The Colbert Bump.
Some know its influence, some crave its generosity. But each has seen its power.
For instance, US Speedskating craved the Bump. A week before the start of its 2009 World Cup season, Paul Brabants, director of the team, received a call from a producer with The Colbert Report, the satirical Comedy Central news show hosted by the mock-egomaniac Stephen Colbert.
Word had reached Colbert of the team's troubles, which, to Brabants, seemed insurmountable: The World Cup was starting, the Winter Olympics were just around the corner and the team was facing a massive financial shortfall.
Dutch bank DSB had gone under, and with it the $US300,000 ($NZ360,224) sponsorship the bank had pledged to the team. So The Colbert Report offered to step in, raise the necessary money - and become the official sponsor of US Speedskating.
"To be honest, I didn't think about it that long," Brabants said. "I don't want to say there were no reservations. It is a comedy show; we didn't know how this would be perceived. But right out of the blue, Colbert proposed rallying Colbert Nation to our cause - and that is not a gift you turn down."
Demographically speaking, it's a dream audience: The Colbert Report has a nightly viewership of 1.5 million in the United States, and with The Daily Show, its companion fake newscast, beats both Leno and Letterman in the coveted 18-to-34-year-old viewing segment.
Then there's its knack for altruism: Our conservative estimate of how much The Colbert Report has raised for various charities since 2005, largely through modest viewer donations, is $US3.5 million.
Simply defined, though, the Colbert Bump is a megaphone of influence, shouted by a comedian with a keen ethical compass who plays a blowhard with no ethical compass and hopes the audience gets the difference.
It began as a kind of joke - in the sense that Colbert, the host, would bluster on about the "bump" his show gave anyone or anything appearing on it. However, the Bump has become anything but a joke - in the sense that the political, philanthropic and social ramifications of Colbert and his sway over his audience have grown remarkable, touching on a dizzying range of subjects both silly and serious.
Earlier in the year, Colbert and Jimmy Gallon promised to perform Lack's infamous hit, Friday, if the Colbert Nation raised at least $US26,000 for the charity Donors Choose. Done. In June, Colbert asked the FEC if he could create an organisation to solicit funds for campaign advertising.
"All I'm trying to do is affect the 2012 election," he told Trevor Potter, a former FEC chairman, during an episode of the show. "It's not like I'm trying to install tunes." Done.
When Colbert broke his wrist in 2007 and began selling $US5 rubber "Wrist strong" bracelets (in recognition of "wrist violence"), proceeds went to the Yellow Ribbon Fund, which assists injured service members. The show raised $US171,000 in a few months - and through bay auctions of props from the set and additional sources (including proceeds from "Americana Dream", the Colbert-branded flavour of Ben & Jerry's ice-cream) since has brought the total to $US350,000 for the organisation.
As Mark Robbins, the director of Yellow Ribbon, said: "People don't realise [Colbert] is like a conduit to money for charities. He's raised our visibility beyond anything we had expected. Now I get random cheques from people - 'Here's $10 in honour of Stephen's birthday'."
Indeed, a few days after Colbert asked viewers to give to US Speedskating, the show raised $US202,000 through its website; soon after, its logo was stitched on to the team's uniforms. By January, it had raised $US300,000.
The Bump, however, is not solely warm and fuzzy. In fact, though it has been a good time for the Bump, the Bump is not necessarily something you want. A few weeks ago, after Colbert mocked "Terry the Tyrannosaurus", the hard hat-wearing, pro-drilling dinosaur mascot of Canada-based natural gas provider Talisman Energy, the character disappeared from the company's website.
On the political side, there are the many implications of the Colbert Super PAC, the organisation that the FEC approved and Colbert plans to use to promote or oppose political candidates during the 2012 presidential election. Its specific implications are debatable, though that's probably Colbert intention.
Regardless of what his PAC means, however, the line between Colbert the satirist and Colbert the advocate has grown increasingly thin, said Sophia McClellan, a professor of comparative literature at Penn State who has written a book about Colbert influence, America According To Colbert.
"Someone with a massive fan base who can get them to do whatever they want is not what anyone wants to see in a healthy democracy. But I think he has a knack for choosing causes that are meaningful and causes that are silly, and, more importantly, he has the faith in the audience to understand the difference - and the larger lesson.
"I think his playing a right-wing blowhard character, balancing it with a reality - that's not new," she added. "But Colbert is offering us a new definition of what it means to be a public intellectual, which is about amusing ourselves to activism."
