Stephen Colbert’s Jewish Conspiracy
On a segment on last week’s Colbert Report, Colbert constructed a joke in which Mahmoud Ahmadinejad endorsed Streit’s Matzah, claiming "Even I can’t deny it’s delicious!" (See above left)
When I first saw the clip, I immediately thought of the ad we created in behalf of Udi’s Granola last year, depicting the Iranian President eating a bowl of Udi’s Granola. Tagline: "Israeli born Udi Baron makes a granola so delicious, nobody can say no." (See above right)
One thing I’ve learned doing Heeb as long as I have is that it is uncanny the way that two humorists connected only by the fact that they sniff the same cultural ether, can nonetheless produce nearly identical jokes. In fact, a month before we launched our own phony Holocaust memoir competition, unbeknownst to us, The New Yorker had beat us to the punch (apparently, beating our SAT scores wasn’t enough for those know-it-alls). Oversights like these happen all the time, I figured, so I didn’t give too much thought to the Colbert joke when I first saw it.
Then I got a phone call from our friends at Udi’s Granola.
Apparently, just prior to last year’s Democratic Convention in Denver, Udi’s sent a care package to the Colbert Report after the titular host (while in character) referred to Denver deragorily as "granola-snarfing." Included in the care package were copies of Udi’s Ahmadinejad ad along with a bunch of copies of Heeb in which the ad appeared. According to Udi’s, Colbert’s assistant Emily Lazar emailed them shortly thereafter to thank them for the care package.
Normally I hate to promote conspiracy theories, but it does seem like the Colbert staff bit from the Udi’s ad campaign and not just from their bags of incredibly tasty, natural artisan granola.
comments
submit a comment03.18.09 at 11:03 pm
Colbert needs to be put On Notice !!
03.18.09 at 11:03 pm
oh. my. god. what blatant disregard for a respected publication. u suck colbert.
03.19.09 at 8:03 pm
HEEB readers, my suggestion is for all of you to put The Colbert Show on notice. I’ve set-up an entry on The Colbert Show forum where you can put Colbert and his writers on notice:
http://forum.colbertnation.com/tcr/board/message?board.id=TCR&thread.id=5301
Be Udiful,
Eric aka The Granola Tycoon
03.19.09 at 10:03 pm
I work so hard every day to satisfy Ahmadinejad’s granola standard and now I have to learn how to bake Matzos? What’s up guys, Passover is just around the corner. Please make them take it all back!
http://forum.colbertnation.com/tcr/board/message?board.id=TCR&thread.id=5301
Yosi, The Granola Operator
03.20.09 at 2:03 am
Hysterical.
03.20.09 at 11:03 am
i guess the economy is so bad, even colbert is stealing. very uncool.
03.20.09 at 12:03 pm
Colbert,
You owe these hard-working Americans an ON-AIR apology for smearing their fine family names & American-made product with the butt-ugly face of a ruthless, anti-Semitic, anti-American, terrorist scumbag.
I thought (even) you were above this kind of gutter humor.
You’re ON NOTICE my friend!
03.20.09 at 1:03 pm
Looks like Colbert is running out of fresh ideas and turning to his favorite breakfast cereal for inspiration/material…?
03.20.09 at 3:03 pm
TRUTHINESS, Colbert!!
03.21.09 at 1:03 am
I’ve never been able to figure out if Stephen Colbert was serious or delirious. Now I know. His ripoff of Udi’s granola proves his ideas aren’t original. He’s nothing more than joke, and not an original one at that! He steals more material than Milton Berle ever did!
03.24.09 at 10:03 am
I don’t understand why they went to the trouble to Photoshop him on a Streit’s box. Why couldn’t they just use the Udi’s ad—you know, a campaign that actually exists? It doesn’t take away from the fact that the joke is funny, despite who came up with it originally.
Or am I retarded here? Let me know. I’ll be back in a bit. Off to the secret bathroom …