Name	Spanish, Castilian
Nativename	,
Pronunciation	,
Familycolor	Indo-European
Script	Latin (Spanish variant)
Region	(see below)
Speakers	First language 329 million to 400 million.500 million as first or second language.
Fam2	Italic
Fam3	Romance
Fam4	Italo-Western
Fam5	Gallo-Iberian
Fam6	Ibero-Romance
Fam7	West Iberian
Script	Latin (Spanish variant)
Script	Latin (Spanish variant)
Nation	21 countries, United Nations, European Union, Organization of American States, Organization of Ibero-American States, Union of South American Nations, Central American Integration System, African Union, Caricom, World Trade Organization, North American Free Trade Agreement, Andean Community of Nations, Mercosur, Inter-American Development Bank, Latin Union, Antarctic Treaty.
Agency	Association of Spanish Language Academies ( and 21 other national Spanish language academies)
Iso1	es
Iso2	spa
Iso3	spa
Lingua	51-AAA-b
Map	Map-Hispanophone World.png
Mapcaption
Notice	IPA }}

Spanish (sometimes called Castilian) ('''' or '''' in Spanish) is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia during the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile (present northern Spain) into central and southern Iberia during the later Medieval period.

Modern Spanish developed with the readjustment of consonants ('''') that began in 15th century. The language continues to adopt foreign words from a variety of other languages as well as developing new words. Spanish was taken most notably to the Americas as well as to Africa and Asia Pacific with the expansion of the Spanish Empire between the 15th and 19th centuries, where it became the most important language for government and trade.

In 1999, there were according to ''Ethnologue'' 358 million people speaking Spanish as a native language and a total of 417 million speakers worldwide. Currently these figures are up to 400 and 500 million people respectively. Spanish is the second most natively spoken language in the world, after Mandarin Chinese. Mexico contains the largest population of Spanish speakers. Spanish is one of the six official languages of the United Nations, and used as an official language of the European Union, and Mercosur.

Due to its increasing presence in the demographics and popular culture of the United States, particularly in the fast-growing states of the Sun Belt, Spanish is widely considered to be the most beneficial second language for a native speaker of American English. The increasing political stability and economies of many larger Hispanophone nations, the language's immense geographic extent in Latin America and Europe for tourism, and the growing popularity of warmer, more affordable, and culturally vibrant retirement destinations found in the Hispanic world have contributed significantly to the growth of learning Spanish as a foreign language across the world.

By 2050, it is likely that 10 percent of the world population will be speaking Spanish, and will be the most widely spoken language in the Western Hemisphere by a considerable degree, including both first and second language speakers.

History

Castilian emerged from its ancestral Vulgar Latin (common Latin) dialects in the 9th century. Latin had been brought to Iberia by the Romans during the Second Punic War around 210 BC, absorbing influences from the native Iberian languages such as Celtiberian, Basque and other paleohispanic languages. Later, it gained other external influences, most notably from the Arabic of the later Al-Andalus period.

Local versions of Vulgar Latin evolved into Castilian in the central-north of Iberia, in an area defined by the then remote crossroad strips of Alava, Cantabria, Burgos, Soria and La Rioja, within the Kingdom of Castile (see Glosas Emilianenses). In this formative stage, Castilian developed a strongly differing variant from its close cousin, Leonese, and was distinguished by a heavy Basque influence (see Iberian Romance languages). This distinctive dialect progressively spread south with the advance of the , and so gathered a sizable lexical influence from Al-Andalus Arabic, especially in the later Medieval period.

In the fifteenth century, in a process similar to that affecting other Romance languages, Castilian underwent a dramatic change with the ''Readjustment of the Consonants'' (''''). Typical features of Spanish diachronic phonology include lenition (Latin , Spanish ), palatalisation (Latin , Spanish , and Latin , Spanish ) and diphthongisation (stem-changing) of stressed short ''e'' and ''o'' from Vulgar Latin (Latin , Spanish ; Latin , Spanish ).

The , written in Salamanca in 1492 by Elio Antonio de Nebrija, was the first grammar written for a modern European language. According to a popular anecdote, when Nebrija presented it to Queen Isabella, she asked him what was the use of such a work, and he answered that language is the instrument of empire. In his introduction to the grammar, dated August 18, 1492, Nebrija wrote that "... language was always the companion of empire."

From the 16th century onwards, the language was taken to the Americas and the Spanish East Indies via Spanish colonization. Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra is a so well-known reference in the world that Spanish is often called ''la lengua de Cervantes'' ("the language of Cervantes").

In the 20th century, Spanish was introduced to Equatorial Guinea and the Western Sahara, and to areas of the United States that had not been part of the Spanish Empire, such as Spanish Harlem in New York City. For details on borrowed words and other external influences upon Spanish, see Influences on the Spanish language.

Geographic distribution

Spanish is recognised as one of the official languages of the United Nations, the European Union, the Organization of American States, the Organization of Ibero-American States, the African Union, the Union of South American Nations, the Latin Union, and the Caricom and has legal status in the North American Free Trade Agreement.

Country	Population	Spanish as a native language speakers	Bilingual and as a second language speakers (in countries where Spanish is official) or as a foreign language (where it is not official)	Spanish speakers as percentage of population	Total number of Spanish speakers
	112,336,538			98.5%
	307,006,550	35,468,501	14,531,499	%	50,000,000
	47,150,819			98.8%
	46,090,000			99.2%
	40,900,496			99.4%
	29,306,000			98.8%
	29,797,694			86.6%
	17,248,450			99.3%
	14,306,000			98.1%
	14,361,666			86.4%
	11,235,863	11,235,863		99.4%
	10,225,000			99.6%
	10,426,154			87.9%
	8,215,313			99.0%
	6,183,002	6,183,002		99.7%
	64,057,790	440,106	5,721,380	9.6%	6,161,486
	5,822,000			97.0%
	31,759,997	20,000	5,480,000	17.32%	5,500,000
	190,732,694	460,018	5,000,000	2.86%	5,460,018
	4,615,646			99.2%
	6,460,000	369,000	4,043,555	69.5%
	3,998,000			98.8%
	62,041,708	184,867	3,737,633	6.4%	3,922,500
	3,372,000			98.9%
	3,508,000			93.1%
	96,061,683	2,930	3,013,843	3.1%	3,016,773
	81,802,000	178,976	2,527,996	3.3%	2,706,972
	60,605,053	422,249	1,968,320	3.5%	1,635,976
	1,153,915	n.a.	1,044,293	90.5%
	33,212,696	909,000	92,853	3%	1,001,853
	10,636,888	9,570	727,282	6.9%	737,026
	16,665,900	59,578	622,516	4.1%	682,094
	10,403,951	85,990	515,939	5.8%	601,929
	22,246,862		544,531	2.4%	544,531
	9,045,389	101,472	442,601	6%	544,073
	21,007,310	106,517	374,571	2.3%	481,088
	38,500,696		316,104	0.8%	316,104
	8,205,533		267,177	3.3%	267,177
	20,179,602		235,806	1.2%	235,806
	33,769,669		223,000	0.7%	223,379
	5,484,723		219,003	4%	219,003
	7,112,359	130,000	45,231	2.5%	175,231
	127,288,419	78,952	60,000	0.1%	138,952
	7,581,520	123,000	14,420	1.7%	137,420
	7,262,675		133,910	1.8%	133,910
	301,270	106,795	21,848	42.7%	128,643
	223,652	10,699	114,835	56.1%	125,534
	4,156,119		123,591	3%	123,591
	12,853,259		101,455	0.8%	101,455
	10,722,816		86,742	0.8%	86,742
	5,244,749		85,586	1.6%	85,586
	9,930,915		85,034	0.9%	85,034
	100,018	6,800	68,602	75.3%	75,402
	4,491,543		73,656	1.6%	73,656
	84,484	29,907	25,356	68.7%	58,040
	5,455,407		43,164	0.8%	43,164
	4,644,457	12,573	23,677	0.8%	36,250
	140,702,094	3,320	20,000	0.01%	23,320
	4,173,460	21,645		0.5%	21,645
	154,805		19,092	12.3%	19,092
US Virgin Islands	108,612	16,788		15.5%	16,788
	1,345,751,000	2,292	12,835	0.001124%	15,127
	3,565,205		13,943	0.4%	13,943
	27,967	13,857		49.5%	13,857
	792,604			1.4%	11,044
	71,892,807	380	8,000	0.01%	8,380
	2,804,322	8,000		0.3%	8,000
	486,006	3,000	4,344	1.5%	7,344
	403,532	6,458		1.6%	6,458
	1,047,366	4,100		0.4%	4,100
	513,000	n.a.	n.a.	n.a.	n.a.
Total native speakers in the world + bilingual and as a second language where Spanish is official:			32,440,098	%
Total with Spanish speakers as a foreign language:	81,213,062	%

Hispanosphere

It is estimated that the combined total number of Spanish speakers is between 470 and 500 million, making it the third most spoken language by total number of speakers (after Chinese and English). Spanish is the second most widely spoken language in terms of native speakers. Global internet usage statistics for 2007 show Spanish as the third most commonly used language on the Internet, after English and Chinese.

Europe

In Europe, Spanish is an official language of Spain, the country after which it is named and from which it originated. It is widely spoken in Gibraltar, though English is the official language. It is also commonly spoken in Andorra, though Catalan is the official language.

Spanish is spoken in 20 different countries worldwide. It is also spoken by small communities in other European countries, such as the United Kingdom, France, and Germany. Spanish is an official language of the European Union. In Switzerland, Spanish is the native language of 1.7% of the population, representing the largest minority after the 4 official languages of the country.

Spanish is the fourth most widely studied second language in Western Europe after English, French, and German. In countries where those languages are natively spoken (chiefly the United Kingdom, France, and Germany), Spanish is often the third most popular foreign language. Neighboring Portugal and France have considerable minorities of their population with a high degree of competency in Spanish.

Spain

In Spain and in some parts of the Spanish speaking world, but not all, Spanish is called '''' (Castilian) as well as '''' (Spanish), that is, the language of the Castile region, contrasting it with other languages spoken in Spain such as Galician, Basque, and Catalan. In this manner, the Spanish Constitution of 1978 uses the term to define the official language of the whole Spanish State, as opposed to (lit. ''the rest of the Spanish languages''). Article III reads as follows:

Castilian is the official Spanish language of the State. (...) The rest of the Spanish languages shall also be official in their respective Autonomous Communities...}}

The Spanish Royal Academy uses the term ''español'' (rather than "castellano") in its publications, due to the fact that "the term derives from the Provenzal word ''espaignol'', which in turn derives from the Medieval Latin word ''Hispaniolus'', which means 'from—or pertaining to—Hispania'". The ''Diccionario Panhispánico de Dudas'' (a linguistic guide published by the Spanish Royal Academy) states that, although the Spanish Royal Academy prefers to use the term ''español'' in its publications when referring to the Spanish language, both terms (''español'' and ''castellano'') are regarded as synonymous and equally valid.

Currently, the name ''castellano'', which refers directly to the historical context in which it was introduced in the Americas, is preferred in Spain due to the existence of regions where other official languages are spoken (Catalonia, Basque Country, Valencia, Balearic Islands and Galicia) as well as in Argentina, Bolivia, Colombia, Chile, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay and Venezuela, instead of '''', which is more commonly used to refer to the language as a whole when relating to a global context.

Americas

Latin America

Most Spanish speakers are in Latin America; of all countries with a majority of Spanish speakers, only Spain and Equatorial Guinea are outside the Americas. Mexico has the most native speakers of any country. Nationally, Spanish is the official language—either ''de facto'' or ''de jure''—of Argentina, Bolivia (co-official with Quechua and Aymara), Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay (co-official with Guaraní), Ecuador and Peru (co-official with Quechua and, in some regions, Aymara), Uruguay, and Venezuela. Spanish is also the official language (co-official with English) in Puerto Rico.

Spanish has no official recognition in the former British colony of Belize; however, per the 2000 census, it is spoken by 43% of the population. Mainly, it is spoken by the descendants of Hispanics who have been in the region since the 17th century; however, English is the official language.

Spain colonized Trinidad and Tobago first in 1498, introducing the Spanish language to the Carib people. Also the Cocoa Panyols, laborers from Venezuela, took their culture and language with them; they are accredited with the music of "Parang" ("Parranda") on the island. Because of Trinidad's location on the South American coast, the country is greatly influenced by its Spanish-speaking neighbors. A recent census shows that more than 1 500 inhabitants speak Spanish. In 2004, the government launched the ''Spanish as a First Foreign Language'' (SAFFL) initiative in March 2005. Government regulations require Spanish to be taught, beginning in primary school, while thirty percent of public employees are to be linguistically competent within five years.

Spanish is important in Brazil because of its proximity to and increased trade with its Spanish-speaking neighbors, and because of its membership in the Mercosur trading bloc and the Union of South American Nations. In 2005, the National Congress of Brazil approved a bill, signed into law by the President, making Spanish language teaching mandatory in both public and private secondary schools in Brazil. In many border towns and villages (especially in the Uruguayan-Brazilian and Paraguayan-Brazilian border areas), a mixed language known as Portuñol is spoken.

United States

According to 2006 census data, 44.3 million people of the U.S. population were Hispanic or Latino by origin; 34 million people, 12.2 percent, of the population more than five years old speak Spanish at home. Spanish has a long history in the United States because many south-western states were part of Mexico, and Florida was also part of Spain, and it recently has been revitalized by Hispanic immigrants. Spanish is the most widely taught language in the country after English. Although the United States has no formally designated "official languages," Spanish is formally recognized at the state level in various states in addition to English; in the U.S. state of New Mexico for instance, 40% of the population speaks the language. It also has strong influence in metropolitan areas such as Los Angeles, Miami, San Antonio, New York City, Tampa, Las Vegas, San Francisco and Chicago and in the last decade, the language has rapidly expanded in Atlanta, Baltimore, Boston, Charlotte, Cleveland, Dallas, Detroit, Houston, Phoenix, Philadelphia, Richmond, Washington, DC, and Missouri. Spanish is the dominant spoken language in Puerto Rico, a U.S. territory. With a total of 33,701,181 Spanish (Castilian) speakers, according to US Census Bureau, the U.S. has the world's second-largest Spanish-speaking population. Spanish ranks second, behind English, as the language spoken most widely at home.

Africa

In Africa, Spanish is official in Equatorial Guinea (co-official with French and Portuguese), as well as an official language of the African Union. In Equatorial Guinea, Spanish is the predominant language when native and non-native speakers (around 500,000 people) are counted, while Fang is the most spoken language by number of native speakers. Today, in Western Sahara, a former spanish colony, an unknown number of Sahrawis are able to read and write in Spanish, and several thousands have received university education in foreign countries as part of aid packages (mainly in Cuba and Spain). It is also spoken in the Spanish cities in continental North Africa (Ceuta and Melilla) and in the autonomous community of Canary Islands (143,000 and 1,995,833 people, respectively). Within Northern Morocco, a former Franco-Spanish protectorate that is also geographically close to Spain, approximately 20,000 people speak Spanish as a second language. It is spoken by some communities of Angola, because of the Cuban influence from the Cold War, in South Sudan among South Sudanese natives that relocated to Cuba during the Sudanese wars and returned in time for their country's independence, and in Nigeria by the descendants of Afro-Cuban ex-slaves.

Asia

Spanish was used by the colonial governments and the educated classes in the former Spanish East Indies, namely the Philippines, Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands. From 1565 to 1973 it was an official language of the Philippines. Up to 1899 it was the language of government, trade and education, and spoken as a first language by Spaniards and educated Filipinos. In the mid 19th century the colonial government set up a free public school system with Spanish as the medium of instruction. This increased the use of Spanish throughout the islands and led to a class of Spanish-speaking intellectuals called the Ilustrados. Although Spanish never became the language of a majority of the population, Philippine literature and press primarily used Spanish up to the 1940s. It continued as an official language until the change of Constitution in 1973. Following the U.S. occupation and administration of the islands in 1899, the American government increasingly imposed English, especially after the 1920s. The US authorities conducted a campaign of introducing English as the medium of instruction in schools, universities and public spaces, and prohibited the use of Spanish in media and educational institutions.

