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Colbert Nation to sponsor U.S. speed-skating team

“It’s kind of unseemly how many Canadians I’m going to have to be dealing with”

Stephen Colbert, who plays a fake pundit on The Colbert Report, is constantly on the lookout for new stunts, and his latest stunt may take his show all the way to the Olympics. On his show last night, he interviewed representatives of the U.S. speed skating team, which lost its sponsorship last month after its main sponsor declared bankruptcy. After asking his studio audience whether the “Colbert Nation” should help out, Colbert announced that he and his fans would become the new sponsors of the team, with viewers donating money at colbertnation.com (a site that Colbert has previously used to raise money for military families). Colbert can now turn his sponsorship of the speed-skating team into one of his trademark running gags, a storyline that will take the show right up to the Vancouver Olympics in 2010. But Colbert says that while his character likes the Olympics, there may be some drawbacks: “It still tragically involves a lot of Canadians. It’s kind of unseemly how many Canadians I’m going to have to be dealing with.”

Associated Press

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