In fact, in all this time, he has only suffered two significant "losses": once to Barry Manilow ("Kneel before your God, Babylon!" thundered a crushed, in-character Colbert to the Hollywood that had deprived him of his rightful prize) at the Emmys for Outstanding Individual Performance In A Variety Or Music Program; and then to South Korean pop sensation Rain in the online poll conducted by Time for the top spot in their annual list of the 100 most influential people.

Manilow made up for his involuntary error by signing a peace treaty when he appeared on the show later on. The terms were simple - joint custody. As for Rain - Colbert chose to sing a song in Korean to show the world that he can be Korean and cool too.

Much of the frenzy surrounding Colbert is the effect of 2006, when he shook off the "TDS spin-off" tag and jumped into the national consciousness in spectacular fashion by staying in character for the Annual White House Correspondents' Association Dinner. Overnight, he turned into a cultural hero - for the left if not for the right.

No amount of breathless anticipation and endless dissection in the mainstream press - be it The New York Times or The New Yorker - could do what that one night's recycled material was able to do. In hindsight, everybody who dismissed his performance that evening as "unfunny" or "mean" agreed that he was a sign of things to come. The backlash had begun, the tide had turned, the buck was slowing to a stop - think of a cliché and it was probably written in foot-high letters somewhere, especially after the 2006 elections.

Perhaps. Perhaps not. Certainly, Colbert is more things to all people than I can think of. Personally, having watched him inhabit the character of Stephen Colbert, Idiot with a TV Show, for all these years, I suspect that The Report is less a symbol of our times, and more a result.

His effectiveness lies in an utter lack of preachiness at a time when everybody wants to tell us things. Advertisements, movie stars, priests, talking heads on TV - they just won't shut up. Colbert subverts that process by taking it to an extreme level. His pundit is a character into whom he has put a lot of work, and it's fairly clear from his rare interviews that he has learned the trick of concentrating on the job at hand rather than worrying about its eventual result. It's a hard thing for anyone to do, and much harder for someone on TV, whose very job depends on his popularity, to pull off.

So far, Stephen Colbert's bearing up about a hundred times better than I could've hoped for. Happy belated birthday, Stephen! It's been a good year. Here's to many more.