After the country became independent in 1946, Spanish remained an official language along with English and Tagalog-based Filipino. However, the language lost its official status in 1973 during the regime of Ferdinand Marcos. In 2007 the Arroyo administration announced that it would pass legislation to reintroduce Spanish in the Philippine education system. In 2010 a Memorandum was signed between Spanish and Philippine authorities to cooperate in implementing this decree. Today, Radio Manila broadcasts daily in Spanish. Worthy of mention is the Chabacano language spoken by 600,000 people both in the Philippines and Sabah. Chabacano, a Spanish-Philippine pidgin, sounds strange to Spanish speakers but is mutually intelligible.

The local languages of the Philippines retain much Spanish influence, with many words being derived from Castilian Spanish and Mexican Spanish, due to the control of the islands by Spain through Mexico City until 1821, and directly from Madrid until 1898.

Oceania

Among the countries and territories in Oceania, Spanish is also spoken in Easter Island, a territorial possession of Chile. The U.S. Territories of Guam and Northern Marianas, and the independent states of Palau, Marshall Islands and the Federated States of Micronesia all once had majority Spanish speakers, since the Marianas and the Caroline Islands were Spanish colonial possessions until the late 19th century (see Spanish-American War), but Spanish is no longer used by the masses but there are still native and second-language speakers. It also exists as an influence on the local native languages and is spoken by Hispanic American resident populations.

Antarctica

The Antarctic Treaty regulates international relations with respect to Antarctica. Argentina and Chile, both Spanish speaking countries, claim territories according to this treaty. The Argentine Antarctica sector had a winter population of 169 in 1999, and in the Chilean Antarctic Territory, according to the national census of 2002, the population was 130 (115 male, 15 female).

Royal Spanish Academy

The (Royal Spanish Academy), founded in 1713, together with the 21 other national ones (see Association of Spanish Language Academies), exercises a standardizing influence through its publication of dictionaries and widely respected grammar and style guides. Because of influence and for other sociohistorical reasons, a standardized form of the language (Standard Spanish) is widely acknowledged for use in literature, academic contexts and the media.

Accent variation

There are important variations spoken among the regions of Spain and throughout Spanish-speaking America. One major phonological difference between Castilian, broadly speaking, the accents spoken in most of Spain, and the accent of much of southern Spain, the Canary Islands and all the Latin American accents of Spanish, is the absence of a voiceless dental fricative ( as in English ''thing'') in the latter. In Spain, the Castilian accent is commonly regarded as the standard variety used on radio and television, although attitudes towards southern accents have changed significantly in the last 50 years. In addition to variations in pronunciation, minor lexical and grammatical differences exist. For example, is the use of slightly different pronouns and differs from the standard.

The variety with the most speakers is Mexican Spanish. It is spoken by more than the twenty percent of the Spanish speakers (107 million of the total 494 million, according to the table above). One of its main features is the reduction or loss of the unstressed vowels, mainly when they are in contact with the sound /s/.

Voseo

Spanish has three second-person singular pronouns: , , and . The use of the pronoun and/or its verb forms is called .

Grammar

is the subject form [you say] and object of a preposition (''a vos digo'') [to you I say], while "os" is the direct object form [I saw you] and indirect object without express preposition [I say to you].

Since ''vos'' is historically the 2nd-person plural, verbs are conjugated as such despite the fact the word now refers to a single person:

.

The possessive form is : . Adjectives, when used in conjunction with ''vos'', do not agree with the pronoun but instead with the real referents in gender and number: .

Two main types of may be distinguished: reverential and American dialectal. In archaic solemn usage, expressed special reverence and could be used to address both the second person singular and the second person plural. In contrast, the more commonly known American form of is always used to address only one speaker and implies closeness and familiarity. Unlike the first type, the second one need not involve ''vos'' and may instead be expressed simply in the use of the plural form of the verb (even in combination with the pronoun ''tú'').

The ''pronominal '' employs the use of as a pronoun to replace and , which are second-person singular informal. As a subject employs: instead of As a vocative: instead of As a term of preposition: instead of And as a term of comparison: instead of

However, for the (that which uses the pronominal verbs and its complements without preposition) and for the possessive, they employ the forms of , respectively: In other words, in the previous examples the authors conjugate the pronoun subject with the pronominal verbs and its complements of .

The verbal consists of the use of the second person plural, more or less modified, for the conjugated forms of the second person singular: . The verbal paradigm of is characterized by its complexity. On the one hand, it affects, to a distinct extent, each verbal tense. On the other hand, it varies in functions of geographic and social factors and not all the forms are accepted in cultured norms.

Extension in Latin America

is used extensively as the primary spoken form of the second-person singular pronoun, although with wide differences in social consideration. Generally, it can be said that there are zones of exclusive use of in the following areas: almost all of Mexico, the West Indies, Panama, most of Peru and Venezuela, Coastal Ecuador and the Andean coast of Colombia.

They alternate as a cultured form and as a popular or rural form in: Bolivia, north and south of Peru, Andean Ecuador, small zones of the Venezuelan Andes, a great part of Colombia, and the oriental border of Cuba.

exists as an intermediate formality of treatment and as a familiar treatment in: Chile, the Venezuelan Zulia State, the Pacific coast of Colombia, and the Mexican state of Chiapas.

Areas of generalized include Argentina, Costa Rica, East of Bolivia, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Paraguay, Uruguay and the Colombian region of Valle and Antioquia.

Ustedes

Spanish forms also differ regarding second-person plural pronouns. "Usted" (Ud.) was initially the written abbreviation of "vuestra merced" (your grace). The dialects of Latin America have only one form of the second-person plural for daily use, (formal or familiar, as the case may be, though non-formal usage can sometimes appear in poetry and rhetorical or literary style). In Spain there are two forms — (formal) and (familiar). The pronoun is the plural form of in most of Spain, but in the Americas (and in certain southern Spanish areas such as Seville, Cádiz and in the Canary Islands) it is replaced with . It is notable that the use of for the informal plural "you" in southern Spain does not follow the usual rule for pronoun–verb agreement; e.g., while the formal form for "you go", , uses the third-person plural form of the verb, in Seville, Cádiz and other parts of Western Andalusia the informal form is constructed as , using the second-person plural of the verb. In the Canary Islands, though, the usual pronoun–verb agreement is preserved in most cases. The 'ustedeo' is mainly used in Costa Rica and Colombia In Honduras especially in San Pedro Sula, Honduras, "usted" is used as a formal pronoun between couples. It is used to portray respect between the romantic couple, while between colleagues and friends "vos" is used. "Usted" is also used to portray respect between someone whom is a generation older or is of higher authority.

Vocabulary

Some words can be different, even significantly so, in different Hispanophone countries. Most Spanish speakers can recognize other Spanish forms, even in places where they are not commonly used, but Spaniards generally do not recognize specifically American usages. For example, Spanish ''mantequilla'', ''aguacate'' and ''albaricoque'' (respectively, 'butter', 'avocado', 'apricot') correspond to ''manteca'', ''palta'', and ''damasco'', respectively, in Argentina, Chile (except ''manteca''), Paraguay, Peru (except ''manteca'' and ''damasco''), and Uruguay. The everyday Spanish words ''coger'' ('to take'), ''pisar'' ('to step on') and ''concha'' ('seashell') are considered extremely rude in parts of Latin America, where the meaning of ''coger'' and ''pisar'' is also "to have sex" and ''concha'' means "vulva". The Puerto Rican word for "bobby pin" (''pinche'') is an obscenity in Mexico, but in Nicaragua it simply means "stingy", and in Spain refers to a chef's helper. Other examples include ''taco'', which means "swearword" (among other meanings) in Spain and "traffic jam" in Chile, but is known to the rest of the world as a Mexican dish. ''Pija'' in many countries of Latin America and Spain itself is an obscene slang word for "penis", while in Spain the word also signifies "posh girl" or "snobby". ''Coche'', which means "car" in Spain, central Mexico and Argentina, for the vast majority of Spanish-speakers actually means "baby-stroller" or "pushchair", while ''carro'' means "car" in some Latin American countries and "cart" in others, as well as in Spain. Papaya is the slang term for "vagina" in the parts of Cuba and Venezuela, where the fruit is instead called ''fruta bomba'' and ''lechosa'', respectively.

Association of Spanish Language Academies

The Association of Spanish Language Academies () is the entity which regulates the Spanish language. It comprises the academies of 22 countries, ordered by date of Academy foundation: Spain (1713), Colombia (1871), Ecuador (1874), Mexico (1875), El Salvador (1876), Venezuela (1883), Chile (1885), Peru (1887), Guatemala (1887), Costa Rica (1923), Philippines (1924), Panama (1926), Cuba (1926), Paraguay (1927), Dominican Republic (1927), Bolivia (1927), Nicaragua (1928), Argentina (1931), Uruguay (1943), Honduras (1949), Puerto Rico (1955), and United States (1973).

Classification and related languages

Spanish is closely related to the other Iberian Romance languages: Asturian, Catalan, Galician, Ladino, Leonese and Portuguese. Catalan, an Iberian language is more similar to Occitan to the north than to Spanish or Portuguese to the west. It should be noted that although Portuguese and Spanish are very closely related, particularly in vocabulary (89% lexically similar according to the Ethnologue of Languages), syntax and grammar, there are also some differences that don't exist between Catalan and Portuguese. While Spanish and Portuguese are widely considered to be mutually intelligible, it has been noted that while most Portuguese speakers can understand spoken Spanish with little difficulty, Spanish speakers face more difficulty in understanding spoken Portuguese. The written forms are considered to be equally intelligible, however.

Judaeo-Spanish

Judaeo-Spanish (also known as Ladino), which is essentially medieval Spanish and closer to modern Spanish than any other language, is spoken by many descendants of the Sephardi Jews who were expelled from Spain in the 15th century. Therefore, its relationship to Spanish is comparable with that of the Yiddish language to German. Ladino speakers are currently almost exclusively Sephardi Jews, with family roots in Turkey, Greece or the Balkans: current speakers mostly live in Israel and Turkey, and the United States, with a few pockets in Latin America. It lacks the Native American vocabulary which was influential during the Spanish colonial period, and it retains many archaic features which have since been lost in standard Spanish. It contains, however, other vocabulary which is not found in standard Castilian, including vocabulary from Hebrew, French, Greek and Turkish, and other languages spoken where the Sephardim settled.

Judaeo-Spanish is in serious danger of extinction because many native speakers today are elderly as well as elderly ''olim'' (immigrants to Israel) who have not transmitted the language to their children or grandchildren. However, it is experiencing a minor revival among Sephardi communities, especially in music. In the case of the Latin American communities, the danger of extinction is also due to the risk of assimilation by modern Castilian.

A related dialect is Haketia, the Judaeo-Spanish of northern Morocco. This too tended to assimilate with modern Spanish, during the Spanish occupation of the region.

Vocabulary comparison

Spanish and Italian share a similar phonological system. At present, the lexical similarity with Italian is estimated at 82%. The lexical similarity with Portuguese is greater at 89%. Mutual intelligibility between Spanish and French or Romanian is lower (lexical similarity being respectively 75% and 71%): comprehension of Spanish by French speakers who have not studied the language is low at an estimated 45% – the same as English. The common features of the writing systems of the Romance languages allow for a greater amount of interlingual reading comprehension than oral communication would.

! Latin	! Spanish	Galician language>Galician	Portuguese language>Portuguese	Astur-Leonese linguistic group>Astur-Leonese	Aragonese language>Aragonese	Catalan language>Catalan	Italian language>Italian	French language>French	Romanian language>Romanian	English language>English
		(''outros'')¹				(archaically also )	(''altri'')²	(''autres'')³		we
(lit. "true brother")						(archaically also )5				brother
	(Ecclesiastical Latin>Ecclesiastical)										Tuesday
		/''cançom''4								song
or	(archaically also )		(archaically also )			(archaically also )				more
	(also )		(archaically also )							left hand
or (lit. "no thing born")		/	(''neca'' and ''nula rés'' in some expressions; archaically also )				/	/		nothing

1. also in early modern Portuguese (e.g. ''The Lusiads'') 2. in Southern Italian dialects and languages 3. Alternatively 4. Depending on the written norm used. See Reintegracionismo 5. Medieval Catalan, e.g. ''Llibre dels feits del rei en Jacme''

Characterisation

A defining feature of Spanish was the diphthongization of the Latin short vowels ''e'' and ''o'' into ''ie'' and ''ue'', respectively, when they were stressed. Similar sound changes are found in other Romance languages, but in Spanish, they were significant. Some examples: Lat. > Sp. , It. , Fr. , Rom. , Port./Gal. , Ar. , Ast. , Cat. "stone". Lat. > Sp. , It. , Fr. / , Rom. , Port./Gal. , Ar. , Ast. , Cat. "die".

Peculiar to early Spanish (as in the Gascon dialect of Occitan, and possibly due to a Basque substratum) was the mutation of Latin initial ''f-'' into ''h-'' whenever it was followed by a vowel that did not diphthongize. Compare for instance: Lat. > It. , Port. , Ar. , Gal. , Ast. , Fr. , Cat. , Occitan , Rom. , (but Gascon ) Sp. (but Ladino ); Lat. > Lad. , Port./Gal. , Ar. , Ast. , Sp. ; but Lat. > It. , Port./Gal. , Rom. , Ar. , Ast. Cat. , Sp./Lad. .

Some consonant clusters of Latin also produced characteristically different results in these languages, for example: Lat. , acc. , > Lad. , , ; Sp. , , . However, in Spanish there are also the forms , , ; Port. , , ; Rom. , , ; Gal. , , ; Ast. , , . Lat. acc. , , > Lad. , , ; Sp. , , ; Port. , , ; Gal. , , ; Rom. , , ; Ast. , , .

By the 16th century, the consonant system of Spanish underwent the following important changes that differentiated it from neighbouring Romance languages such as Portuguese and Catalan: Initial , when it had evolved into a vacillating , was lost in most words (although this etymological ''h-'' is preserved in spelling and in some Andalusian and Caribbean dialects it is still aspirated in some words). The consonant written ‹u› or ‹v› (in Latin, this was , at the time of the merger it may have been a bilabial fricative ) merged with the consonant written ‹b› (a voiced bilabial plosive, ). In contemporary Spanish, there is no difference between the pronunciation of orthographic ‹b› and ‹v›, excepting emphatic pronunciations that cannot be considered standard or natural. The voiced alveolar fricative which existed as a separate phoneme in medieval Spanish merged with its voiceless counterpart . The phoneme which resulted from this merger is currently spelled ''s''. The voiced postalveolar fricative merged with its voiceless counterpart , which evolved into the modern velar sound by the 17th century, now written with ''j'', or ''g'' before ''e, i''. Nevertheless, in most parts of Argentina and in Uruguay, ''y'' and ''ll'' have both evolved to or . The voiced alveolar affricate merged with its voiceless counterpart , which then developed into the interdental , now written ''z'', or ''c'' before ''e, i''. But in Andalusia, the Canary Islands and the Americas this sound merged with as well. See ''Ceceo'', for further information.

The consonant system of Mediaeval Spanish has been better preserved in Ladino and in Portuguese, neither of which underwent these shifts

Writing system

Spanish is written in the Latin alphabet, with the addition of the character ‹ñ› (, representing the phoneme , a letter distinct from ‹n›, although typographically composed of an ‹n› with a tilde) and the digraphs ‹ch› (, representing the phoneme ) and ‹ll› (, representing the phoneme ). However, the digraph ‹rr› (, 'strong r", , 'double r', or simply ), which also represents a distinct phoneme , is not similarly regarded as a single letter. Since 1994 ‹ch› and ‹ll› have been treated as letter pairs for collation purposes, though they remain a part of the alphabet. Words with ‹ch› are now alphabetically sorted between those with ‹cg› and ‹ci› , instead of following ‹cz› as they used to. The situation is similar for ‹ll›.

Thus, the Spanish alphabet has the following 27 letters and 2 digraphs:

:a, b, c, d, e, f, g, h, i, j, k, l, m, n, ñ, o, p, q, r, s, t, u, v, w, x, y, z. :ch, ll.

The letters "k" and "w" are used only in words and names coming from foreign languages (kilo, folklore, whiskey, William, etc.).

With the exclusion of a very small number of regional terms such as ''México'' (see Toponymy of Mexico), pronunciation can be entirely determined from spelling. Under the orthographic conventions, a typical Spanish word is stressed on the syllable before the last if it ends with a vowel (not including ‹y›) or with a vowel followed by ‹n› or an ‹s›; it is stressed on the last syllable otherwise. Exceptions to this rule are indicated by placing an acute accent on the stressed vowel.

