen received from the astronauts, or should I say "astronuts?"