Stephen Colbert’s Super PAC Ads Get “Cornographic”

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Last we heard from Colbert Super PAC, the satirist Stephen Colbert’s political action committee, it had nearly created a massive loophole in the nation’s laws regulating money in politics. (In the end, the nation’s top campaign finance cop ruled favorably for Colbert and pro-regulation groups.)

Now, with the Republican presidential candidates descending on Ames, Iowa, for that town’s straw poll this weekend, Colbert Super PAC is at it again with a pair of campaign ads that are hilarious parodies of the typical pre-election spot. With Colbert as narrator, his PAC bashes outside political groups urging Iowans to write in Texas Gov. Rick Perry for the Ames Straw Poll, then tells viewers to write in “Rick Parry”—with an “a”—instead. “We want you to vote for Rick Parry, too—but not their Rick Perry, our Rick Parry,” Colbert intones.

Oh, and there’s some “cornography” in Colbert PAC’s ad. Really. Watch for yourself:

First ad:

And the second ad:

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

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