Political activist and comedian Dick Gregory couldn't agree more: "He works for this generation because he knows its cadences, its lingo. If I wanted young people to read the Bible, I'd want a rap group to deliver it - then kids would know it better than preachers. Colbert gets this, but I wonder if he knows how powerful he is, that [he and Jon Stewart] are in position to determine policy! I think I first realised that when they did that rally."
He was referring to the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear, which drew an estimated 250,000 to the Mall in Washington last October. It was activism without a cause. Or, as a sign there read: "Vague But Awesome".
At least twice recently Colbert did something fairly remarkable for Colbert: He publicly broke with his character. Both instances gave a glimpse, if fleeting, of the 47-year-old himself, who lived in Chicago for years as an actor at The Second City. Outside the FEC hearing in Washington, after the commission gave its decision, he told the crowd: "Some have cynically asked if this is some kind of a joke. But I don't think that participating in democracy is a joke. I don't think that wanting to know what the rules are is a joke."
And as Colbert said at Northwestern University, Illinois, where he last month delivered the commencement speech: "In my experience, you will truly serve only what you love, because, as the Prophet says, service is love made visible ... If you love money, you will serve only money. And if you love only yourself, you will serve only yourself, and you will have only yourself."
It's easy to read into Colbert, because he offers so little of himself.
Indeed, for this story, he would only answer a few questions via email, and the replies were blunt and largely unrevealing. How does he select the charity groups he works with?
Generally, if "the cause appeals" to him.
Because of the success of the Colbert Nation, is he frequently solicited by political organisations and charity groups - and if so, how is this handled?
He is never solicited by political organisations and his significant charity work tends to appear on the show, he said.
Why use The Colbert Report as a springboard for advocacy?
"Why not?" Said Jonathan Alter, a former Newsweek columnist who is good friends with Colbert (and whose wife is a Colbert Report producer): "I think Stephen doesn't really believe in ever being explicit about his intentions ...
He kind of had to be explicit at the end of his Congressional testimony in support of farm workers [conducted in character, before a House subcommittee on immigration]. That didn't go the way he wanted. He was ironic and the committee was not laughing. He's left of centre and admits this, but he's not in it to advance an ideology. He's a fake newsman, but he shows how things work and the way things don't work, and I think he's turned into a real journalist.
"Also, to say he doesn't resemble his character in real life is a gross understatement. Satire always comes out of idealism, and, to be a great satirist, you need to be an idealist. One does not work without the other."
Colbert background is familiar, often repeated: He's from South Carolina, the youngest of 11 children and the son of James W. Colbert, who was the first vice-president of academic affairs for the Medical University of South Carolina and killed in a plane crash in 1974 (along with two of Stephen's brothers).
Indeed, much of his charity work is administered from South Carolina.
The Coastal Community Foundation of South Carolina, which was run by his sister-in-law Madeleine McGee for a decade, distributes proceeds from the Stephen Colbert Americana Dream Fund to various charities.
In addition, Colbert is on the board of Donors Choose, which helps needy classrooms and has landed a Colbert Bump of more than $US1.2 million since Colbert joined the board in 2007.
It's also a key example of why Colbert is so popular among activists.
"He's kind of helped define our brand," said Charles Best, the founder of Donors Choose. "He's probably one of the big reasons why people might look to our charity as being forward-thinking."
Colbert also is deeply Catholic - he even teaches a Sunday school class.
Fr James Martin, a friend and the culture editor of American magazine, a weekly Catholic magazine, said these were not small points.
"I think, in a way, Stephen is participating in what the Vatican calls the new evangelist, which [is] trying new ways of spreading the Gospel. Satire can be a form of evangelist. Jesus used parables as satire."
I asked Colbert if he sees his works as a kind of ministry, as a spreading of Christian ideals.
He wrote that he "doesn't believe charity is an exclusively Christian idea".
I asked Martin if there was anything trendy about doing charity work because of Colbert, if the message got lost in the joke.
"The question reminds me of Aristotle, who said we become virtuous by acting virtuously," he said.
"If you help people only because you think you should, and others do, that's not so bad.
"I doubt that's what Stephen intends, of course. I think a lot of his message is simple - it's that old thing about 'comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable'."
• The Colbert Report screens on Mondays at 10pm on Comedy Central.