The acute accent is used, in addition, to distinguish between certain homophones, especially when one of them is a stressed word and the other one is a clitic: compare ('the', masculine singular definite article) with ('he' or 'it'), or ('you', object pronoun), (preposition 'of'), and (reflexive pronoun) with ('tea'), ('give' [formal imperative/third-person present subjunctive]) and ('I know' or imperative 'be').

The interrogative pronouns (, , , , etc.) also receive accents in direct or indirect questions, and some demonstratives (, , , etc.) can be accented when used as pronouns. The conjunction ('or') is written with an accent between numerals so as not to be confused with a zero: e.g., should be read as rather than ('10,020'). Accent marks are frequently omitted in capital letters (a widespread practice in the days of typewriters and the early days of computers when only lowercase vowels were available with accents), although the ''Real Academia Española'' advises against this.

When ‹u› is written between ‹g› and a front vowel (‹e i›), it indicates a "hard g" pronunciation. A diaeresis (‹ü›) indicates that it is not silent as it normally would be (e.g., ''cigüeña'', 'stork', is pronounced ; if it were written ‹cigueña›, it would be pronounced ).

Interrogative and exclamatory clauses are introduced with inverted question and exclamation marks (‹¿› and ‹¡›, respectively).

Phonology

The phonemic inventory listed in the following table includes phonemes that are preserved only in some accents, other accents having merged them (such as ''yeísmo'' or ''seseo''); these are marked with an asterisk (*), marginal phonemes are represented in parentheses (). Where symbols appear in pairs, the symbol to the right represents a voiced consonant.

!	! colspan=2	! colspan=2	Alveolar consonant>Alveolar	! colspan=2	! colspan=2
Nasal consonant>Nasal
Plosive consonant>Plosive
Fricative consonant>Fricative		*		()
Affricate consonant>Affricate
Trill consonant>Trill
Flap consonant>Tap
Lateral consonant>Lateral

Lexical stress

Spanish is a syllable-timed language, so each syllable has the same duration regardless of stress. Stress most often occurs on any of the last three syllables of a word, with some rare exceptions at the fourth last or earlier syllables. The ''tendencies'' of stress assignment are as follows: In words ending in vowels and , stress most often falls on the penultimate syllable.

In words ending in all other consonants, the stress more often falls on the last syllable.

Preantepenultimate stress (stress on the syllable that comes three before the last in a word) occurs rarely and only in words like ''guardándoselos'' ('saving them for him/her/them') where clitics follow certain verbal forms.

In addition to the many exceptions to these tendencies, there are numerous minimal pairs which contrast solely on stress such as ''sábana'' ('sheet') and ''sabana'' ('savannah'), as well as ''límite'' ('boundary'), ''limite'' ('[that] he/she limits') and ''limité'' ('I limited'), or also "líquido", "liquido" and "liquidó".

The spelling system unambiguously reflects where the stress occurs: in the absence of an accent mark, the stress falls on the last syllable unless the last letter is "n", "s", or a vowel, in which cases the stress falls on the next-to-last syllable; if and only if the absence of an accent mark would give the wrong stress information, an acute accent mark appears over the stressed syllable.

An amusing example of the significance of intonation in Spanish is the phrase '''' (What do you mean, how do I eat? I eat the way I eat!).

V and B

The letters V and B are both normally pronounced identically as or similar, and academic authorities now state that this is the only correct pronunciation. The Royal Spanish Academy considers the pronunciation for the letter V to be incorrect and affected. However some Spanish speakers maintain the pronunciation of the sound as it is in other western European languages. The sound is used for the letter V, in the Spanish language, by a few second-language speakers in Spain whose native language is Catalan, in the Balearic Islands, Valencian Community and southern Catalonia. In the USA it is also common due to the proximity and influence of English phonology, and the is also occasionally used in Mexico. Some parts of Central America also use which the Royal Academy attributes to the interference of local indigenous languages.

Historically, the pronunciation was uncommon but considered correct well into the 20th century. Spanish schools taught a pronunciation for most of the 20th century.

Some Spaniards consider the pronunciation of for the letter V to be more poetic, and it is used by many singers such as Julio Iglesias, Juan Pardo, Paloma San Basilio, Amaia Montero and Alejandro Sanz.

Grammar

Spanish is a relatively inflected language, with a two-gender system and about fifty conjugated forms per verb, but limited inflection of nouns, adjectives, and determiners. (For a detailed overview of verbs, see Spanish verbs and Spanish irregular verbs.)

It is right-branching, uses prepositions, and usually, though not always, places adjectives after nouns, as do most other Romance languages. Its syntax is generally subject–verb–object, though variations are common. It is a pro-drop language (or null subject language) (that is, it allows the deletion of pronouns which are pragmatically unnecessary) and is verb-framed.

Instituto Cervantes

The Instituto Cervantes (''Cervantes Institute'') is a worldwide non-profit organization created by the Spanish government in 1991. This organization has branched out in over 20 different countries with 54 centres devoted to the Spanish and Hispanic American culture and Spanish Language. The ultimate goals of the Institute are to promote the education, the study and the use of Spanish universally as a second language, to support the methods and activities that would help the process of Spanish language education, and to contribute to the advancement of the Spanish and Hispanic American cultures throughout non-Spanish-speaking countries.

See also

Names given to the Spanish language

Spanish language poets

Spanish profanity

Spanish proverbs

;Spanish language institutions

Association of Spanish Language Academies

Real Academia Española

Instituto Cervantes

Certificate of Use of Language in Spanish

Fundéu BBVA (formerly The Foundation of Urgent Spanish)

;Spanish-speaking world

Countries where Spanish is an official language

Hispanic culture

Hispanophone

Panhispanism

;Romance languages

Differences between Spanish and Portuguese

Romance languages

Latin Union

;Influences on the Spanish language

Arabic influence on the Spanish language

List of Spanish words of Germanic origin

List of Spanish words of Nahuatl origin

List of Spanish words of Indigenous American Indian origin

List of Spanish words of Philippine origin

;Dialects and languages influenced by Spanish

Chavacano language

Frespañol

Llanito

Palenquero

Papiamento

Philippine languages

Portuñol

Spanglish

Spanish-based creole languages

List of English words of Spanish origin

;Spanish dialects and varieties

;European Spanish

* Andalusian Spanish

* Canarian Spanish

* Castilian Spanish

* Castrapo (Galician Spanish)

* Murcian Spanish

;Spanish in the Americas

* North American Spanish

* Central American Spanish

* Caribbean Spanish

* South American Spanish

* Spanish in the United States

;Spanish in Africa

* Equatoguinean Spanish

;Spanish in Asia

Spanish in the Philippines

References

Bibliography

External links

Dictionary of the RAE Real Academia Española's official Spanish language dictionary

Spanish – BBC Languages

Basic Spanish Grammar

Spanish evolution from Latin

Spanish phrasebook on WikiTravel

Category:Spanish language Category:Languages of Spain Category:Languages of Andorra Category:Languages of Argentina Category:Languages of Belize Category:Languages of Bolivia Category:Languages of the Caribbean Category:Languages of Chile Category:Languages of Colombia Category:Languages of Costa Rica Category:Languages of the Dominican Republic Category:Languages of Ecuador Category:Languages of El Salvador Category:Languages of Equatorial Guinea Category:Languages of Guatemala Category:Languages of Honduras Category:Languages of Mexico Category:Languages of Nicaragua Category:Languages of Panama Category:Languages of Paraguay Category:Languages of Peru Category:Languages of the Philippines Category:Languages of the United States Category:Languages of Uruguay Category:Languages of Venezuela Category:Languages of South America Category:SVO languages

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order	44th
office	President of the United States
term start	January 20, 2009
vicepresident	Joe Biden
predecessor	George W. Bush
birth date	August 04, 1961
birth place	Honolulu, Hawaii, United States
birthname	Barack Hussein Obama II
nationality	American
party	Democratic
spouse	Michelle Obama (m. 1992)
children	Malia (b.1998) Sasha (b.2001)
residence	The White House
alma mater	Occidental CollegeColumbia University (B.A.)Harvard Law School (J.D.)
profession	Community organizerAttorneyAuthorConstitutional law professorUnited States SenatorPresident of the United States
religion	Christian, former member of United Church of Christ
signature	Barack Obama signature.svg
website	WhiteHouse.gov
footnotes	}}

The Presidency of Barack Obama began at noon EST on January 20, 2009, when he became the 44th President of the United States. Obama was a United States Senator from Illinois at the time of his victory over Arizona Senator John McCain in the 2008 presidential election. Barack Obama is the first African-American president of the United States, as well as the first born in Hawaii.

His policy decisions have addressed a global financial crisis and have included changes in tax policies, legislation to reform the United States health care industry, foreign policy initiatives and the phasing out of detention of prisoners at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp in Cuba. He attended the G-20 London summit and later visited U.S. troops in Iraq. On the tour of various European countries following the G-20 summit, he announced in Prague that he intended to negotiate substantial reduction in the world's nuclear arsenals, en route to their eventual extinction. In October 2009, Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for "his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples."

Transition period

The presidential transition period began following Obama's election to the presidency on November 4, 2008. The Obama-Biden Transition Project was co-chaired by John Podesta, Valerie Jarrett, and Pete Rouse. During the transition period, Obama announced his nominations for his Cabinet and administration. Shortly after the election on November 4, Obama chose Representative Rahm Emanuel of Illinois as White House Chief of Staff.

Cabinet nominations included former Democratic primary opponents Hillary Rodham Clinton for Secretary of State and Bill Richardson for Secretary of Commerce (although the latter withdrew on January 4, 2009). Obama appointed Eric Holder as his Attorney General, the first African-American appointed to that position. He also nominated Timothy F. Geithner to serve as Secretary of the Treasury. On December 1, Obama announced that he had asked Robert Gates to remain as Secretary of Defense, making Gates the first Defense head to carry over from a president of a different party. He nominated former Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Susan Rice to the United States Ambassador to the United Nations, which he restored to a Cabinet-level position.

During his transition, he maintained a website Change.gov, on which he wrote blogs to readers and uploaded video addresses by many of the members of his new cabinet. He announced strict rules for federal lobbyists, restricting them from financially contributing to his administration and forcing them to stop lobbying while working for him. The website also allowed individuals to share stories and visions with each other and the transition team in what was called the Citizen's Briefing Book, which was given to Obama shortly after his inauguration. Most of the information from Change.gov was transferred to the official White House website whitehouse.gov just after Obama's inauguration.

Inauguration

Barack Obama was inaugurated on January 20, 2009. He officially assumed the presidency at 12:00 noon, EST, and completed the oath of office at 12:05 PM, EST. He delivered his inaugural address immediately following his oath. After his speech, he went to the President's Room in the House Wing of the Capitol and signed three documents: a commemorative proclamation, a list of Cabinet appointments, and a list of sub-Cabinet appointments, before attending a luncheon with congressional and administration leaders and invited guests. To commemorate the 200th anniversary of the birth of former President Abraham Lincoln, the same Bible that was used for Lincoln's inauguration was used in Obama's inauguration.

In administering the oath, Chief Justice John G. Roberts misplaced the word "faithfully" and erroneously replaced the phrase "President of the United States" with "President to the United States" before restating the phrase correctly; since Obama initially repeated the incorrect form, some scholars argued the President should take the oath again. On January 21, Roberts readministered the oath to Obama in a private ceremony in the White House Map Room, making him the seventh U.S. president to retake the oath; White House Counsel Greg Craig said Obama took the oath from Roberts a second time out of an "abundance of caution".

First 100 days

Expectations

Obama's 100th day in office was April 29, 2009. In his first post-election interview with ''60 Minutes'', Obama said that he has been studying Franklin Roosevelt's first 100 days, while adding, "The first hundred days is going to be important, but it's probably going to be the first thousand days that makes the difference."

Obama's first 100 days were highly anticipated ever since he became the presumptive nominee. Several news outlets created web pages dedicated to covering the subject. Commentators weighed in on challenges and priorities within domestic, foreign, economic, and environmental policy. CNN lists a number of economic issues that "Obama and his team will have to tackle in their first 100 days", foremost among which is passing and implementing a recovery package to deal with the financial crisis. Clive Stafford Smith, a British human rights lawyer, expressed hopes that the new president will close Guantanamo Bay detention camp in his first 100 days in office. After aides of the president announced his intention to give a major foreign policy speech in the capital of an Islamic country, there were speculations in Jakarta that he might return to his former home city within the first 100 days.

''The New York Times'' devoted a five-part series, which was spread out over two weeks, to anticipatory analysis of Obama's first hundred days. Each day, the analysis of a political expert was followed by freely edited blog postings from readers. The writers compared Obama's prospects with the situations of Franklin D. Roosevelt (January 16, Jean Edward Smith), John F. Kennedy (January 19, Richard Reeves), Lyndon B. Johnson (January 23, Robert Dallek), Ronald Reagan (January 27, Lou Cannon), and Richard Nixon.

Legislation and executive orders

Within minutes of taking the Oath of Office on January 20, Obama's Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel, issued an order suspending last-minute federal regulations pushed through by outgoing President George W. Bush, planning to review everything still pending. Due to the economic crisis, the President enacted a pay freeze for Senior White House Staff making more than $100,000 per year, as well as announcing stricter guidelines regarding lobbyists in an effort to raise the ethical standards of the White House. He asked for a waiver to his own new rules, however, for the appointments of William Lynn to the position of Deputy Defense Secretary, Jocelyn Frye to the position of director of policy and projects in the Office of the First Lady, and Cecilia Muñoz to the position of director of intergovernmental affairs in the executive office of the president, leading to some criticism of hypocrisy and violation of his pledge for governmental openness.

In his first week in office, Obama signed Executive Order 13492 suspending all the ongoing proceedings of Guantanamo military commission and ordering the detention facility to be shut down within the year. He also signed Executive Order 13491 - Ensuring Lawful Interrogations requiring the Army Field Manual to be used as a guide for terror interrogations, banning torture and other coercive techniques, such as waterboarding. Obama also issued an executive order entitled "Ethics Commitments by Executive Branch Personnel", setting stricter limitations on incoming executive branch employees and placing tighter restrictions on lobbying in the White House. Obama signed two Presidential Memoranda concerning energy independence, ordering the Department of Transportation to establish higher fuel efficiency standards before 2011 models are released and allowing states to raise their emissions standards above the national standard. He also ended the Mexico City Policy, which banned federal grants to international groups that provide abortion services or counseling.

In his first week he also established a policy of producing a weekly Saturday morning video address available on whitehouse.gov and YouTube, much like those released during his transition period. The first address had been viewed by 600,000 YouTube viewers by the next afternoon.

The first piece of legislation Obama signed was the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009 on January 29, which revised the statute of limitations for filing pay discrimination lawsuits. Lilly Ledbetter joined Obama and his wife, Michelle, as he signed the bill, fulfilling his campaign pledge to nullify ''Ledbetter v. Goodyear''. On February 3, he signed the Children's Health Insurance Program Reauthorization Act (CHIP), expanding health care from 7 million children under the plan to 11 million.

| format = Ogg | type = speech }} After much debate, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) was passed by both the House and Senate on February 13, 2009. Originally intended to be a bipartisan bill, the passage of the bill was largely along party lines. No Republicans voted for it in the House, and three moderate Republicans voted for it in the Senate (Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe of Maine and Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania). The bill combined tax breaks with spending on infrastructure projects, extension of welfare benefits, and education. The final cost of the bill was $787 billion, and almost $1.2 trillion with debt service included. Obama signed the Act into law on February 17, 2009, in Denver, Colorado.

On March 9, 2009, Obama lifted restrictions on federal funding of embryonic stem cell research, and in doing so, called into question some of George W. Bush's signing statements. Obama stated that he too would employ signing statements if he deems upon review that a portion of a bill is unconstitutional, and he has issued several signing statements.

Early in his presidency, Obama signed a law raising the tobacco tax 62 cents on a pack of cigarettes. The tax is to be "used to finance a major expansion of health insurance for children", and "help some [smokers] to quit and persuade young people not to start".

In October 2011, Obama instituted the We Can't Wait program, which involved using executive orders, administrative rulemaking, and recess appointments to institute policies without the support of Congress. The initiative was developed in response to Congress's unwillingness to pass economic legislation proposed by Obama, and conflicts in Congress during the 2011 debt ceiling crisis.

