Colbert solicits his own honors

By: By Scott Collins | LOS ANGELES TIMES
Published: October 14, 2009

Consider, if you will, the humble diving beetle. It's not a particularly glamorous creature, with its six legs and hard exoskeleton. A living being further removed from the distractions of show business could not be found, or so you might think until you run across the name of one recently discovered species: Agaporomorphus colberti.

Yes, Stephen Colbert, the endlessly mocking and jibing host of Comedy Central's The Colbert Report, has a water beetle named after him.

And that's just the start of it. Colbert -- French pronunciation, please, with a silent "t" -- has had his name slapped across all manner of random objects that have no obvious connection to him or his popular nightly show. Earlier this year, math geeks named the five remaining numbers of the Sierpinski Problem -- apparently an issue of great import to math geeks -- in his honor. A mascot for the Saginaw (Mich.) Spirit hockey team is called Steagle Colbeagle the Eagle.

Earlier this year, Colbert won a naming contest for a NASA space module, even though the agency later backtracked and named a treadmill on the International Space Station after him instead. Last year, Colbert petitioned successfully to have his portrait hung in Washington's National Portrait Gallery (near the bathrooms, but still). At the corporate level, Ben & Jerry saluted Colbert with a new ice cream flavor. Virgin America, not wishing to be left stranded at the gate, named an A320 jet "Air Colbert."

What does a celebrity have to do to get stuff named after himself these days? Just ask, it seems.

When Colbert speaks, his fans respond. And not in the typical watch-this, buy-that fashion. His followers go so much further. Members of the "Colbert Nation" are actually called to action, as if canvassing for a political campaign. They write letters. They vote. They do whatever their smarmy hero tells them to do, no matter how firmly his tongue is planted inside his cheek.

Colbert has even built an entire segment around his fatuous character's ironically self-obsessed quest for tribute: "Who's Not Honoring Me Now?"