Labor & Employment Law

TNG/CWA Member in Colbert Report Investigative Spotlight

By Mike Hall

Emilio Gonzalez got a first-hand lesson in improvisational comedy and satire recently from a master of the art: Stephen Colbert. For a segment of the Colbert Report’s phony investigative series, “Who’s Watching the Watchdogs,” Colbert took on the Consumers Union where Gonzalez, a member of The Newspaper Guild/CWA (TNG/CWA) Local 31003, is an appliance testing project leader.

Gonzalez told The Guild Reporter’s Janelle Hartman he was a bit nervous about what would make it to the air after Colbert, who never broke character as the obnoxious, right wing, faux Fox News anchor, spent time spreading grime on dishes and engaging in a bit of plate toss in the dishwasher lab.

It wasn’t rehearsed in any way, we just went with the flow. He made it easy. He’s like a good dancer who’s able to lead his partners where he wants them to go.

Colbert’s line of questioning included this tricky dance step for Gonzalez.

Let’s say I kill a drifter with a dinner plate, and I want something that’s going to get everything off that plate, I mean no DNA. What would you recommend? What model?

Without missing a beat, Gonzalez replies, “It’s a Bosch.”

With Gonzalez doing his best straight man impersonation, Hartman writes that Colbert

learned there’s a method to soiling dishes, put an entire KFC meal in one of the machines and playfully tossed a few plates at Gonzalez. “He decided he’d rather fling them than stack them.”

Click here to read Hartman’s full feature. The episode aired June 8 and it and other back episodes are here.

Full post as published by AFL-CIO NOW BLOG on June 19, 2010 (boomark / email).