Approval ratings and opinion

2009

After his transition period, Obama entered office with an approval rating of 82%. At the end of his first week, 68% of respondents in a Gallup poll approved of how Obama was handling his job, the second highest approval rating for a President shortly after being elected since World War II. Throughout early February polls showed scattered approval ratings: 62% (CBS News), 64% (USA Today/Gallup), 66% (Gallup), and 76% in an outlier poll (CNN/Opinion Research). Gallup reported the congressional address in late February boosted his approval from a term-low of 59% to 67%.

Throughout autumn 2009, Rasmussen estimated Obama's approval as fluctuating between 45% and 52% and his disapproval between 48% and 54%; as of November 11, Pew Research estimated Obama's approval between 51% and 55% and his disapproval between 33% and 37% since July.

Handling of the economy

Rasmussen reported in mid-February 2009, that 55% of voters gave Obama good or excellent marks on his handling of the economy. In early March, a ''The Wall Street Journal'' survey of 49 economists gave Obama an average grade of 59 out of 100, with 42% of the respondents surveyed giving the administration's economic policies a grade below 60 percent. In comparison, only 30% of those same economists considered the response of governments around the world to the global recession to have been adequate. In April, a Gallup poll showed trust in Obama's economic policy with 71% saying they had "a fair amount" or "a great deal" of confidence in Obama's handling of the economy, higher than for Ben Bernanke, Tim Geithner, or leaders of Congress. Another Gallup poll in June showed 55% of Americans approved Obama's overall handling of the economy, but 48% and 51% disapproved of his handling of the federal budget deficit and controlling federal spending, respectively. A CBS News poll taken August 27–31 showed 53% of those polled approved of his handling of the economy. A Rasmussen poll taken on November 12 found 45% of Americans rating Obama's handling of the economy as poor and 39% rating him as doing a good or excellent job. They found 72% of Democrats rated his handling of the economy as good or excellent, while only 10% of Republicans and 27% of voters not affiliated with either party agreed.

2010

On March 25, 2010, following his signing of landmark health care reform legislation into law, Obama's polling was revealed by Bloomberg to be 50%, with higher marks for relations with other countries (58%) and his running of the war in Afghanistan (54%). "Obama's approval rating is roughly equal to what Bill Clinton had at this point in his presidency, according to data maintained by Gallup (and) higher than the 45 percent Ronald Reagan recorded in April 1982" and more favorable than Democrats or Republicans office in 2010. They found Obama's approval rating was at 85% among Democrats, compared with 46% among independents and 11% among Republicans.

Fox News released the results of two polls on April 8–9, 2010. The first showed a drop in Obama's approval rating to 43%, with 48% disapproving. In that poll, Democrats approved of Obama's performance 80–12%, while independents disapproved 49–38%. The other poll, which concentrated on the economy, showed disapproval of Obama's handling of the economy by a 53–42% margin, with 62% saying they were dissatisfied with the handling of the federal deficit. According to a Gallup Poll released April 10, 2010, President Obama had a 45% approval rating, with 48% disapproving. In a poll from Rasmussen Reports, released April 10, 2010, 47% approved of the President's performance, while 53% disapproved.

2011

Obama's approval rating jumped to a high following the death of Osama Bin Laden on May 2, 2011. A GfK poll conducted May 5, 2011 found his approval rating to be 60%. During the debt ceiling debate in August 2011, Obama's approval rating dropped to the low-40s.

Major legislation

2009

January 29: Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act

February 4: Children's Health Insurance Reauthorization Act

February 11: DTV Delay Act

February 17: American Recovery and Reinvestment Act

March 30: Omnibus Public Lands Management Act of 2009

April 21: Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act

May 20: Fraud Enforcement and Recovery Act

May 20: Helping Families Save Their Homes Act of 2009

May 22: Credit Card Accountability, Responsibility, and Disclosure Act of 2009

June 22: Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act

August 6: Cash For Clunkers Extension Act

October 22: Veterans Health Care Budget Reform and Transparency Act

October 28: Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act

October 28: National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2010

October 30: Ryan White HIV/AIDS Treatment Extension Act

November 6: Worker, Homeownership, and Business Assistance Act of 2009

2010

January 27: Emergency Aid to American Survivors of Haiti Earthquake Act

March 4: Travel Promotion Act

March 18: Hiring Incentives to Restore Employment Act (HIRE Act)

March 23: Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act

March 30: Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010

May 5: Caregivers and Veterans Omnibus Health Services Act of 2010

May 17: Daniel Pearl Freedom of the Press Act

July 1: Comprehensive Iran Sanctions, Accountability, and Divestment Act

July 21: Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act

July 22: Unemployment Compensation Extension Act of 2010

July 22: Improper Payments Elimination and Recovery Act of 2010

August 10: SPEECH Act of 2010

September 27: Small Business Jobs and Credit Act of 2010

December 9: Animal Crush Video Prohibition Act of 2010

December 13: Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010

December 17: Tax Relief, Unemployment Insurance Reauthorization, and Job Creation Act of 2010

December 22: Don't Ask, Don't Tell Repeal Act of 2010

2011

January 2: James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act of 2010 () January 4: Food Safety and Modernization Act, ,

January 7: National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2011

August 2: Budget Control Act of 2011

October 21: United States-Colombia Free Trade Agreement Implemention Act

October 21: United States-Panama Free Trade Agreement Implemention Act

October 21: United States-South Korea Free Trade Agreement Implemention Act

December 31: National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012

Personnel

Cabinet appointees

Twenty-two members of the Obama administration are either in the United States Cabinet (15) or are in positions considered to be Cabinet-level (7). The members of the Cabinet are the heads of the fifteen major departments (State, Defense, Justice, etc.), and the seven cabinet-level positions are the Vice President, White House Chief of Staff, Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, Director of the Office of Management and Budget, U.S. Trade Representative, Ambassador to the United Nations, and the Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers. Since Robert Gates was a member of the previous administration, his letter of resignation (a formality at the end of a President's term) was simply not accepted, and he did not need confirmation. On January 19, 2009, Senate Democratic leaders requested fifteen of the twenty positions to be ratified by unanimous consent, and seven gained unanimous confirmation by voice vote the next day: Ken Salazar, Steven Chu, Arne Duncan, Peter Orszag, Eric Shinseki, Tom Vilsack, and Janet Napolitano. On January 21, Obama presided over the swearing in of the seven unanimous nominees. Later that day, the Senate confirmed Hillary Clinton by a 94–2 vote. On January 22, several more confirmations were approved unanimously: Susan E. Rice, Ray LaHood, Lisa P. Jackson, and Shaun Donovan. On January 26, the Senate confirmed Geithner by a 60–34 margin.

At the conclusion of Obama's first week as President, Hilda Solis, Tom Daschle, Ron Kirk, and Eric Holder had yet to be confirmed, and there had been no second appointment for Secretary of Commerce. Holder was confirmed by a vote of 75–21 on February 2, and on February 3, Obama announced Senator Judd Gregg as his second nomination for Secretary of Commerce. Daschle withdrew later that day amid controversy over his failure to pay income taxes and potential conflicts of interest related to the speaking fees he accepted from health care interests. Solis was later confirmed by a vote of 80-17 on February 24, and Ron Kirk was confirmed on March 18 by a 92-5 vote in the Senate.

Gregg, who was the leading Republican negotiator and author of the TARP program in the Senate, after publication that he had a multi-million dollar investment in the Bank of America, on February 12, withdrew his nomination as Secretary of Commerce, citing "irresolvable conflicts" with President Obama and his staff over how to conduct the 2010 census and the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. Former Washington governor Gary Locke was nominated on February 26 as Obama's third choice for Commerce Secretary and confirmed on March 24 by voice vote.

On March 2, Obama introduced Kansas governor Kathleen Sebelius as his second choice for Secretary of Health and Human Services. He also introduced Nancy-Ann DeParle as head of the new White House Office of Health Reform, which he suggested would work closely with the Department of Health and Human Services. At the end of March, Sebelius was the only remaining Cabinet member yet to be confirmed.

Six high-ranking cabinet nominees in the Obama administration had their confirmations delayed or rejected among reports that they did not pay all of their taxes, including Tom Daschle, Obama's original nominee for Health and Human Services Secretary, and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner. Though Geithner was confirmed, and Senator Max Baucus, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, thought Daschle would have been confirmed, Daschle withdrew his nomination on February 3. Obama had nominated Nancy Killefer for the position of Chief Performance Officer, but Killefer also withdrew on February 3, citing unspecified problems with District of Columbia unemployment tax. A senior administration official said that Killefer's tax issues dealt with household help. Hilda Solis, Obama's nominee for Secretary of Labor, faced delayed confirmation hearings due to tax lien concerns pertaining to her husband's auto repair business, but she was later confirmed on February 24. While pundits puzzled over U.S. Trade Representative-designate Ron Kirk's failure to be confirmed by March 2009, it was reported on March 2 that Kirk owed over $10,000 in back taxes. Kirk agreed to pay them in exchange for Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus's aid in speeding up the confirmation process; he was later confirmed on March 18. On March 31, Kathleen Sebelius, Obama's nominee for Health and Human Services secretary, revealed in a letter to the Senate Finance Committee that her Certified Public Accountant found errors in her tax returns for years 2005-2007. She, along with her husband, paid more than $7,000 in back taxes, along with $878 in interest.

Notable non-Cabinet positions

Appointees serve at the pleasure of the President and were nominated by Barack Obama except as noted.

Chair of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation

*Sheila Bair¹ (2009–2011)

Special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan

*Richard Holbrooke (2009–2010)

*Marc Grossman (2011–present)

Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs

* Retired General James L. Jones (2009–2011)

* Thomas E. Donilon (2011–present)

Special envoy to the Middle East

* George J. Mitchell (2009–2011)

* David Hale (2011–present)

Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation

* Robert Mueller² (2009–present)

Director of the Central Intelligence Agency

* Leon Panetta (2009–2011)

* Michael Morell (Acting-2011)

* David Petraeus (2011–present)

Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers

* Christina Romer (2009–2010)

* Austan Goolsbee (2010–2011)

* Alan Krueger (2011–present)

Chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission

* Mary Schapiro (2009–present)

Assistant to the President for Economic Policy and Director of National Economic Council

* Lawrence Summers (2009–2010)

* Gene Sperling (2011–present)

Chairman of the Economic Recovery Advisory Board

* Paul Volcker (2009–2011)

* ''Replaced by Council on Jobs and Competitiveness in 2011''

Chairperson of the Council on Jobs and Competitiveness

* Jeffrey R. Immelt (2011–present)

¹Appointed by George W. Bush in 2006 to a five-year term ²Appointed by George W. Bush in 2001 to a ten-year term

Judicial nominees

United States Supreme Court

Obama appointed the following Justices to the Supreme Court of the United States: Sonia Sotomayor 2009 Elena Kagan 2010

Other courts

Outside of the Supreme Court, by October 2009, Obama had nominated fewer than two dozen judges to fill judicial vacancies, of which there were close to 100. This has prompted some Democrats to criticize the pace of Obama's judicial appointments as too slow. In December 2009, Senator Patrick Leahy criticized Republicans for stalling those judicial nominations that had been made, noting that the Senate confirmed more district and circuit court nominees during the first year of the George W. Bush administration than it had approved by that point during the Barack Obama presidency.

As of July 2010, Obama's nominees to the district and circuit courts had been confirmed at a rate of only 43.5 percent, compared to 87.2 percent during Bill Clinton's administration and 91.3 percent for George W. Bush. The Center for American Progress, which compiled the data, commented:

Judicial confirmations slowed to a trickle on the day President Barack Obama took office. Filibusters, anonymous holds, and other obstructionary tactics have become the rule. Uncontroversial nominees wait months for a floor vote, and even district court nominees—low-ranking judges whose confirmations have never been controversial in the past—are routinely filibustered into oblivion. Nominations grind to a halt in many cases even after the Senate Judiciary Committee has unanimously endorsed a nominee.

Policies

Economy

Upon entering office, Obama planned to center his attention on handling the global financial crisis. Even before his inauguration he lobbied Congress to pass an economic stimulus bill, which became the top priority during his first month in office. As President, Obama made a high profile trip to Capitol Hill, Washington, D.C. to dialog with Congressional Republicans and advocate for the bill. On February 17, 2009, Obama signed into law a $787 billion plan that included spending for health care, infrastructure, education, various tax breaks and incentives, and direct assistance to individuals. The tax provisions of the law reduced taxes for 98 percent of taxpayers, bringing tax rates to their lowest levels in 60 years.

As part of the 2010 budget proposal, the Obama administration has proposed additional measures to attempt to stabilize the economy, including a $2–3 trillion measure aimed at stabilizing the financial system and freeing up credit. The program includes up to $1 trillion to buy toxic bank assets, an additional $1 trillion to expand a federal consumer loan program, and the $350 billion left in the Troubled Assets Relief Program. The plan also includes $50 billion intended to slow the wave of mortgage foreclosures. The 2011 budget includes a three-year freeze on discretionary spending, proposes several program cancellations, and raises taxes on high income earners to bring down deficits during the economic recovery.

In a July 2009 interview with ABC News, Biden was asked about the sustained increase of the U.S. unemployment rate from May 2007 to October 2009 despite the administration's multi-year economic stimulus package passed five months earlier. He responded "The truth is, we and everyone else, misread the economy. The figures we worked off of in January were the consensus figures and most of the blue chip indexes out there ... the truth is, there was a misreading of just how bad an economy we inherited." The White House indicates that 2 million jobs were created or saved due to the stimulus package in 2009 and self reporting by recipients of the grants, loans, and contracts portion of the package report that the package saved or created 608,317 jobs in the final three months of 2009.

The unemployment rate rose in 2009, reaching a peak in October at 10.1% and averaging 10.0% in the fourth quarter. Following a decrease to 9.7% in the first quarter of 2010, the unemployment rate fell to 9.6% in the second quarter, where it remained for the rest of the year. Between February and December 2010, employment rose by 0.8%, which was less than the average of 1.9% experienced during comparable periods in the past four employment recoveries. GDP growth returned in the third quarter of 2009, expanding at a 1.6% pace, followed by a 5.0% increase in the fourth quarter. Growth continued in 2010, posting an increase of 3.7% in the first quarter, with lesser gains throughout the rest of the year. Overall, the economy expanded at a rate of 2.9% in 2010.

During November–December 2010, Obama and a lame duck session of the 111th Congress focused on a dispute about the temporary Bush tax cuts, which were due to expire at the end of the year. Obama wanted to extend the tax cuts for taxpayers making less than $250,000 a year. Congressional Republicans agreed but also wanted to extend the tax cuts for those making over that amount, and refused to support any bill that did not do so. All the Republicans in the Senate also joined in saying that, until the tax dispute was resolved, they would filibuster to prevent consideration of any other legislation, except for bills to fund the U.S. government. On 7 December, Obama strongly defended a compromise agreement he had reached with the Republican congressional leadership that included a two-year extension of all the tax cuts, a 13-month extension of unemployment insurance, a one-year reduction in the FICA payroll tax, and other measures. On December 10, Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) led a filibuster against the compromise tax proposal, which lasted over eight hours. Obama persuaded many wary Democrats to support the bill, but not all; of the 148 votes against the bill in the House, 112 were cast by Democrats and only 36 by Republicans. The $858 billion Tax Relief, Unemployment Insurance Reauthorization, and Job Creation Act of 2010, which ''The Washington Post'' called "the most significant tax bill in nearly a decade", passed with bipartisan majorities in both houses of Congress and was signed into law by Obama on December 17, 2010.

Ethics

Lobbying reform

Early in his presidential campaign, Obama stated that "they [lobbyists] won't find a job in my White House", but softened his stance later in the campaign. On January 21, 2009, Obama issued an executive order for all future appointees to his administration, which stated, no appointee who was a registered lobbyist within the two years before his appointment could participate on matters in which he lobbied for a period of two years after the date of appointment. Three formal waivers were initially issued in early 2009, out of 800 executive appointments: to William J. Lynn III, a lobbyist for Raytheon, to hold the position of Deputy Secretary of Defense; to Jocelyn Frye, former general counsel at the National Partnership for Women and Families, to serve as Director of Policy and Projects in the Office of the First Lady; and to Cecilia Muñoz, former senior vice president for the National Council of La Raza, to serve as Director of Intergovernmental Affairs in the Executive Office of the President. As of March 21, 2009, at least thirty officials appointed by Obama had been lobbyists in the past five years. Ten additional waivers were announced in September 2009.

