British Olympic health salute rankles Colbert

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Stephen Colbert dipped into the sports world on The Colbert Report Monday to review the London Olympics opening ceremony, even though he admits he doesn’t understand them.

“For some reason, they open the Games with a halftime show,” he said. “I think it’s metric, I don’t know.”

While he was impressed with what he called a tribute to landscaping – “I did not know the British had so many Mexicans,” he said – Colbert did take issue with one sequence in Danny Boyle’s show: a salute to Britain’s National Health Service, which he said offered a peek into America’s future after the Affordable Health Care act takes effect.

“Instead of taking you to a hospital, they throw you on a rolling disco bed and cram you a thousand at a time into a stadium while spectators when your colonoscopy gets thrown up on the ‘Kiss-Cam,’” he said.

But he was heartened by the fact that after Monday’s events, the U.S. and China were tied in the total medal count, even if China held a 9-5 edge in the gold medal tally.

“Naturally, the U.S. trails in gold [medals], because every time we win one, we hand it over on the podium to pay off our national debts,” Colbert said.

Watch Colbert’s review