"I like talking about people who don’t have any power..."

... Stephen Colbert, breaking character.










Migrant workers' truck, 1940
Photographer: Jack Delano
Library of Congress, FSA/OWI Archive

Full Colbert quote:

I like talking about people who don't have any power, and it seems like one of the least powerful people in the United States are migrant workers who come in and do our work, but don’t have any rights as a result. And yet, we still ask them to come here, and at the same time, ask them to leave. And that's an an interesting contradiction to me, and um... You know, "whatsoever you did for the least of my brothers," and these seemed like the least of my brothers, right now. A lot of people are "least brothers" right now, with the economy so hard, and I don't want to take anyone's hardship away from them or diminish it or anything like that. But migrant workers suffer, and have no rights.

Part of the Q & A following Colbert's testimony before Congress; taken from here.

The testimony itself had some digressions into Colbertian schtick. But his remarks on the actual issue were a well-deserved poke at Congress.

A performance panned by a media appalled at talk of those without power. And most of all, appalled by Colbert's speaking to Congress in that tone.

Just as they've been appalled in the past, when Colbert spoke truth to the even more powerful...