Not all recent former lobbyists require waivers; those without waivers write letters of recusal stating issues from which they must refrain because of their previous jobs. ''USA Today'' reported that 21 members of the Obama administration have at some time been registered as federal lobbyists, although most have not within the previous two years. Lobbyists in the administration include William Corr, an anti-tobacco lobbyist, as Deputy Secretary of Health and Human Services and Tom Vilsack, who lobbied in 2007, for a national teachers union, as Secretary of Agriculture. Also, the Secretary of Labor nominee, Hilda Solis, formerly served as a board member of American Rights at Work, which lobbied Congress on two bills Solis co-sponsored, and Mark Patterson, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner's chief of staff, is a former lobbyist for Goldman Sachs.

The Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington have criticized the administration, claiming that Obama is retreating from his own ethics rules barring lobbyists from working on the issues about which they lobbied during the previous two years by issuing waivers. According to Melanie Sloan, the group's executive director, "It makes it appear that they are saying one thing and doing another."

Transparency

The Obama administration has said that all executive orders, non-emergency legislation, and proclamations will be posted to the official White House website, whitehouse.gov, allowing the public to review and comment for five days before the President signs the legislation. The pledge was twice broken during Obama's first month in office when he signed SCHIP legislation and the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act with less than the full five days of "sunlight before signing". The administration has said that they are still "working through implementation procedures and some initial issues with the congressional calendar".

During his first week in office, Obama announced plans to post a video address each week on the site, and on YouTube, informing the public of government actions each week. During his speech at the 2008 Democratic National Convention, Obama stated, "I will also go through the federal budget, line by line, eliminating programs that no longer work and making the ones we do need work better and cost less - because we cannot meet twenty-first century challenges with a twentieth century bureaucracy."

On January 21, 2009, by executive order, Obama revoked Executive Order 13233, which had limited access to the records of former United States Presidents. Obama issued instructions to all agencies and departments in his administration to "adopt a presumption in favor" of Freedom of Information Act requests. In April 2009, the United States Department of Justice released four legal memos from the Bush administration to comply voluntarily with a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union. The memos were written by John Yoo and signed by Jay Bybee and Steven Bradbury, then Principal Assistant Attorneys General to the Department of Justice, and addressed to John A. Rizzo, general counsel of the Central Intelligence Agency. The memos describe in detail controversial interrogation methods the CIA used on prisoners suspected of terrorism. Obama became personally involved in the decision to release the memos, which was opposed by former CIA directors Michael Hayden, Porter Goss, George Tenet and John Deutch. Former Vice President Dick Cheney criticized Obama for not releasing more memos; Cheney claimed that unreleased memos detail successes of CIA interrogations.

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act requires all recipients of the funds provided by the act to publish a plan for using the funds, along with purpose, cost, rationale, net job creation, and contact information about the plan to a website Recovery.gov so that the public can review and comment. Inspectors General from each department or executive agency will then review, as appropriate, any concerns raised by the public. Any findings of an Inspector General must be relayed immediately to the head of each department and published on Recovery.gov.

On June 16, 2009, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) filed a lawsuit against the Obama administration in order to get information about the visits of coal company executives. Anne Weismann, the chief counsel for CREW, stated "The Obama administration has now taken exactly the same position as the Bush administration... I don't see how you can keep people from knowing who visits the White House and adhere to a policy of openness and transparency." On June 16, MSNBC reported that its more comprehensive request for visitor logs since Obama's January 20 inauguration had been denied. The administration announced that White House visitor logs will be made available to the public on an ongoing basis, with certain limitations, for visits occurring after September 15, 2009. Beginning on January 29, 2010, the White House did begin to release the names of its visitor records. Since that time, names of visitors (which includes not only tourists, but also names of union leaders, Wall Street executives, lobbyists, party chairs, philanthropists and celebrities), have been released. The names are released in huge batches up to 75,000 names at a time. Names are released 90–120 days after having visited the White House. The complete list of names is available online by accessing the official White House website.

Obama stated during the 2008 Presidential campaign that he would have negotiations for health care reform televised on C-SPAN, citing transparency as being the leverage needed to ensure that people stay involved in the process taking place in Washington. This did not fully happen and Politifact gives President Obama a "Promise Broken" rating on this issue. After White House press secretary Robert Gibbs initially avoided addressing the issue, President Obama himself acknowledged that he met with Democratic leaders behind closed doors to discuss how best to garner enough votes in order to merge the two (House and Senate) passed versions of the health care bill. Doing this violated the letter of the pledge, although Obama maintains that negotiations in several congressional committees were open, televised hearings. Obama also cited an independent ethics watchdog group describe his administration as the most transparent in recent history.

The Obama administration has been characterized as much more aggressive than the Bush and other previous administrations in their response to whistleblowing and leaks to the press. Three people have been prosecuted under the rarely used Espionage Act of 1917. They include Thomas Andrews Drake, a former National Security Agency (NSA) employee who was critical of the NSA's Trailblazer Project, Stephen Jin-Woo Kim, a State Department contractor who allegedly had a conversation about North Korea with James Rosen of Fox News, and Jeffrey Sterling, who allegedly was a source for James Risen's book State of War. Risen has also been subpoenaed to reveal his sources, another rare action by the government.

Foreign policy

In his inaugural address, Obama suggested that he plans to begin the process of withdrawing from Iraq and continuing to focus on the war in Afghanistan. He also mentioned lessening the nuclear threat through "working tirelessly with old friends and former foes". He spoke about America's determination to combat terrorism, proclaiming America's spirit is "stronger and cannot be broken — you cannot outlast us, and we will defeat you." To the Muslim world, Obama extended an invite to "a new way forward, based on mutual interest and mutual respect". He also said the USA would "extend a hand" to those "who cling to power through corruption and deceit" if they "are willing to unclench" their fists. Shortly after his inauguration President Obama first called President Abbas of the Palestinian National Authority (PNA). Calls were also made to President Mubarak of Egypt, Prime Minister Olmert of Israel and King Abdullah of Jordan. Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton named George Mitchell as Special Envoy for Middle East peace and Richard Holbrooke as special representative to Pakistan and Afghanistan on January 23, 2009. At the same time, Obama called on Israel to open the borders of Gaza, detailing early plans on his administration's peace plans for the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. On February 18, 2009, Obama announced that the U.S. military presence in Afghanistan would be bolstered by 17,000 new troops by summer. The announcement followed the recommendation of several experts including Defense Secretary Robert Gates that additional troops be deployed to the war-torn nation.

Obama declared his plan for ending the Iraq War on February 27, 2009, in a speech at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, before an audience of Marines stationed there. According to the president, combat troops will be withdrawn from Iraq by August 2010, leaving a contingent of up to 50,000 servicemen and servicewomen to continue training, advisory, and counterterrorism operations until as late as the end of 2011.

Other characteristics of the Obama administration on foreign policy include a tough stance on tax havens, continuing military operation in Pakistan, and avowed focus on diplomacy to prevent nuclear proliferation in Iran and North Korea.

On April 1, 2009, Obama and China's President, Hu Jintao, announced the establishment of the U.S.-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue and agreed to work together to build a positive, cooperative, and comprehensive U.S.-China relationship for the 21st century.

In that same month, Obama requested that Congress approve $83.4 billion of supplemental military funding, mostly for the war in Iraq and to increase troop levels in Afghanistan. The request also includes $2.2 billion to increase the size of the US military, $350 million to upgrade security along the US-Mexico border, and $400 million in counterinsurgency aid for Pakistan.

In May 2009, it was reported that Obama plans to expand the military by 20,000 employees.

On June 4, 2009, Obama delivered a speech at Cairo University in Egypt. The wide ranging speech called for a "new beginning" in relations between the Islamic world and the United States. The speech received both praise and criticism from leaders in the region. In March 2010, Secretary of State Clinton criticized the Israeli government for approving expansion of settlements in East Jerusalem.

On April 8, 2010, Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev signed the latest Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START), a "major" nuclear arms control agreement that reduces the nuclear weapons stockpiles of both countries.

In March 2011, international reaction to Muammar Gaddafi's military crackdown on rebel forces and civilians in Libya culminated in a United Nations resolution to enforce a no fly zone in Libya. Obama authorized U.S. forces to participate in international air attacks on Libyan air defenses using Tomahawk cruise missiles to establish the protective zone.

Guantánamo Bay detention camp

On his first day in office, Obama requested a 120-day suspension of all trials for alleged terrorists held at the Guantánamo Bay detention camp, so the new administration could "review the military commissions process, generally, and the cases pending before military commissions , specifically". Another order established a task force to lead a review of detention policies, procedures and individual cases. Obama addressed the State Department that "the United States will not torture" and drafted an executive order to close Guantánamo within a year. On January 22, 2009, Obama signed an executive order ensuring safe, lawful, and humane treatment of individuals detained in armed conflicts. This order restricts interrogators to methods listed and authorized by an Army Field Manual. A detainee released since Obama took office claimed in an interview with Agence France-Presse that conditions at Guantánamo had worsened, stating guards wanted to "take their last revenge" before the facility is closed. On March 13, 2009, the administration announced that it would no longer refer to prisoners at Guantánamo Bay as enemy combatants, but it also asserted that the president has the authority to detain terrorism suspects there without criminal charges.

The case review of detainee files by administration officials and prosecutors was made more difficult than expected as the Bush administration had failed to establish a coherent repository of the evidence and intelligence on each prisoner. By September 2009, prosecutors recommended to the Justice Department which detainees are eligible for trial, and the Justice Department and the Pentagon worked together to determine which of several now-scheduled trials will go forward in military tribunals and which in civilian courts. While 216 international terrorists are already held in maximum security prisons in the U.S., Congress was denying the administration funds to shut down the camp and adapt existing facilities elsewhere, arguing that the decision was "too dangerous to rush". In November, Obama stated that the U.S. would miss the January 2010 date for closing the Guantánamo Bay prison as he had ordered, acknowledging that he "knew this was going to be hard". Obama did not set a specific new deadline for closing the camp, citing that the delay was due to politics and lack of congressional cooperation. The state of Illinois has offered to sell to the federal government the Thomson Correctional Center, a new but largely unused prison, for the purpose of housing detainees. Federal officials testified at a December 23 hearing that if the state commission approves the sale for that purpose, it could take more than six months to ready the facility.

Killing of Osama bin Laden

Starting with information received in July 2010, intelligence developed by the CIA over the next several months determined what they believed to be the location of Osama bin Laden in a large compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, a suburban area 35 miles from Islamabad. CIA head Leon Panetta reported this intelligence to Obama in March 2011. Meeting with his national security advisers over the course of the next six weeks, Obama rejected a plan to bomb the compound, and authorized a "surgical raid" to be conducted by United States Navy SEALs. The operation took place on May 1, 2011, resulting in the death of bin Laden and the seizure of papers and computer drives and disks from the compound. Bin Laden's body was identified through DNA testing, and buried at sea several hours later. Within minutes of Obama's announcement from Washington, DC, late in the evening on May 1, there were spontaneous celebrations around the country as crowds gathered outside the White House, and at New York City's Ground Zero and Times Square. Reaction to the announcement was positive across party lines, including from predecessors George W. Bush and Bill Clinton, and from many countries around the world.

Overseas Contingency Operation

Obama discontinued use of the term "War on Terror" and instead uses the term "Overseas Contingency Operation". However, Obama has stated that the U.S. is at war with Al-Qaeda, saying "Our nation is at war, against a far-reaching network of violence and hatred."

In April 2010, the Obama administration took the extraordinary step of authorizing the targeted killing of an American citizen, the radical Muslim cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, who was believed to have shifted from encouraging attacks on the United States to directly participating in them.

Gun control

During the presidential campaign, Obama announced that he favors measures that respect Second Amendment rights, while at the same time keeping guns away from children and criminals. On February 25, 2009, Attorney General Eric Holder announced that the Obama administration would seek a new assault weapons ban across the United States, saying that it would have a positive impact on the drug-related violence in Mexico. After the statement drew criticism from the NRA and some House Democrats, the Administration reportedly ordered the Justice Department to end public discussion of the issue. Obama has signed into law two bills containing amendments reducing restrictions on gun owners, one which permits guns to be transported in checked baggage on Amtrak trains and another which allows carrying loaded firearms in national parks located in states allowing concealed carry.

Science and technology

Cybersecurity

Obama initiated a 60-day review of cybersecurity by Melissa Hathaway, a consultant for Booz Allen Hamilton, appointed Acting Senior Director for Cyberspace.

''The New York Times'' reported in 2009, that the NSA is intercepting communications of American citizens including a Congressman, although the Justice Department believed that the NSA had corrected its errors. United States Attorney General Eric Holder resumed the wiretapping according to his understanding of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 Amendments Act of 2008 that Congress passed in July 2008, but without explaining what had occurred.

Environment

On January 27, 2009, Obama issued two presidential memoranda concerning energy policy. One directed the Department of Transportation to raise fuel efficiency standards incrementally to by 2020, and the other directed the Environmental Protection Agency to allow individual states to set stricter tailpipe emissions regulations than the federal standard.

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 provides $54 billion in funds to double domestic renewable energy production, renovate federal buildings making them more energy-efficient, improve the nation's electricity grid, repair public housing, and weatherize modest-income homes.

On February 10, 2009, Obama overturned a Bush administration policy that had opened up a five-year period of offshore drilling for oil and gas near both the Atlantic and Pacific coasts. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar has been quoted as saying, "To establish an orderly process that allows us to make wise decisions based on sound information, we need to set aside" the plan "and create our own timeline".

On May 19, 2009, Obama announced a plan to increase the CAFE national standards for gasoline mileage, by creating a single new national standard that will create a car and light truck fleet in the United States that is almost 40 percent cleaner and more fuel-efficient by 2016, than it is today, with an average of 35.5 miles per gallon. Environmental advocates and industry officials welcomed the new program, but for different reasons. Environmentalists called it a long-overdue tightening of emissions and fuel economy standards after decades of government delay and industry opposition. Auto industry officials said it would provide the single national efficiency standard they have long desired, a reasonable timetable to meet it and the certainty they need to proceed with product development plans.

On March 30, 2010, Obama partially reinstated Bush administration proposals to open certain offshore areas along the Atlantic coastline, the eastern Gulf of Mexico and the north coast of Alaska to oil and natural gas drilling. The proposals had earlier been set aside by President Obama after they were challenged in court on environmental grounds.

On May 27, 2010, Obama extended a moratorium on offshore drilling permits after the April 20, 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill which is considered to be the worst oil spill in U.S. history. Although BP took responsibility for the disaster and its ongoing after effects, Obama began a federal investigation along with forming a bipartisan commission to review the incident and methods to avoid it in the future. Obama visited the Gulf Coast on May 2 and May 28 and expressed his frustration on the June 8 ''NBC Today Show'', by saying "I don't sit around just talking to experts because this is a college seminar. We talk to these folks because they potentially have the best answers, so I know whose ass to kick." Obama's response to the disaster has drawn confusion and criticism within segments of the media and public.

NASA

Obama set up the Augustine panel to review the Constellation program in 2009, and announced in February 2010, that he was cutting the program from the 2011 United States federal budget, describing it as "over budget, behind schedule, and lacking in innovation." After the decision drew criticism in the United States, a new "Flexible path to Mars" plan was unveiled at a space conference in April 2010. It included new technology programs, increased R&D; spending, a focus on the International Space Station and contracting out flying crew to space to commercial providers. The new plan also increased NASA's 2011 budget to $19 billion from $18.3 billion in 2010.

In July 2009, Obama appointed Charles Bolden, a former astronaut, to be administrator of NASA.

Stem cell research

On March 9, 2009, Obama repealed a Bush-era policy that prevented federal tax dollars from being used to fund research on new lines of embryonic stem cells. Such research has been a matter of debate between those who emphasize the therapeutic potential of such research and those who suggest that elements of this research breach ethical limitations. Obama stated that "In recent years, when it comes to stem cell research, rather than furthering discovery, our government has forced what I believe is a false choice between sound science and moral values...In this case, I believe the two are not inconsistent. As a person of faith, I believe we are called to care for each other and work to ease human suffering. I believe we have been given the capacity and will to pursue this research — and the humanity and conscience to do so responsibly."

