Irony Impaired

I'm a huge fan of the Colbert Report, and when he announced he was running in the presidential primary in South Carolina (and tried to figure out how to get Doritos to fund his campaign), I was tickled pink.

But it seems that people are taking this seriously, as far as it goes.

Although he's only planning to run in the primaries in his native state of South Carolina, a new Rasmussen poll finds that Stephen Colbert might have some pull as a third-party candidate.

In a three-way race with Hillary Clinton and Rudy Giuliani, Hillary has 45%, Rudy 35% — and Colbert breaks double digits to get 13%. With Fred Thompson as the Republican nominee, it's Clinton 46%, Thompson 34%, and Colbert 12%.

Colbert seems to draw most of his support from the GOP column, indicating a real unhappiness among Republican voters — either that, or conservatives who have watched his show really don't get the joke

Don't get the joke, indeed. I have -- once -- personally met someone who didn't quite get that Colbert's show is a satiric sendup of a conservative talk show. It was boggling.