Hello... Hello... How Does This Thing Make Toast?

I'm going to start right out by saying last night's audience was a rowdy crowd. And that's not necessarily a bad thing. They just were so thrilled to be there that they couldn't contain their enthusiasm. So, they get a bonus "The Colbert Bump" for their contribution to making last night's show a success.

We saw in the previous show that Stephen, a devout Catholic, was nevertheless willing to put religion under the microscope. Last night, as a devout Conservative, he did the same thing by talking about the GOP and their need to do an autopsy on the GOP Party after the dismal success in the most recent election.

 Recently, some members of the GOP held a retreat in Williamsburg, Virginia to think about themselves and to learn how to be happy. Stephen even demonstrated this new philosophy by smiling into the camera and saying, "If it's a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that down."

We also learned from Stephen that you can make an anagram from Reince Priebus. I even saw it today under a photo of Reince Priebus on one of the news shows today on TV. I forget which one. Only thing is, they didn't have the same anagram as Stephen showed us. They only had Rice-a-Roni. No matter. I don't think Stephen actually had the correct anagram anyway.

Also on tap for the Republicans is to turn on Karl Rove. That's right. Rove is bad-mouthing the Tea Party and so the Republicans are bad-mouthing Karl Rove. Stephen called him the manatee with the planatee. It is almost becoming a Civil War within the Republican Party. Surely they are not forgetting what Ronald Reagan said was the 11th Commandment. "Thou shalt not speak ill of any fellow Republican."

This is all still developing, but Stephen simply reminded the GOP that they need to keep smiling.

You may have heard that Steven Seagal is training volunteers to patrol schools in Arizona. He has put hundreds of thousands, if not millions of hours into weapons training. (Stephen Colbert pointed out that millions of hours is in the 115 year range!) The interesting thing about the volunteers is that some of them have experience with police. Because they have arrests for drug possession, domestic violence, sex crimes against children, disorderly conduct, impersonating an officer, and on and on. Stephen's solution is to have one volunteer posse guard the other volunteer posse.

Roger Hodge was the guest on the show last night. He is the editor of the Oxford American.  That is like the New Yorker of the South. The two men talked a lot about southern traditions. Stephen admitted that there's beautiful literature from the South, which he has never read. I'm sure he was joking about that. I hope he was joking about that.

The interview ended with a "Happy Mardi Gras" greeting to Stephen at which point Stephen responded appropriately with a request to Roger Hodge.