Social policy

On January 23, 2009, Obama rescinded the Mexico City Policy, a measure from the Reagan and Bush eras that required any non-governmental organization receiving U.S. Government funding to refrain from performing or promoting abortion services in other countries.

On June 17, 2009, Obama authorized the extension of some benefits (but not health insurance or pension benefits) to same-sex partners of federal employees. Obama has chosen to leave larger changes, such as the repeal of Don't ask, don't tell and the Defense of Marriage Act, to Congress.

On October 19, 2009, the U.S. Department of Justice issued a directive to federal prosecutors in states with medical marijuana laws not to investigate or prosecute cases of marijuana use or production done in compliance with those laws.

On December 16, 2009, President Obama signed the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2010, which repealed a 21-year-old ban on federal funding of needle exchange programs.

On December 22, 2010, Obama signed the Don't Ask, Don't Tell Repeal Act of 2010, a bill that provides for repeal of the Don't ask, don't tell policy of 1993, that has prevented gay and lesbian people from serving openly in the United States Armed Forces. Repealing "Don't ask, don't tell" had been a key campaign promise that Obama had made during the 2008 presidential campaign.

Health care reform

Once the stimulus bill was enacted, health care reform became Obama's top domestic priority. On July 14, 2009, House Democratic leaders introduced a 1,000 page plan for overhauling the US health care system, which Obama wanted Congress to approve by the end of the year.

The U.S. Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimated the ten-year cost to the federal government of the major insurance-related provisions of the bill at approximately $1.0 trillion. In mid-July 2009, Douglas Elmendorf, director of the CBO, testified that the proposals under consideration would significantly increase federal spending and did not include the "fundamental changes" needed to control the rapid growth in health care spending. However after reviewing the final version of the bill introduced after 14 months of debate the CBO estimated that it would reduce federal budget deficits by $143 billion over 10 years and by more than a trillion in the next decade.

After much public debate during the Congressional summer recess of 2009, Obama delivered a speech to a joint session of Congress on September 9 where he addressed concerns over his administration's proposals. In March 2010, Obama gave several speeches across the country to argue for the passage of health care reform. On March 21, 2010, after Obama announced an executive order reinforcing the current law against spending federal funds for elective abortion services, the House, by a vote of 219 to 212, passed the version of the bill previously passed on December 24, 2009, by a 60-vote supermajority in the Senate. The bill, which includes over 200 Republican amendments, was passed without a single Republican vote. On March 23, 2010, President Obama signed the bill into law. Immediately following the bill's passage, the House voted in favor of a reconciliation measure to make significant changes and corrections to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, which was passed by both houses with two minor alterations on March 25, 2010, and signed into law on March 30, 2010.

Education reform

On March 30, 2010, Obama signed the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010, which ended the role of private banks in lending out federally-insured student loans. By directly lending to students, the government is projected to save taxpayers $68 billion dollars over the next several years. Federally-insured student loans will instead be distributed by the Department of Education. The law also increased the amount of Pell Grant awards given each year, doubling its current funding. Starting in 2014, the law permits borrowers to cap the amount they spend on student loans each year to ten percent of their discretionary income and have their balance forgiven if they have faithfully paid the balance of their loan over 20 years. Additionally, the law seeks to make it easier for parents to qualify for Grad PLUS loans, and spends billions on poor and minority schools and $2 billion for community colleges.

Gates arrest controversy

On July 16, 2009, prominent African American Harvard University professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr., was arrested at his Cambridge, Massachusetts home by a local white police officer, Cambridge Police Sgt. James Crowley, for disorderly conduct. Gates, who was locked out of his house, had attempted to break into his own property, thus causing the initial alarm from a neighbor who called 9-1-1. The incident sparked national controversy over whether Gates's civil rights had been violated by Crowley. On July 21, the Cambridge Police Department dropped charges against Gates. On July 22, President Barack Obama, commented on the incident over national and international television, criticized the arrest, and stated the police acted "stupidly" in handling the incident. National law enforcement organizations and members objected to Obama's comments and criticized his handling of the issue. In the aftermath, Obama stated that he regretted his comments exacerbating the situation, and hoped that the situation could become a "teachable moment". To reduce tensions, on July 24, Obama invited both parties to the White House to discuss the issue over beers, and on July 30, Obama and Vice President Joe Biden joined Crowley and Gates in a private, cordial meeting in a courtyard near the White House Rose Garden; this became known colloquially as the "Beer Summit".

Wall Street reform

On July 21, 2010, Obama signed Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, considered to be the largest financial system overhaul since the New Deal. The law recognizes complex financial derivatives and makes rules to protect consumers from unfair practices in loans and credit cards by establishing a new consumer protection agency. At the signing ceremony in the Ronald Reagan Building in Washington D.C. Obama proclaimed, "There will be no more taxpayer-funded bailouts. Period." Obama also mentioned that "These reforms represent the strongest consumer financial protections in history." At the ceremony were Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., and Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., the two committee chairmen who sponsored the bill.

2010 midterm elections

Due in large part to voter frustration over high unemployment and a stalled economy, Republicans won control of the House in the 2010 midterm elections. On reflection after the election, Obama blamed himself, in part, for the many Democrats who went down to defeat knowing that they had risked their careers to support his agenda of economic stimulus legislation and a landmark health care bill. Democrats narrowly retained the Senate majority and will continue to control it through the 112th Congress.

Obama called the elections "humbling" and a "shellacking". He said that the results came because not enough Americans had felt the effects of the economic recovery.

2012 re-election campaign

On April 4, 2011, President Obama announced that he would seek re-election in the 2012 presidential election. The campaign will be based in Chicago and is being run by many former members of the White House staff and members of the successful 2008 campaign.

References

External links

"Obama's People" (photography: Nadav Kander)

The Official White House YouTube page

"President Barack Obama's Inaugural Address". The White House.

"Wrapping Up Open for Questions". The White House.

"President Obama's State of the Union Address" C-SPAN.

Obama, Barack

cs:Vláda Baracka Obamy es:Administración Obama fr:Présidence de Barack Obama ko:버락 오바마 행정부 sw:Urais wa Barack Obama no:Barack Obamas regjering ru:Президентство Барака Обамы sv:Obamas kabinett th:การดำรงตำแหน่งประธานาธิบดีของบารัก โอบามา

name	Seth Meyers
birth name	Seth Adam Meyers
birth date
birth place	Bedford, New Hampshire, U.S.
active	2001–present
occupation	writer, actor
medium	Television, film
nationality	American
genre	Satire/political satire/news satire, improvisational comedy, sketch comedy
subject	American politics, American culture, current events, pop culture, mass media/news media
notable work	Weekend Update anchor on ''Saturday Night Live'' }}

Seth Adam Meyers (born December 28, 1973) is an American actor and comedian. He currently serves as head writer for ''Saturday Night Live'' and hosts its news parody segment ''Weekend Update''.

Early life

Meyers was born in Bedford, New Hampshire, the son of Hillary, a middle school French teacher, and Lawrence Meyers. He attended Manchester High School West in Manchester, New Hampshire. He went on to graduate from Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, where he was a member of the fraternity Phi Gamma Delta. Meyers is the older brother of Josh Meyers who was best known as a cast member of MADtv.

Career

Before ''SNL'', Meyers got his improv comedy start as a member of the Northwestern University improv sketch group Mee-Ow, created by Paul Warshauer and Josh Lazar. He continued his career at ImprovOlympic with the group Preponderate as well as overseas as a cast member of Boom Chicago, an English language improv troupe based in Amsterdam, where his brother was also a cast member.

Meyers appeared with Brendan Fraser and Anita Briem in the 2008 3D film ''Journey to the Center of the Earth''. He also makes a cameo in the 2008 film ''Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist'' as a drunk man who mistakes the main character's Yugo for a taxi. Meyers is currently writing and will star in a movie called ''Key Party''. He also starred in the 2004 comedy ''See This Movie'' with John Cho. In July 2008, Meyers directed the web series ''The Line'' on Crackle. Meyers has hosted the Webby Awards twice, in 2008 and 2009. In 2009, Meyers hosted the Microsoft Company Meeting at Safeco Field in Seattle, WA. Meyers hosted the 2010 and 2011 ESPY Awards on ESPN. In 2011, Seth Meyers was the keynote speaker at the White House Correspondents Association Dinner on April 30.

''Saturday Night Live''

Meyers joined the ''SNL'' cast in 2001. In 2005, he was promoted to writing supervisor, and in January 2006 he became co-head writer, sharing the role with Tina Fey and Andrew Steele. In 2004, he auditioned to co-anchor "Weekend Update" with Fey, but lost out to Amy Poehler. With Fey's departure, Meyers became head writer for the 2006–2007 season and also took on the role of Weekend Update co-anchor with Amy Poehler. When Poehler left the show during the 2008–2009 season, Meyers anchored solo. In fall 2009, Meyers co-anchored two episodes of Saturday Night Live Weekend Update Thursday with Poehler.

During the 2008 United States presidential election, while appearing on ''The Late Show with David Letterman'', former SNL cast member Fey credited Meyers with writing the sketches involving Fey's impression of Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin.

On ''SNL'', Meyers has impersonated such figures as John Kerry, Michael Caine, Anderson Cooper, Carrot Top, Prince Charles, Ryan Seacrest, Sean Penn, Stone Phillips, Tobey Maguire, Peyton Manning, Ben Curtis (also known as the Dell Dude), Ty Pennington, Bill Cowher, Brian Williams, Nicollette Sheridan, Wade Robson, Donald Trump, Jr., Tom Cruise, and Kevin Federline. His recurring characters include Zach Ricky, host of the kids' hidden camera show "Pranksters"; Nerod, the receptionist in the recurring sketch "Appalachian Emergency Room"; David Zinger, a scientist who often insults his fellow workers; DJ Johnathan Feinstein, the DJ on the webcam show "Jarett's Room"; Dan Needler, half of a married couple "that should be divorced," (opposite Amy Poehler); and William Fitzpatrick, from the Irish talk show "Top o' the Morning."

Meyers supported and picketed during the 2007–2008 Writers Guild of America strike. When interviewed he said, "We all know how lucky we are to have the jobs we have. We're not asking for much. You have to change the rules because people are watching TV in a different way." Even so, he mentioned in interviews that he regretted missing much of the presidential election primary season.

Other pursuits

Meyers won the third season of Bravo's ''Celebrity Poker Showdown'' and donated the $100,000 prize to the Boston-based Jimmy Fund. In 2008, Meyers donated over $4,000 to Barack Obama's presidential campaign. Meyers and SNL castmate Bill Hader penned a Spider-Man one-shot entitled "The Short Halloween". It was illustrated by Kevin Maguire and came out May 29, 2009, to positive reviews. Meyers, along with Mike Shoemaker of ''SNL'', created an animated half-hour series "The Awesomes" that was picked up by MTV and will be produced by Lorne Michaels's production company, Broadway Video. He was also a guest speaker at the 2011 White House Press Correspondents Dinner.

Personal life

Meyers is an avid fan of the Boston Red Sox, Boston Celtics and the Pittsburgh Steelers, his father being a Pittsburgh native. He is the older brother of actor Josh Meyers, who, like Seth, has done work on a sketch comedy show. Josh Meyers was a cast member on ''Saturday Night Live'''s former rival show ''MADtv''.

Filmography

See This Movie ''Perception'' ''American Dreamz'' ''Spring Breakdown'' ''Journey to the Center of the Earth (2008 film) ''I Don't Know How She Does It''

+ Films
Year	Title	Role
rowspan="2"	2004	|	Jake Barrymore
''Maestro''	Tim Healy
rowspan="2"	2005	|	Steven
''The Adventures of Big Handsome Guy and his Little Friend''	Disgruntled Dork
rowspan="1"	2006	|	Chet Krogl
rowspan="1"	2007	|	William Rushfield
rowspan="2"	2008	Journey to the Center of the Earth'' ||	Professor Alan Kitzens
''Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist''	Drunk Guy in Yugo
rowspan="2"	2011	|	Unspecified Role
''New Year's Eve (film)	New Year's Eve''	Griffin

References

External links

in 2008

Official SNL cast biography

Live from New York: It’s Sunday Afternoon! conversation with Fred Armisen, Andy Samberg, Jason Sudeikis, Kenan Thompson, and Kristen Wiig at The New Yorker Festival, October 2010

Category:1973 births Category:Living people Category:Actors from New Hampshire Category:American comedians Category:American film actors Category:American television actors Category:American television writers Category:ImprovOlympics Category:Northwestern University alumni Category:People from Hillsborough County, New Hampshire Category:20th-century actors Category:21st-century actors

es:Seth Meyers fr:Seth Meyers nl:Seth Meyers pl:Seth Meyers pt:Seth Meyers ru:Майерс, Сет sv:Seth Meyers

name	Christopher Hitchens
birth name	Christopher Eric Hitchens
birth date	April 13, 1949
birth place	Portsmouth, England
death date	December 15, 2011
death place	Houston, Texas, U.S.
occupation	Writer, journalist, public speaker
alma mater	Balliol College, Oxford
nationality	English American
citizenship	British and American
religion	None
subject	Politics, religion, history, biography, literature
spouse
relatives	Peter Hitchens (brother)
influences	George Orwell, Leszek Kolakowski, Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson, George Eliot, Karl Marx, Leon Trotsky, Rosa Luxemburg, John Stuart Mill, Joseph Heller, Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Noam Chomsky, Gore Vidal, Edward Said, Salman Rushdie, Vladimir Nabokov, Richard Llewellyn, Aldous Huxley, PG Wodehouse, Evelyn Waugh, Richard Hofstadter, Paul Mark Scott, James Fenton, James Joyce, Albert Camus, Oscar Wilde, Conor Cruise O'Brien, Martin Amis, Kingsley Amis, Ian McEwan, Colm Tóibín, Bertrand Russell, Wilfred Owen, Israel Shahak, Isaiah Berlin, Émile Zola, W. H. Auden, Susan Sontag
influenced	Johann Hari, Martin Amis, Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins
signature	CH Signature 2.jpg|200px
website	}}

Christopher Eric Hitchens, nicknamed "Hitch", (13 April 1949 – 15 December 2011) was an English American author, essayist and journalist, whose books, essays, and journalistic career spanned more than four decades. He was a columnist and literary critic for ''The Atlantic'', ''Free Inquiry'', ''The Nation'', ''Salon'', ''Slate'', ''Vanity Fair'', ''World Affairs'', and became a media fellow at the Hoover Institution in September 2008. He was a staple of talk shows and lecture circuits and in 2005 was voted the world's fifth top public intellectual in a ''Prospect''/''Foreign Policy'' poll.

Hitchens was known for his admiration of George Orwell, Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson and for his excoriating critiques of Mother Teresa, Bill and Hillary Clinton, Henry Kissinger and Britain's royal family, among others. His confrontational style of debate made him both a lauded and controversial figure. As a political observer, polemicist and self-defined radical, he rose to prominence as a fixture of the left-wing publications in his native Britain and in the United States. His departure from the established political left began in 1989 after what he called the "tepid reaction" of the Western left following Ayatollah Khomeini's issue of a ''fatwā'' calling for the murder of Salman Rushdie. The September 11 attacks strengthened his internationalist embrace of an interventionist foreign policy, and his vociferous criticism of what he called "fascism with an Islamic face". His numerous editorials in support of the Iraq War caused some to label him a neoconservative, although Hitchens insisted he was not "a conservative of any kind".

Identified as a champion of the "New Atheism" movement, Hitchens described himself as an antitheist and a believer in the philosophical values of the Enlightenment. Hitchens said that a person "could be an atheist and wish that belief in god were correct", but that "an antitheist, a term I'm trying to get into circulation, is someone who is relieved that there's no evidence for such an assertion." According to Hitchens, the concept of a god or a supreme being is a totalitarian belief that destroys individual freedom, and that free expression and scientific discovery should replace religion as a means of teaching ethics and defining human civilization. He wrote at length on atheism and the nature of religion in his 2007 book ''God Is Not Great''.

Though Hitchens retained his British citizenship, he became a United States citizen on the steps of the Jefferson Memorial on 13 April 2007, his 58th birthday. Asteroid 57901 Hitchens is named after him. His memoir, ''Hitch-22'', was published in June 2010. Touring for the book was cut short later in the same month so he could begin treatment for newly diagnosed esophageal cancer. On 15 December 2011, Hitchens died from pneumonia, a complication of his cancer, in the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas.

