The Colbert Report

By: Daniel Schorn

Watch the Segment »

Web Extras

Police and firefighters investigate the scene where four people were found dead at a house in Salem, Ore., on Tuesday, May 22, 2012. Salem police say five people have died in what they believe was a murder-suicide. The police told the Salem Statesman Journal the bodies of a woman and three children were found in a house that burned Tuesday morning in northeast Salem. They say the womanâs husband was been found dead in a vehicle near Cottage Grove. None of the victims was immediately identified. (AP Photo/Statesman Journal, Timothy J. Gonzalez) (TIMOTHY J. GONZALEZ)

When 60 Minutes visited, Colbert was reviewing a piece to air that night — an interview with the congressional delegate from the Virgin Islands, Donna Christiansen.

"Isn't it time to drop the whole virgin act?" Colbert asked Christiansen in his interview.

"What would else would we call ourselves?" she asked.

"Trollop Island? … The Been Around The Block Islands? ...The Not Until The Third Date Islands?" Colbert joked.

"Can we just leave it at Virgin Islands?" she replied.

The interview with Christiansen is one of a 435-part series, with every member of the House of Representatives. Colbert discovered that a camera, any camera, even his camera, is irresistible to men and women seeking re-election every two years. His questions are totally off the wall, as John Mica of Florida discovered.

"Do you have to take your toupee off when you go through security?" Colbert asked the congressman.

Stephanie Tubbs-Jones of Ohio got a taste of Colbert's brand of humor, when Colbert asked her, "Twenty-two astronauts were born in Ohio. What is it about your state that makes people want to flee the earth?"

Colbert has been going for laughs since he was a child, growing up near Charleston, S.C., in a large very family. He is the youngest of 11 kids.

Despite coming from Charleston, Colbert does not have a trace of a southern accent.

"At a very young age, I decided I was not gonna have a southern accent. Because people, when I was a kid watching TV, if you wanted to use a shorthand that someone was stupid, you gave the character a southern accent. And that's not true. Southern people are not stupid. But I didn't wanna seem stupid. I wanted to seem smart. And so I thought, 'Well, you can't tell where newsmen are from,'" Colbert explains.