NP - How Many Stephen Colberts Are There?

[David Morris]

On Thu, Jan 5, 2012 at 1:49 PM, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:

 http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/08/magazine/stephen-colbert.html?_r=1

In October, Colbert offered the Republican Party in South Carolina
$400,000 to defray the cost of the presidential primary there in
January in return for naming rights — he wanted the ballots, the
lanyards, the press credentials to say “The Stephen Colbert Super PAC
South Carolina Primary” — and for a nonbinding referendum question
that asked the voters to decide whether “corporations are people” or
“only people are people.” [...]

“I figured that if they’d sell me the naming rights, they’d probably
be willing to sell me a referendum,” Colbert told me. “I always assume
that anything that could be for sale probably is.”

Amazingly, the South Carolina Republicans were on the point of
agreeing to Colbert’s proposal, and ballots were printed that included
the referendum question, when the state Supreme Court ruled that the
counties, not the party, had to pay for the primary and that the
ballot could not include referendum questions.