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I write topical humor for radio DJs and have done it every day for 15 years. In my professional opinion, there are some pretty good lines (or at least ideas for lines) scattered here and there in this. But the problem is with the attitude, which is relentlessly one-sided and grounded in an arrogant belief that the opinions of the writer are fact and anyone who might disagree is stupid and misinformed. That's deadly for comedy because pomposity is what comedy skewers, not what it celebrates. It's particularly deadly when it is done in an inappropirate venue, such as right in front of the President of the United States, who obviously can't respond.

Colbert is a character or concept comedian (something that wears out fast with me, like Bobcat Goldthwait's creepy whining). His concept is that he's a big lib playing a lib's cliche idea of an arrogant, boneheaded conservative blowhard. It's a one-note idea based on a false stereotype. Therefore, what might appear to be self-deprecating humor that makes the comic look ridiculous is actually an attack on people he doesn't like, so it comes across as nasty rather than funny. That's why liberals like it so much: it reinforces their own prejudices and allows them to smugly belittle everyone who might disagree with them. But it's bad humor. Good topical humor is not blindly partisan: it skewers hypocrisy wherever it is found. Otherwise, it's just mean-spirited propaganda disguised as humor (see the smug sarcasm of Al Franken, which has the sentence structure of jokes, but seldom displays any wit or even linguistic creativity).