Life and career

Early life and education

His mother, Yvonne Jean (née Hickman), and father, Eric Ernest Hitchens (1909–1987), met in Scotland while both were serving in the Royal Navy during World War II. Yvonne was at the time a "Wren" (a member of the Women's Royal Naval Service), and Eric a "purse-lipped and silent" commander, whose ship HMS ''Jamaica'' helped sink Nazi Germany's battleship ''Scharnhorst'' in the Battle of the North Cape. His father's naval career required the family to move a number of times from base to base throughout Britain and its dependencies, including in Malta, where Christopher's brother Peter was born in Sliema in 1951.

Hitchens's mother having argued that "if there is going to be an upper class in this country, then Christopher is going to be in it,", in the late fifties and early sixties he was educated at Mount House School in Tavistock in Devon, then at the independent Leys School in Cambridge, and then at Balliol College in Oxford, where he was tutored by Steven Lukes and read philosophy, politics, and economics. Hitchens was "bowled over" in his adolescence by Richard Llewellyn's ''How Green Was My Valley'', Arthur Koestler's ''Darkness at Noon,'' Fyodor Dostoyevsky's ''Crime and Punishment'', R. H. Tawney's critique on ''Religion and the Rise of Capitalism,'' and the works of George Orwell. In 1968, he took part in the TV quiz show ''University Challenge''.

Hitchens has written of his homosexual experiences when in boarding school in his memoir, ''Hitch-22''. These experiences continued in his college years, when he allegedly had relationships with two men who eventually became a part of the Thatcher government.

In the 1960s Hitchens joined the political left, drawn by his anger over the Vietnam War, nuclear weapons, racism, and "oligarchy", including that of "the unaccountable corporation". He would express affinity with the politically charged countercultural and protest movements of the 1960s and 1970s. However, he deplored the rife recreational drug use of the time, which he describes as hedonistic.

He joined the Labour Party in 1965, but along with the majority of the Labour students' organization was expelled in 1967, because of what Hitchens called "Prime Minister Harold Wilson's contemptible support for the war in Vietnam". Under the influence of Peter Sedgwick, who translated the writings of Russian revolutionary and Soviet dissident Victor Serge, Hitchens forged an ideological interest in Trotskyist and anti-Stalinist socialism. Shortly after he joined "a small but growing post-Trotskyist Luxemburgist sect".

Journalistic career (1970–1981)

Hitchens began working as a correspondent for the magazine ''International Socialism'', published by the International Socialists, the forerunners of today's British Socialist Workers Party. This group was broadly Trotskyist, but differed from more orthodox Trotskyist groups in its refusal to defend communist states as "workers' states". Their slogan was "Neither Washington nor Moscow but International Socialism".

Hitchens left Oxford with a third class degree. His first job was with the London ''Times Higher Education Supplement'', where he served as social science editor. Hitchens admitted that he hated the position, and was later fired; he recalled, "I sometimes think if I'd been any good at that job, I might still be doing it." In the 1970s, he went on to work for the ''New Statesman'', where he became friends with the authors Martin Amis and Ian McEwan, among others. At the ''New Statesman'' he acquired a reputation as a fierce left-winger, aggressively attacking targets such as Henry Kissinger, the Vietnam War, and the Roman Catholic Church.

In November 1973, Hitchens' mother committed suicide in Athens in a suicide pact with her lover, a former clergyman named Timothy Bryan. They overdosed on sleeping pills in adjoining hotel rooms, and Bryan slashed his wrists in the bathtub. Hitchens flew alone to Athens to recover his mother's body. Hitchens said he thought his mother was pressured into suicide by fear that her husband would learn of her infidelity, as their marriage had been strained and unhappy. Both her children were then independent adults. While in Greece, Hitchens reported on the constitutional crisis of the military junta. It became his first leading article for the ''New Statesman''.

American career (1981–2011)

After moving to the United States in 1981, Hitchens wrote for ''The Nation'', where he penned vociferous critiques of Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush and American foreign policy in South and Central America. He became a contributing editor of ''Vanity Fair'' in 1992, writing ten columns a year. He left ''The Nation'' in 2002 after profoundly disagreeing with other contributors over the Iraq War. There is speculation that Hitchens was the inspiration for Tom Wolfe's character Peter Fallow in the 1987 novel ''The Bonfire of the Vanities'', but others — including Hitchens (or he indicated as such while alive) — believe it to be ''Spy Magazine''s "Ironman Nightlife Decathlete" Anthony Haden-Guest. In 1987, his father died from cancer of the esophagus.

Hitchens spent part of his early career in journalism as a foreign correspondent in Cyprus. Through his work there he met his first wife Eleni Meleagrou, a Greek Cypriot, with whom he had two children, Alexander and Sophia. His son, Alexander Meleagrou-Hitchens, born in 1984, has worked as a researcher for London think tanks the Policy Exchange and the Centre for Social Cohesion. Hitchens continued writing essay-style correspondence pieces from a variety of locales, including Chad, Uganda and the Darfur region of Sudan. His work took him to over 60 countries. In 1991 he received a Lannan Literary Award for Nonfiction.

Before Hitchens' political shift, the American author and polemicist Gore Vidal was apt to speak of Hitchens as his "Dauphin" or "heir". In 2010, Hitchens attacked Vidal in a ''Vanity Fair'' piece headlined "Vidal Loco," calling him a "crackpot" for his adoption of 9/11 conspiracy theories. Also, on the back of his book ''Hitch-22,'' among the praise from notable writers and figures, a Vidal quote endorsing Hitchens as his successor is crossed out with a red 'X' and a message saying "NO C.H." His strong advocacy of the war in Iraq had gained Hitchens a wider readership, and in September 2005 he was named one of the "Top 100 Public Intellectuals" by ''Foreign Policy'' and ''Prospect'' magazines. An online poll ranked the 100 intellectuals, but the magazines noted that the rankings of Hitchens (5), Noam Chomsky (1), and Abdolkarim Soroush (15) were partly due to supporters publicising the vote.

In 2007 Hitchens' work for ''Vanity Fair'' won him the National Magazine Award in the category "Columns and Commentary". He was a finalist once more in the same category in 2008 for some of his columns in ''Slate'' but lost out to Matt Taibbi of ''Rolling Stone''. He won the National Magazine Award for Columns about Cancer in 2011. Hitchens also served on the Advisory Board of Secular Coalition for America and offered advice to Coalition on the acceptance and inclusion of nontheism in American life.

Literature reviews

Hitchens wrote a monthly essay on books in ''The Atlantic'' and contributed occasionally to other literary journals. One of his books, ''Unacknowledged Legislation: Writers in the Public Sphere'', is a collection of such works, and ''Love, Poverty and War'' contains a section devoted to literary essays. In ''Why Orwell Matters'', he defends Orwell's writings against modern critics as relevant today and progressive for his time. In the 2008 book ''Christopher Hitchens and His Critics: Terror, Iraq, and the Left'', many literary critiques are included of essays and other books of writers, such as David Horowitz and Edward Said.

During a three-hour interview by ''Book TV'', he named authors who have had influence on his views, including Aldous Huxley, George Orwell, Evelyn Waugh, P. G. Wodehouse and Conor Cruise O'Brien.

Political views

The ''San Francisco Chronicle'' referred to Hitchens as a "gadfly with gusto". In 2009, Hitchens was listed by ''Forbes'' magazine as one of the "25 most influential liberals in the U.S. media". However, the same article noted that he would "likely be aghast to find himself on this list", since it reduces his self-styled radicalism to mere liberalism. Hitchens' political perspective can be found in his wide ranging writings which include many of the political dialogues he published.

Socialism

Hitchens became a socialist "largely [as] the outcome of a study of history, taking sides ... in the battles over industrialism and war and empire." In 2001, he told Rhys Southan of ''Reason'' magazine that he could no longer say "I am a socialist." Socialists, he claimed, had ceased to offer a positive alternative to the capitalist system. Capitalism had become the more revolutionary economic system, and he welcomed globalisation as "innovative and internationalist", but added, "I don't think that the contradictions, as we used to say, of the system, are by any means all resolved." He stated that he had a renewed interest in the freedom of the individual from the state, but that he still considered libertarianism "ahistorical" both on the world stage and in the work of creating a stable and functional society, adding that libertarians are "more worried about the over-mighty state than the unaccountable corporation" whereas "the present state of affairs ... combines the worst of bureaucracy with the worst of the insurance companies."

In 2006, in a town hall meeting in Pennsylvania debating the Jewish Tradition with Martin Amis, Hitchens commented on his political philosophy by stating, "I am no longer a socialist, but I still am a Marxist". In a June 2010 interview with ''The New York Times'', he stated that "I still think like a Marxist in many ways. I think the materialist conception of history is valid. I consider myself a very conservative Marxist". In 2009, in an article for ''The Atlantic'' entitled "The Revenge of Karl Marx", Hitchens frames the late-2000s recession in terms of Marx's economic analysis and notes how much Marx admired the capitalist system he was calling for the end of, but says that Marx ultimately failed to grasp how revolutionary capitalist innovation was. Hitchens was an admirer of Che Guevara, commenting that "[Che's] death meant a lot to me and countless like me at the time, he was a role model, albeit an impossible one for us bourgeois romantics insofar as he went and did what revolutionaries were meant to do — fought and died for his beliefs." However, in an essay written in 1997, he distanced himself somewhat from some of Che's actions.

He continued to regard both Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky as great men, and the October Revolution as a necessary event in the modernization of Russia. In 2005, Hitchens praised Lenin's creation of "secular Russia" and his discrediting of the Russian Orthodox Church, describing it as "an absolute warren of backwardness and evil and superstition".

Iraq War and the war on terror

The years after the ''fatwa'' issued against Salman Rushdie saw Hitchens looking for allies and friends. In the United States he became increasingly critical of what he called "excuse making" on the left. At the same time, he was attracted to the foreign policy ideas of some on the Republican-right that promoted pro-liberalism intervention, especially the neoconservative group that included Paul Wolfowitz. Around this time, he befriended the Iraqi dissident and businessman Ahmed Chalabi. In 2004, Hitchens stated that neoconservative support for US intervention in Iraq convinced him that he was "on the same side as the neo-conservatives" when it came to contemporary foreign policy issues. Hitchens had also been known to refer to his association with "temporary neocon allies".

Following the September 11 attacks, Hitchens and Noam Chomsky debated the nature of radical Islam and the proper response to it. In October 2001, Hitchens wrote criticisms of Chomsky in ''The Nation''. Chomsky responded and Hitchens issued a rebuttal to Chomsky to which Chomsky again responded. Approximately a year after the September 11 attacks and his exchanges with Chomsky, Hitchens left ''The Nation'', claiming that its editors, readers and contributors considered John Ashcroft a bigger threat than Osama bin Laden, and that they were making excuses on behalf of Islamist terrorism; in the following months he wrote articles increasingly at odds with his colleagues.

Christopher Hitchens argued the case for the Iraq War in a 2003 collection of essays entitled ''A Long Short War: The Postponed Liberation of Iraq'', and he has held numerous public debates on the topic with George Galloway and Scott Ritter. Though he admitted to the numerous failures of the war, and its high civilian casualties, he stood by the position that deposing Saddam Hussein was a long-overdue responsibility of the United States, after decades of poor policy, and that holding free elections in Iraq had been a success not to be scoffed at. He argued that a continued fight in Iraq against insurgents, whether they be former Saddam loyalists or Islamic extremists, was a fight worth having, and that those insurgents, not American forces, should have been the ones taking the brunt of the blame for a slow reconstruction and high civilian casualties.

Criticism of George W. Bush

Prior to September 11, 2001, and the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan, Hitchens was highly critical of Bush's "non-interventionist" foreign policy. He also criticized Bush's support of intelligent design and capital punishment.

Although Hitchens defended Bush's post-September 11 foreign policy, he criticized the actions of U.S. troops in Abu Ghraib and Haditha, and the U.S. government's use of waterboarding, which he unhesitatingly deemed as torture after being invited by ''Vanity Fair'' to voluntarily undergo it. In January 2006, Hitchens joined with four other individuals and four organizations, including the American Civil Liberties Union and Greenpeace, as plaintiffs in a lawsuit, ''ACLU v. NSA'', challenging Bush's warrantless domestic spying program; the lawsuit was filed by the ACLU.

Presidential endorsements

Hitchens would elaborate on his political views and ideological shift in a discussion with Eric Alterman on Bloggingheads.tv. In this discussion Hitchens revealed himself to be a supporter of Ralph Nader in the 2000 U.S. presidential election, who was disenchanted with the candidacy of both George W. Bush and Al Gore.

Hitchens made a brief return to ''The Nation'' just before the 2004 U.S. presidential election and wrote that he was "slightly" for Bush; shortly afterwards, ''Slate'' polled its staff on their positions on the candidates and mistakenly printed Hitchens' vote as pro-John Kerry. Hitchens shifted his opinion to "neutral", saying: "It's absurd for liberals to talk as if Kristallnacht is impending with Bush, and it's unwise and indecent for Republicans to equate Kerry with capitulation. There's no one to whom he can surrender, is there? I think that the nature of the jihadist enemy will decide things in the end".

In the 2008 presidential election, Hitchens in an article for ''Slate'' stated, "I used to call myself a single-issue voter on the essential question of defending civilization against its terrorist enemies and their totalitarian protectors, and on that 'issue' I hope I can continue to expose and oppose any ambiguity." He was critical of both main party candidates, Barack Obama and John McCain. Hitchens went on to support Obama, calling McCain "senile", and his choice of running mate Sarah Palin "absurd", calling Palin a "pathological liar" and a "national disgrace".

Blumenthal–Hitchens feud

Hitchens and Carol Blue chose to submit an affidavit to the trial managers of the Republican Party in the trial of impeachment of Bill Clinton. In the affidavit, Blue and Hitchens swore that their then-friend, Sidney Blumenthal, had described Monica Lewinsky as a stalker. This allegation contradicted Blumenthal's own sworn deposition in the trial, and it resulted in a hostile exchange of opinion in the public sphere between Hitchens and Blumenthal. Following the publication of Blumenthal's ''The Clinton Wars,'' Hitchens wrote several pieces in which he accused Blumenthal of manipulating the facts.

Israel–Palestine

Hitchens had said of himself, "I am an Anti-Zionist. I'm one of those people of Jewish descent who believes that Zionism would be a mistake even if there were no Palestinians."

A review of his autobiography ''Hitch-22'' in the ''Jewish Daily Forward'' refers to Hitchens as "a prominent anti-Zionist" and says that he views Zionism "as an injustice against the Palestinians". Others have commented on his anti-Zionism as well suggesting that his memoir was "marred by the occasional eruption of [his] anti-Zionism". The ''Jewish Daily Forward'' quoted him saying of Israel's prospects for the future, "I have never been able to banish the queasy inner suspicion that Israel just did not look, or feel, either permanent or sustainable."

In ''Slate'', Hitchens pondered the notion that, instead of curing antisemitism through the creation of a Jewish state, "Zionism has only replaced and repositioned" it, saying: "there are three groups of 6 million Jews. The first 6 million live in what the Zionist movement used to call Palestine. The second 6 million live in the United States. The third 6 million are distributed mainly among Russia, France, Britain, and Argentina. Only the first group lives daily in range of missiles that can be (and are) launched by people who hate Jews." Hitchens argued that instead of supporting Zionism, Jews should help "secularize and reform their own societies", believing that unless one is religious, "what the hell are you doing in the greater Jerusalem area in the first place?"

During a town hall function in Pennsylvania with Martin Amis, Hitchens stated that "one must not insult or degrade or humiliate people" and that he "would be opposed to this maltreatment of the Palestinians if it took place on a remote island with no geopolitical implications". Hitchens described Zionism as "an ethno-nationalist quasi-religious ideology" and stated his desire that if possible, he would "re-wind the tape [to] stop Hertzl from telling the initial demagogic lie (actually two lies) that a land without a people needs a people without a land".

