Stewart/Colbert Punchline News: The Olympics on Full Boil

Olympic leaps and political pratfalls faced the judges of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report.

Grecian Formula

The London Olympics, the most overexposed story of the past week, were further exposed by Jon Stewart at TDS and Stephen Colbert of TCR. But while most television coverage focused on the triumphs, black belt satirists Colbert and Stewart were drawn to all the things that went wrong, from envious allegations of doping by a victorious Chinese swimmer (Colbert: "How did she even finish the race? She's 16 -- halfway through, you KNOW she checked her Facebook page!") to "spoiler alerts" on news programs that revealed the winners of events yet to be aired (Stewart: "If you don't want to know the results, please look down at your treadmill or board your plane -- This is CNN!").

Both shows began the week contrasting the totalitarian perfection of the Beijing opening ceremonies of 2008 with London's considerably more eccentric and endearing stadium-sized history lesson. Stewart laced into an inexcusably provincial NBC for not showing a tribute to victims of a terrorist attack that struck London one day after the city was named host of the 2012 Olympics...

...while counterfeit conservative Colbert released the Kraken of his outrage on director Danny Boyle's love letter to Britain's joyously socialist National Health Service.