Colbert: Satire is parody with a point

During an appearance on Meet the Press, comedian Stephen Colbert explained the philosophy behind The Colbert Report.

"I'm a satirist," he told David Gregory. "All satirists make points. Satire is parody with a point. So if I was doing satire and didn't have a point of view, then that would be truly schizophrenic. That would be like trying to establish patterns that aren't really there. I always have a point of view."

"I'm interested in the news, so people often think that I'm an ideologue or that I have a political intent," Colbert continued. "But I comment on things that are in the news. I do not imagine that I am a newsman. I really admire newsmen. I really enjoy good news. And I'm not a politician. But I like playing political games to see what really happens."

Colbert explained that he tried to embody absurd political memes, while Jon Stewart deconstructed the news.

"I falsely reconstruct the news," he said. "If I do it, and something in the news is doing it, that real thing is probably bull."

Forming his own Super PAC, Colbert said, allowed him to learn about the "political-industrial complex" that feeds off of campaign money. He denied that his satire allowed him to tell "truer truths." Comedy, he said, just made things more palatable.

"We did almost an entire year on Super PACs. Every week we did a story, sometimes twice a week we did a story on Super PACs. Those are jokes about campaign finance reform, but we were so interested in it that we got our audience interested in it."

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