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(UPDATED 10/22) I am not without a sense of humor (anybody see the Ambiguously Gay Duo/Minneapolis police spoof on SNL Saturday?) and I am a big, big fan of the Jon Stewart-Stephen Colbert week-nightly comedy hour on Comedy Central.

So why don’t I find this recent “I’m running for president as both a Democrat/Republican in South Carolina” schtick of Colbert’s particularly funny? The rest of the media is just wetting its pants over it, as evidenced by the boatload of press the faux right-winger has generated since he hinted at his big announcement last Tuesday on his pal Stewart’s show, then made the announcement on his own show.

Nobody’s been more anxious to be in on the joke than the New York Times , which seems particularly devoted to the satirist’s nascent campaign.

Maureen Dowd appeared to start it all a week ago with the cute trick of turning over her column to him, where he hinted at the pending “news.” This is the same Pulitzer-Prize winning hardballer who turned into a blushing, giggling schoolgirl around Colbert and Stewart during an interview for Rolling Stone last year.

Colbert’s announcement was followed by a second Times story that intimated that the man was really serious, having placed calls to South Carolina political apparachiks.

Now today, following Colbert’s appearance on Meet the Press [transcript here]our adored local boy and big time columnist David Carr weighed in on l’affaire Colbert and finally, finally began to peel back the Saran Wrap on this bullshit…even if he did so with the utmost in respect and tenderness.

Big media was taken to task during the release of “Borat” for playing along with Sacha Baron Cohen’s grotesque character rather than forcing Cohen himself to the forefront of interviews. The media hung its head in shame–kind of–and the movie went on to make gazillions at the box office. Now it appears that hangover has subsided and it’s once again time to report sham as news and vice versa, and send Colbert’s book sales and ratings soaring.

Steve, my plea borrows some infamous words from your buddy Jon: Stop. Stop. Stop hurting America.

Stop helping mainstream media behave like fawning wannabe-cool assholes. Stop. Go do your show. Sell your book–you’ve got a platform most authors would kill for.

I’m seriously trying to figure out whether the stock market’s going down the tubes, if we’re about to bomb the shit out of Iran, and which actual presidential candidate is worthy of my attention. Frankly, all your dicking around is distracting formerly reputable journalists from doing their jobs. It was cute when Pat Paulson did it–everyone knew he was kidding.

I’m not even sure half your viewers know that your show is a spoof, let alone your candidacy. That’s the scariest development of all, if you continue with this bit.

LAMBERT:
I have to add this, from hyper-glossy Portfolio mag. It pretty well echoes Deborah’s take on the Colbert campaign.

LAMBERT: Oh boy. The wagon is rolling. Now there’s this from Gawker.com. And this from Huffington Post.

RYBAK: They can eat my dust. Cool, gives Jimmy and his buddy others to yell at….

While hunkered down at the cabin over the long MEA weekend watching a monsoon-like system refill northeast Minnesota rivers and lakes I had to laugh at a front-page (above-the-fold) story in the Duluth News Tribune. It seems Duluth NBC affiliate weatherman Karl Spring, formerly of KSTP and WFTC here in the Twin Cities thinks Al Gore is “a left wing nut” with “an agenda”. At least that’s what he said on a panel discussion on a Twin Ports public radio show.

Tsk, tsk. Mr. Spring’s response to the kerfuffle he set off and the News Tribune’s interest has been to tuck it in, keep his head down and bury himself in five-day forecasts. No further comments have been forthcoming, no doubt on strict orders from his superiors.

But I kind of like the fact he said what he thinks. I don’t agree with him for a second, especially if his “Al Gore is a left wing nut” rant is code — as it seems to be — for disparaging the human effects of global climate change. But at least he had the guts — OK, more likely the “imprudence” — to say what he believes about an issue of greater relevance than whether the kiddies should wear their galoshes at the bus stop in the morning.

Not that I look to TV weather people for any great depth of science, much less a political point of view. But the perhaps sad fact is that for a lot of folks the TV weather anchor is their most frequent interface with meteorological science. With that in mind, and with climate change as profound an issue to everyone as it is (with or without Al Gore, although Gore’s knee-jerk adversaries seem incapable of separating the two), it seems valid to me that those charming, glib people clicking through the weather maps offer a clue to their, uh, educated opinion on climate change.

I’ve mentioned this before, but here in the Twin Cities, WCCO’s Paul Douglas is, for all intents and purposes, alone in his unconditional view that climate change is upon us, it is serious and human activity is a key component. This is to Douglas’s eternal credit and, to my mind anyway, greatly enhances his credibility. His primary competitors … eh, not so much.

It would be fascinating to hear Douglas, KSTP’s Dave Dahl (or Chikage Windler), or KARE’s Belinda Jensen or Fox’s Ian Leonard on say, Kerri Miller’s MPR show talking seriously about the yeas and nays of climate change. Conventional wisdom says that any weather anchor at KSTP knows better than to wade into any “pro-Gore”-like thinking about climate change. Stanley Hubbard the boss of KSTP, after all, has actually produced his own documentary suggesting “global warming” is rank alarmism at best, and a hoax at worse. (And good luck finding a link to that gem on the KSTP website.)

Over at KARE, where according to the well-tuned Gannett formula, they have perfected the game of never offending anyone, the educated, professional opinions of weather department employees are blocked by well-tailored socks in their mouths.

Oh, and do I have to even mention that Mr. Spring, up in Duluth, concedes he hasn’t even seen Gore’s movie?

BTW: Relative to Mr. Spring, here is a fascinating column from the Baltimore Sun collecting reader response to the news story on Gore winning the Nobel Peace Prize.

Frankly, fear of exactly this kind of vicious, almost unhinged reaction is what prevents your average timorous weather anchor from saying anything about climate change.