EPISODE NUMBER: 10144 (August 27, 2014)
GUESTS: Michael Sheen
SEGMENTS: Intro - 8/27/14 | Outrage in Ferguson | Outrage in Ferguson - A National Conversation on Race | Scrabble’s Updated Dictionary | Michael Sheen | Sign Off - Welcome Baby Eva!
SUIT REPORT: Dark Suit | White Shirt | Maroon/Light Blue Stripped Tie
VIDEOS: Wednesday, August 27, 2014

Intro - 8/27/14

Tonight, does racism still exist in America or is that just an ugly rumor spread by those lying Norwegians? Then, change has come to a classic board game, “Candyland” now comes with an insulin pump. And my guest Michael Sheen plays a 1960s researcher of human sexuality, yet another job made obsolete by the internet. A new study says breakfast is no longer the most important meal of the day. It has fallen to 8th place.

Outrage in Ferguson

• I was on break the last two weeks, and finally got to some long delayed projects in my woodworking shop. I have been trying to make some really nice book ends, but I can never quite get them to match. So instead, I won two Emmy’s.

• The point is, I’m back. Which is good. Because without me around for the past two weeks the world went and threw a big old tragedy party. It was like “Don’t Tell Mom the Baby-Sitter’s Dead”, except everyone is dead.

• Violence escalated in the Middle East, the eastern Middle East, and most unstable of all, the middle west [Missouri].

CNN: “18-year-old Michael Brown was shot multiple times by a police officer in broad daylight.”

CBS: “Witnesses say Brown had his hands up and was surrendering when he was shot multiple times.”

CNN: “Brown’s death has sparked a week of protests, looting, a shooting and sometimes violent responses from police.”

• Sadly Ferguson, Missouri is now best known for racial conflict, police brutality and violence in the streets. And not as they claim proudly on the official city website, for “Food Truck Mondays.”

• But we don’t know if this was racist or even if racism still exists. I for one don’t see race. Not even my own. People tell me I’m white and I believe them because I keep asking waiters about gluten.

• What we do know is the shooting of an unarmed young black man is a story we’ve heard far too many times before. And the only way to ensure we never hear it again, is for the press to stop reporting it.

• Because now this is the food truck. And it serves fresh, high velocity rubber burritos. And the hot pepper sauce is not optional.

Brent Bozell (Fox News): “I think the coverage has been a travesty. Look at it first from the standpoint of quantity. How did this incident justify hundreds if not thousands of nonstop hours of coverage when there is so much going on in the world.”

Fox News Spin Cycle: “There are a lot of bad things that I think have come from journalists being there and from all the 24/7 media speculation. And I think one is that it’s probably made things more volatile.”

Howard Kurtz (Fox News #Media Buzz): “I wrote a column for Fox this week saying just theoretically floating the idea, what if all the journalists in this town packed up the equipment and left. Would that have had an impact on the violence. A lot of people responded and said yes.”

• Yes, I respond. It’s true. The presence of a camera clearly makes people behave recklessly. Because I don’t believe for a minute that Howie Kurtz would have floated the idea that journalists are to blame for the Ferguson violence if a camera wasn’t pointed at him. For his own safety get this man off of television.

• Brown supporters are being backed by an organisation with no respect for the law. The White House.

Fox News: President Obama is sending three White House officials to attend Brown’s funeral in st. Louis, Missouri.

Marc Thiessen (Fox News): “They sent three White House officials to the funeral of Michael Bown. When Margaret Thatcher died last year they sent nobody. In what universe does Margaret Thatcher, one of the greatest British prime ministers in history merit nobody, and Michael Brown merits three White House officials?

• The president says a delegation to Ferguson, yet he sent not one Justice Department official to investigate the murder of Margaret Thatcher. At the very least he could have sent Angela Landsbury.

Outrage in Ferguson - A National Conversation on Race

• With emotions boiling on both sides people are beginning To call for the unthinkable. A rational discussion.

“We do have an opportunity here to talk about incidents of race. [...] We still need to have a discussion on race in America. [...] It is important we have open dialogue about the realities of issues like this. [...] I think we should continue this conversation long after the Michael Brown case is done. [...] This is again another time to have an open discussion about race in society.”

• Well, if there has to be a frank and honest national discussion about race in America, I guess I’m already talking. I’ll go first.

• Folks, our nation has a long shameful legacy of systemic oppression of African-Americans. And I’ll grant you thinks aren’t completely equal. White people have better economic and educational opportunities, and are regarded without suspicion by law enforcement.

• But on the other hand, black people get to use the n-word. Can’t put a price on that. If you could, Cliven Bundy and his buddies might have paid it.

• By the way black people, why can’t you be more like these guys? They were armed and they dared the cops to shoot them and nothing happened. Just figure out whatever was different about them and you’ll be fine.

