SALON

Saturday, Dec 8, 2012 2:01 PM UTC

Nikki Haley: I won’t appoint Stephen Colbert to Senate

South Carolina's governor appears to end the speculation over Jim DeMint's seat. Blame it on milk (really)

By

Topics: Stephen Colbert, Nikki Haley, Jim DeMint,

Nikki Haley: I won't appoint Stephen Colbert to SenateStephen Colbert (Credit: Yuri Gripas / Reuters)

South Carolina’s governor appears to have closed the door on appointing Stephen Colbert to the U.S. Senate, all because the comedian didn’t know the state drink was milk.

During “The Colbert Report” on Thursday, Colbert urged his fans to send Gov. Nikki Haley messages on Twitter with the hashtag “SenatorColbert” telling her why he would make a great senator from his home state. Haley is appointing a senator after Jim DeMint announced he is resigning at the end of the year.

Colbert, who plays a mock conservative pundit on his Comedy Central show, also gave Haley four reasons he was the perfect choice.

“You want somebody young, somebody conservative, somebody from South Carolina, maybe somebody who had a super PAC,” Colbert said, ticking off the choices by putting down a finger until the final one was left pointing at himself.

“Wait a second,” Colbert said, as his crowd cheered.

Thousands of messages poured into the governor’s official Twitter account. She responded on her favorite social media site, Facebook, writing on her page that she appreciated Colbert’s interest and all the tweets.

“But you forget one thing, my friend. You didn’t know our state drink. Big, big mistake,” Haley wrote, adding a link to a video of her April appearance on Colbert’s show where the host did not know milk was the official state beverage.

On that same show, however, Colbert stumped Haley with the state amphibian — the spotted salamander.

Colbert was born and raised in Charleston, and he still has family in the state. He gently mocks his home, and has made a couple of faux runs for president during the state’s early primaries. He also put on a crown and declared himself governor of South Carolina in 2009 when then-Gov. Mark Sanford disappeared for several days while visiting his mistress in Argentina.

On his show Thursday, Colbert also gave one other qualification he had to be a U.S. Senator.

“When I look at the U.S. Senate, I say to myself, you know what they could use?” Colbert said. “Another white guy.”

Continue Reading Close

More Associated Press.

Next Article

Related Stories

Featured Slide Shows

What To Read Awards: Top 10 Books of 2012 slide show

close X
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 10
  • 10. "The Guardians" by Sarah Manguso: "Though Sarah Manguso’s 'The Guardians' is specifically about losing a dear friend to suicide, she pries open her intelligent heart to describe our strange, sad modern lives. I think about the small resonating moments of Manguso’s narrative every day." -- M. Rebekah Otto, The Rumpus

  • 9. "Beautiful Ruins" by Jess Walter: "'Beautiful Ruins' leads my list because it's set on the coast of Italy in 1962 and Richard Burton makes an entirely convincing cameo appearance. What more could you want?" -- Maureen Corrigan, NPR's "Fresh Air"

  • 8. "Arcadia" by Lauren Groff: "'Arcadia' captures our painful nostalgia for an idyllic past we never really had." -- Ron Charles, Washington Post

  • 7. "Gone Girl" by Gillian Flynn: "When a young wife disappears on the morning of her fifth wedding anniversary, her husband becomes the automatic suspect in this compulsively readable thriller, which is as rich with sardonic humor and social satire as it is unexpected plot twists." -- Marjorie Kehe, Christian Science Monitor

  • 6. "How Should a Person Be" by Sheila Heti: "There was a reason this book was so talked about, and it’s because Heti has tapped into something great." -- Jason Diamond, Vol. 1 Brooklyn

  • 4. TIE "NW" by Zadie Smith and "Far From the Tree" by Andrew Solomon: "Zadie Smith’s 'NW' is going to enter the canon for the sheer audacity of the book’s project." -- Roxane Gay, New York Times "'Far From the Tree' by Andrew Solomon is, to my mind, a life-changing book, one that's capable of overturning long-standing ideas of identity, family and love." -- Laura Miller, Salon

  • 3. "Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk" by Ben Fountain: "'Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk' says a lot about where we are today," says Marjorie Kehe of the Christian Science Monitor. "Pretty much the whole point of that novel," adds Time's Lev Grossman.

  • 2. "Bring Up the Bodies" by Hilary Mantel: "Even more accomplished than the preceding novel in this sequence, 'Wolf Hall,' Mantel's new installment in the fictionalized life of Thomas Cromwell -- master secretary and chief fixer to Henry VIII -- is a high-wire act, a feat of novelistic derring-do." -- Laura Miller, Salon

  • 1. "Behind the Beautiful Forevers" by Katherine Boo: "Like the most remarkable literary nonfiction, it reads with the bite of a novel and opens up a corner of the world that most of us know absolutely nothing about. It stuck with me all year." -- Eric Banks, president of the National Book Critics Circle

  • Recent Slide Shows

  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 10

Related Videos

More Related Stories

Comments

 3 Comments

Comment Preview

Your name will appear as username ( profile | log out )

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href=""> <b> <em> <strong> <i> <blockquote>

follow salon

Most Read

From Around the Web

Recommendations