Stephen Colbert gets a Detroit Challenge from Angry Resident
Stephen Colbert. Photo courtesy: freep.com
Comedy Central’s Stephen Colbert is being challenged by a Detroit resident, who has apparently taken offense to the talk show host’s frequent jabs at the Motor City.
Josh McManus, 34, is calling on Colbert to lead a march through Detroit, so he can see what the city is actually like.
On his show “The Colbert Report,” the talk show host often depicts Detroit as something as a wasteland, riddled with crime.
In one of his sketch comedies, where Colbert told people to run for their lives as a satellite fell to Earth, Detroit was again the butt of the joke.
“As we speak, a defunct satellite is hurtling toward the Earth where it will destroy everything in its path. Let’s just pray it lands somewhere where it can’t do any damage — like Detroit,” he said.
The one that annoys McManus the most is Colbert’s quip that walking through downtown Detroit at night is as death-defying a stunt as tightrope walking across Niagara Falls. New York State officials praised that feat for reviving tourism.
McManus, an entrepreneur who founded the business- and community-building venture D:Hive — garnered 1,000 supporters in one week on a Facebook page devoted to the cause called Colbert Does Detroit (and so can you).
The now activist, says satire is a good awareness vehicle for social change, and in issuing his challenge said, “Mr. Colbert, when are you going to put your ass where your mouth is?“
Colbert’s publicist declined an interview request.
Source: The Detroit Free Press
Dervedia Thomas is a freelance reporter and writer. A native of Trinidad and Tobago, her interest in journalism began while she was a reporter for the student newspaper at South Carolina State University, where she did her undergraduate degree in marketing. She went on to earn an MS degree in Journalism from Columbia University as a Pulitzer Moore Fellow and focused on consumer reporting, social media, immigration and digital media. You can follow Dervedia on her personal blog at www.dervediathomas.wordpress.com or on twitter @derv05