Scott Thill: 3 Ways to Expose Our Rotten Corporate State!

He may no longer be running for president of the United States of South Carolina, but the Colbert Report's hyperreal satirist Stephen Colbert is still educating viewers on America's arcane political machinery, while schooling mainstream journalists on how to properly inform the citizenry. He's participated in the democratic process by recently launching the super PAC, Americans for a Better Tomorrow, Tomorrow, and campaigning for office in both 2008 and 2012, and he's amassed a well-funded war chest of still unknown size, with which he plans on creating more attack ads to monkey-wrench the electoral status-quo, and perhaps more. Some in Colbert Nation, including this writer, spend much time dreaming that Colbert announces a surprise third-party run for the White House. If only to further illuminate the two-party system at its worst, and at best, to strike a blow for satirists and other culture jammers who would seriously think about local or national politics as a worthy side project. "The Yes Men come the closest to Colbert for using existing rules and structures to expose and satirize their intent," media theorist Douglas Rushkoff told AlterNet. "Of course, Timothy Leary ran for governor of California, and Abbie Hoffman levitated the Pentagon, but Colbert is clearly on a scale that would have been hard to imagine early on."