Colbert's Green-Screen Challenge
Over the course of the 2008 Presidential election, a boring speech by John McCain became so common that late-night comedians rarely found the energy to make fun of it anymore. But when McCain chose to make his June 3rd speech in front of a featureless green background, TV pseudopundit Stephen Colbert saw comedy gold. "I don't want to bog you down with technical jargon, but basically Jesus made green a magical color," Colbert explained. "By speaking in front of a green screen, John McCain issues a bold challenge to Americans to make him seem interesting." Thus began Colbert's "Make McCain Exciting Challenge," encouraging viewers of The Colbert Report to showcase their technical skills and imaginations by cut-and-pasting McCain's image into a number of equally unlikely and hilarious scenarios. In a series of clips submitted by viewers and aired on The Colbert Report, McCain appears in a Batman fight sequence, talks policy with his head in a jar, shakes his hips a la Elvis, enjoys a cameo in the film Transformers and narrowly escapes death on a wacky Japanese game show. One video even had McCain consoling recently laid-off Americans while surfboarding. (Color Colbert non-plussed by that particular example: "I told you to make McCain exciting, not make surfing boring," he told the clip's creator.)