• I’m just one perspective when it comes to the national conversation on race. This is a dialogue. So now I cede the floor to one of the black late night hosts to respond - In January of 2015 [Larry Wilmore].

Scrabble’s Updated Dictionary

• I recently learned something disturbing about one of our classic games.

CBS: “For its first time innearly a decade 5,000 new words will appear in the new edition of Scrabble’s official dictionary, including words like ‘hashtag’, ‘selfie’, ‘buzzkill’ and ‘bromance’.”

• That’s right, Hasbro has added new Scrabble words, and I’m sorry, but this ends our hasbro-mance because this assault on our traditional Scrabble vocabulary makes me mad, no, change that to vexed.

• This is nothing but a cheap attempt by the lexi-conartists over at Hasbro to pander to the younglings out there.

Robin Pollock Daniel (Champion of the Scrabble Association): “It makes the game more accessible to younger people. Which we’re always looking for, all the technology words make it more attractive to them.”

• That’s right, folks. The new words capture the way young people speak, at least the ones who are chillaxing at the funplex while geocaching someschmutz.

• And to appeal to the valued Eskimo youth demo they have also added ‘qajaq’ which is the Inuit spelling for ‘kayak’.

• We cannot allow Inuit words in Scrabble. Now any random jumble of tiles is likely to be one of their 400 words for snow.

• Worst of all, “Truthiness”, a word that I created, that became Merriam Webster’s 2006 “Word of the Year”, is not in the revised Scrabble dictionary.

• But ask yourself, doesn’t it feel like it is? And when you play, doesn’t it feel like it has a silent ‘q’ and ‘z’? ["Qtruthinessz"]

• Well, just because this new dictionary is filled with schmutz, doesn’t mean I can’t still beat any young person at scrabble. Brandon, get on out here.

Stephen: Brandon and I, earlier before the show we were playing a game righ there. Fun game, isn’t it, Brandon?
Brandon: Sure. It’s like “Words with Friends”.
Stephen: We are not friends.

Stephen: Okay, I’ll go first. Let’s try this. L-o-g, ‘log’, beat that!
Brandon: Hmmmm. V-g-i-n-g.
Stephen: What is ‘vlogging’, that is a made up word.
Brandon: It’s when you create a blog with video material. It’s in the new dictionary.
Stephen: Okay, fine, fine, then I’m going to spell B-u-r-g-l-k-a-f.
Brandon: Burglkaf’s not a word.
Stephen: Oh really,because you just used it in a sentence, smart guy.
Brandon: Here. B-u-r-g-l-k-a-f-s. Plural. Triple word score!

Interview - Michael Sheen

Stephen: You’re a Welshman, correct.
Michael: I am first and foremost a Welshman.
Stephen: If any moment you want to break into a coal mining ditty or sing “Men of Harlech”, I am here for you. *both sing* Thank you very much. I’ve always wanted to sing that with a Welshman.

Michael: A lot of people say so much has changed now. We’ve come such a long way [in relation to sex]. When I was in drama school.
Stephen: Oh my God.
Michael: We used to be affiliated with a medical school down the road and sometimes they would ask us to come and improvise as people with some sort of sexual dysfunction in their relationship for the doctors to learn from. So we would get all these real cases, and then we would have to pretend we were them and they [the doctors] would have to work out the problem. And one time the problem was that the couple, they couldn’t understand why they weren’t getting pregnant, and it turned out the couple were having sex in each other’s armpits.
Stephen: Was it good? I can understand how he has sex in her armpit. It’s hard for me to understand how she has sex in his armpit.
Michael: How much you have to learn, Stephen.

Stephen: As an actor doing this, what kind of research did you do. Did you have to do a ride-along? Did you have to do any sex research. Do you enjoy the sex?
Michael: I did the sex once, and I have a beautiful daughter Lily as a result. *audience claps* Are you clapping for my daughter or the sex I had?

Stephen: Here’s my problem. [...] I think sex is fine, I’m a fan, okay. But do we have to learn about it? Doesn’t that take some of the mystery out of it?
Michael: This is just the attitude that William Masters had to deal with in the ’50s.
Stephen: And because he dealt with that, now we know everything and nothing is really exciting any more. Back then the Sears catalog was a turn-on. Now there’s nothing on the internet that doesn’t make me yawn.
Michael: That was a form of sex, yawning. The are special pornographic websites for people that get turned on by yawning.

Sign Off - Welcome Baby Eva!

• Before we go I just want to wish a big warm welcome to the newest member of the Colbert Nation, Eva Jean Marco, brand-new daughter of Colbert Report graphics designer Bill Marco. Bill is one of the photo shop wizards who takes reality and digitally enhances it until it is to my liking. [...] So congratulations to Bill, his wife Katie and Eva. I could not be happier if i were riding on a flying tiger with Kate Upton and Donald Trump.