During Monday night’s “Late Show,” host Stephen Colbert recounted his own “moment of human contact” with the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia at the 2006 White House Correspondents Dinner.
Colbert’s speech, which he performed as his conservative Republican character, was a cheeky defense of then-President George W. Bush’s presidency and the invasion of Iraq. It wasn’t well received.
In fact, Colbert said on Monday’s episode, no one in the front row or the dais spoke to him after—except Scalia.
“I thought, ‘Don’t me make you love you, old man,’ ” Colbert said. “So, I will forever be grateful for that moment of human contact he gave me. Justice Scalia, I salute you.”
Watch the video, from CBS, below:
Oh man, only Colbert can salute you and flip you off at the same time. Funny guy
It wasn’t well received?!
I frickin’ loved it!
Only Colbert!
“It wasn’t well received by the conservatives in the audience, but was roundly applauded and was viewed on YouTube millions of times by liberals in America.” There, fixed it for you.
Scalia was the juridical bogeyman of my adult life, but from most accounts I’ve read he was delightful one-on-one. As a female Times columnist (I can’t remember if it was Anna Quindlen, or Gail Collins, or MoDo) observed years ago, “Everybody loves Nino.”