He continued to say that Zionism "nonetheless has founded a sort of democratic state which isn't any worse in its practice than many others with equally dubious origins." He stated that settlement in order to achieve security for Israel is "doomed to fail in the worst possible way", and the cessation of this "appallingly racist and messianic delusion" would "confront the internal clerical and chauvinist forces which want to instate a theocracy for Jews". However, Hitchens contended that the "solution of withdrawal would not satisfy the jihadists" and wondered "What did they imagine would be the response of the followers of the Prophet [Muhammad]?" Hitchens bemoaned the transference into religious terrorism of Arab secularism as a means of democratization: "the most depressing and wretched spectacle of the past decade, for all those who care about democracy and secularism, has been the degeneration of Palestinian Arab nationalism into the theocratic and thanatocratic hell of Hamas and Islamic Jihad". He maintained that the Israel-Palestine conflict is a "trivial squabble" that has become "so dangerous to all of us" because of "the faith-based element."

Hitchens collaborated on this issue with prominent Palestinian advocate Edward Said, in 1988 publishing ''Blaming the Victims: Spurious Scholarship and the Palestinian Question''.

Domestic policy

Hitchens actively supported drug policy reform and called for the abolition of the "War on Drugs" which he described as an "authoritarian war" during a debate with William F. Buckley. He supported the legalization of cannabis for both medical and recreational purposes, citing it as a cure for glaucoma and as treatment for numerous side-effects induced by chemotherapy, including severe nausea, describing the prohibition of the drug as "sadistic". On the issue of abortion, Hitchens prioritized in affirming that he believed a fetus should be regarded as an "unborn child", but opposed the overturning of ''Roe v. Wade'' and supported the development of medical abortion techniques, and fundamentally believed in access to contraceptives and reproductive rights as "the only thing that is known to cure poverty", and in order to prevent surgical abortion altogether.

Other

Other issues Hitchens wrote on the subjects of included his support for the reunification of Ireland, abolition of the British monarchy, and his condemnation of the war crimes of Slobodan Milošević and Franjo Tuđman in Yugoslavia, and the Bosnian War.

Critiques of specific individuals

Hitchens was known for his scathing critiques of public figures. Three figures — Bill Clinton, Henry Kissinger, and Mother Teresa — were the targets of three separate full length texts, ''No One Left to Lie To: The Triangulations of William Jefferson Clinton'', ''The Trial of Henry Kissinger'', and ''The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice''. Hitchens also wrote book-length biographical essays about Thomas Jefferson (''Thomas Jefferson: Author of America''), George Orwell (''Why Orwell Matters''), and Thomas Paine (''Thomas Paine's "Rights of Man": A Biography'').

However, the majority of Hitchens's critiques took the form of short opinion pieces, some of the more notable being his critiques of: Jerry Falwell, George Galloway, Mel Gibson, Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama, Michael Moore, Daniel Pipes, Ronald Reagan, Jesse Helms, and Cindy Sheehan.

Views on religion

Hitchens often spoke out against the Abrahamic religions, or what he called "the three great monotheisms" (Judaism, Christianity and Islam). He said: "The real axis of evil is Christianity, Judaism, and Islam". In his book, ''God Is Not Great'', Hitchens expanded his criticism to include all religions, including those rarely criticized by Western secularists such as Hinduism and neo-paganism. His book had mixed reactions, from praise in ''The New York Times'' for his "logical flourishes and conundrums" to accusations of "intellectual and moral shabbiness" in the ''Financial Times''. ''God Is Not Great'' was nominated for a National Book Award on 10 October 2007.

Hitchens contended that organized religion is "the main source of hatred in the world", "[v]iolent, irrational, intolerant, allied to racism, tribalism, and bigotry, invested in ignorance and hostile to free inquiry, contemptuous of women and coercive toward children", and that accordingly it "ought to have a great deal on its conscience". In ''God Is Not Great'', Hitchens contends that:

[A]bove all, we are in need of a renewed Enlightenment, which will base itself on the proposition that the proper study of mankind is man and woman [referencing Alexander Pope]. This Enlightenment will not need to depend, like its predecessors, on the heroic breakthroughs of a few gifted and exceptionally courageous people. It is within the compass of the average person. The study of literature and poetry, both for its own sake and for the eternal ethical questions with which it deals, can now easily depose the scrutiny of sacred texts that have been found to be corrupt and confected. The pursuit of unfettered scientific inquiry, and the availability of new findings to masses of people by electronic means, will revolutionize our concepts of research and development. Very importantly, the divorce between the sexual life and fear, and the sexual life and disease, and the sexual life and tyranny, can now at last be attempted, on the sole condition that we banish all religions from the discourse. And all this and more is, for the first time in our history, within the reach if not the grasp of everyone.

His book rendered him one of the major advocates of the "New Atheism" movement, and he also was made an Honorary Associate of the National Secular Society. Hitchens said he would accept an invitation from any religious leader who wished to debate with him. He also served on the advisory board of the Secular Coalition for America, a lobbying group for atheists and humanists in Washington, DC. In 2007, Hitchens began a series of written debates on the question "Is Christianity Good for the World?" with Christian theologian and pastor, Douglas Wilson, published in ''Christianity Today'' magazine. This exchange eventually became a book by the same title in 2008. During their book tour to promote the book, film producer Darren Doane sent a film crew to accompany them. Doane produced the film ''Collision'': "Is Christianity GOOD for the World?" which was released on 27 October 2009.

On 26 November 2010 Hitchens appeared in Toronto, Canada at the Munk Debates, where he debated religion with former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, a convert to Roman Catholicism. Blair argued religion is a force for good, while Hitchens was against it. Preliminary results on the Munk website said 56 per cent of the votes backed the proposition (Hitchens' position) before hearing the debate, with 22 per cent against (Blair's position), and 21 per cent undecided, with the undecided voters leaning toward Hitchens, giving him a 68 per cent to 32 per cent victory over Blair, after the debate.

In February 2006, Hitchens helped organize a pro-Denmark rally outside the Danish Embassy in Washington, DC in response to the Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy.

Hitchens was accused by William A. Donohue of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Liberties of being particularly anti-Catholic. Hitchens responded "when religion is attacked in this country [...] the Catholic Church comes in for a little more than its fair share". Hitchens had also been accused of anti-Catholic bigotry by others, including Brent Bozell, Tom Piatak in ''The American Conservative'', and UCLA Law Professor Stephen Bainbridge. In an interview with ''Radar'' in 2007, Hitchens said that if the Christian right's agenda were implemented in the United States "It wouldn't last very long and would, I hope, lead to civil war, which they will lose, but for which it would be a great pleasure to take part." When Joe Scarborough on 12 March 2004 asked Hitchens whether he was "consumed with hatred for conservative Catholics", Hitchens responded that he was not and that he just thinks that "all religious belief is sinister and infantile". Piatak claimed that "A straightforward description of all Hitchens's anti-Catholic outbursts would fill every page in this magazine", noting particularly Hitchens' assertion that U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Roberts should not be confirmed because of his faith.

Hitchens was raised nominally Christian, and went to Christian boarding schools but from an early age declined to participate in communal prayers. Later in life, Hitchens discovered that he was of partially Jewish ancestry. According to Hitchens, when his brother Peter took his fiancée to meet their maternal grandmother, who was then in her 90s, she said of his fiancée, "She's Jewish, isn't she?" and then announced: "Well, I've got something to tell you. So are you." Hitchens found out that his maternal grandmother, Dorothy Levin, was raised Jewish (Dorothy's father and maternal grandfather had both been born Jewish, and Dorothy's maternal grandmother – Hitchens' matrilineal great-great-grandmother – was a convert to Judaism). Hitchens' maternal grandfather converted to Judaism before marrying Dorothy Levin. Hitchens' Jewish-born ancestors were immigrants from Eastern Europe (including Poland). In an article in the ''The Guardian'' on 14 April 2002, Hitchens stated that he could be considered Jewish because Jewish descent is matrilineal. In a 2010 interview at New York Public Library, Hitchens stated that he was against circumcision, a Jewish tradition, and that he believed "if anyone wants to saw off bits of their genitalia they should do when they're grown up and have made the decision for themselves".

In February 2010, he was named to the Freedom From Religion Foundation's Honorary Board of distinguished achievers.

Personal life

Marriages and children

Hitchens married Eleni Meleagrou, a Greek Cypriot, in a Greek Orthodox church in 1981; the couple had a son, Alexander and a daughter, Sophia. In 1989 Hitchens left Meleagrou for Carol Blue, an American writer. The couple married in a New York synagogue; they had a daughter, Antonia.

Relationship with his younger brother

Hitchens' younger brother by two-and-a-half years, Peter Hitchens, is a Christian and socially conservative journalist in London, although, like his brother, he had been a Trotskyist in the 1970s. The brothers had a protracted falling-out after Peter wrote that Christopher had once joked that he "didn't care if the Red Army watered its horses at Hendon" (a suburb of London). Christopher denied having said this and broke off contact with his brother. He then referred to his brother as "an idiot" in a letter to ''Commentary'', and the dispute spilled into other publications as well. Christopher eventually expressed a willingness to reconcile and to meet his new nephew (born in 1999); shortly thereafter the brothers gave several interviews together in which they said that their personal disagreements had been resolved. They appeared together on 21 June 2007 edition of the BBC current affairs discussion show ''Question Time''. The pair engaged in a formal televised debate for the first time on 3 April 2008, at Grand Valley State University, and at the Pew Forum on 12 October 2010.

Smoking and drinking

A June 2006 profile on Hitchens by NPR stated: "Hitchens is known for his love of cigarettes and alcohol — and his prodigious literary output." However, in late 2007 he gave up smoking, undergoing an epiphany in Madison, Wisconsin. His brother Peter later wrote of his surprise at this decision. It was while writing his memoir ''Hitch-22'' that he resumed smoking cigarettes and continued until his cancer diagnosis. Hitchens admitted to drinking heavily; in 2003 he wrote that his daily intake of alcohol was enough "to kill or stun the average mule", noting that many great writers "did some of their finest work when blotto, smashed, polluted, shitfaced, squiffy, whiffled, and three sheets to the wind."

British politician George Galloway, founder of the socialist Respect Party, on his way to testify in front of a United States Senate sub-committee investigating the scandals in the U.N. Oil-for-Food programme, called Hitchens a "drink-sodden ex-Trotskyist popinjay", to which Hitchens quickly replied, "only some of which is true". Later, in a column for ''Slate'' promoting his debate with Galloway which was to take place on 14 September 2005, he elaborated on his prior response: "He says that I am an ex-Trotskyist (true), a 'popinjay' (true enough, since the word's original Webster's definition is a target for arrows and shots), and that I cannot hold a drink (here I must protest)."

Oliver Burkeman writes, "Since the parting of ways on Iraq [...] Hitchens claims to have detected a new, personalised nastiness in the attacks on him, especially over his fabled consumption of alcohol. He welcomes being attacked as a drinker 'because I always think it's a sign of victory when they move on to the ad hominem.' He drinks, he says, 'because it makes other people less boring. I have a great terror of being bored. But I can work with or without it. It takes quite a lot to get me to slur.'"

In the question and answer session following a speech Hitchens gave to the Commonwealth Club of California on 9 July 2009, one audience member asked what was Hitchens' favorite whisky. Hitchens replied that "the best blended scotch in the history of the world" is Johnnie Walker Black Label. He also playfully indicated that it was the favorite whisky of, among others, the Iraqi Ba'ath Party, the Palestinian Authority, the Libyan dictatorship, and "large branches of the Saudi Arabian Royal Family". He concluded his answer by calling it the "breakfast of champions" and exhorted the audience to "accept no substitute".

In his 2010 memoir ''Hitch-22'', Hitchens wrote: "There was a time when I could reckon to outperform all but the most hardened imbibers, but I now drink relatively carefully." He described his current drinking routine on working-days as follows: "At about half past midday, a decent slug of Mr. Walker's amber restorative, cut with Perrier water (an ideal delivery system) and no ice. At luncheon, perhaps half a bottle of red wine: not always more but never less. Then back to the desk, and ready to repeat the treatment at the evening meal. No 'after dinner drinks' — ​most especially nothing sweet and never, ever any brandy. 'Nightcaps' depend on how well the day went, but always the mixture as before. No mixing: no messing around with a gin here and a vodka there."

Reflecting on the lifestyle that supported his career as a writer he said:

I always knew there was a risk in the bohemian lifestyle ... I decided to take it because it helped my concentration, it stopped me being bored — it stopped other people being boring. It would make me want to prolong the conversation and enhance the moment. If you ask: would I do it again? I would probably say yes. But I would have quit earlier hoping to get away with the whole thing. I decided all of life is a wager and I'm going to wager on this bit ... In a strange way I don't regret it. It's just impossible for me to picture life without wine, and other things, fueling the company, keeping me reading, energising me. It worked for me. It really did.

Esophageal cancer and death

In June 2010, Hitchens postponed his book tour for ''Hitch-22'' to undergo treatment for esophageal cancer. He announced that he was undergoing treatment in a ''Vanity Fair'' piece entitled "Topic of Cancer". Hitchens said that he recognised the long-term prognosis was far from positive, and that he would be a "very lucky person to live another five years". In November 2010, Hitchens canceled a scheduled appearance in New York, where he was to debate religion writers David Hazony and Stephen Prothero on the subject of the Ten Commandments. Earlier that year, he published a piece in ''Vanity Fair'' on the subject, and was working on a book about the Ten Commandments as well.

During his illness, Hitchens was under the care of Francis Collins and was the subject of Collins' new cancer treatment which maps out the human genome and selectively targets damaged DNA.

In April 2011, Hitchens was forced to cancel an appearance at the American Atheist Convention, and instead sent a letter that stated, "Nothing would have kept me from joining you except the loss of my voice (at least my speaking voice) which in turn is due to a long argument I am currently having with the specter of death." He closed with "And don't keep the faith." The letter also dismissed the notion of a possible deathbed conversion, in which he claimed that "redemption and supernatural deliverance appears even more hollow and artificial to me than it did before." In June 2011, he spoke to a University of Waterloo audience via a home video link.

In October 2011, Hitchens made a public appearance at the Texas Freethought Convention in Houston, TX. ''Atheist Alliance of America'' was also a participant in the joint convention.

In November 2011, George Eaton wrote in the ''New Statesman'':

The tragedy of Hitchens' illness is that it came at a time when he enjoyed a larger audience than ever. Of his tight circle of friends – Amis, Fenton, McEwan, Rushdie – Hitchens was the last to gain international renown, yet he is now read more widely than any of them." Eaton revealed that Hitchens would like to be remembered as a man who fought totalitarianism in all its forms although many remember him as a "lefty who turned right", and his support of the Iraq War and not his support of the War in Bosnia on the side of the Moslems. Eaton concluded, "The great polemicist is certain to be remembered, but, as he is increasingly aware, perhaps not as he would like."

Hitchens died on December 15th, 2011 at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.

In accordance with his wishes, his body was donated to medical research.

Reactions to death

Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair said, "Christopher Hitchens was a complete one-off, an amazing mixture of writer, journalist, polemicist, and unique character. He was fearless in the pursuit of truth and any cause in which he believed. And there was no belief he held, that he did not advocate with passion, commitment and brilliance. He was an extraordinary, compelling and colorful human being whom it was a privilege to know."

Richard Dawkins, British evolutionary biologist at the University of Oxford and a friend of Hitchens', said, "I think he was one of the greatest orators of all time. He was a polymath, a wit, immensely knowledgeable, and a valiant fighter against all tyrants including imaginary supernatural ones."

Norman Finkelstein, American political scientist and author, wrote, "When I first learned that Hitchens was diagnosed with an excruciating and terminal cancer, it caused me to doubt my atheism. The news came just as Hitchens was about to go on a book tour for his long-awaited memoir. It was as if he was setting out on his victory lap when the adulating crowds were supposed to fawn over him and — wham! — his legs were lopped off at the kneecaps. The irony could not be more perfect: the god that the vindictive but witty Mr. Hitchens made a career scoffing at turns out to be ... vindictive but witty. When I heard that Hitchens was dead, I took a deep breath. The air felt cleaner, as if after a 40-day and 40-night downpour." Finkelstein also added, "I get no satisfaction from Hitchens's passing. Although he was the last to know it, every death is a tragedy, if only for the bereft child — or, as in the case of Cindy Sheehan, bereft parent — left behind.

Sam Harris, American writer and neuroscientist, wrote, "I have been privileged to witness the gratitude that so many people feel for Hitch’s life and work — for, wherever I speak, I meet his fans. On my last book tour, those who attended my lectures could not contain their delight at the mere mention of his name — and many of them came up to get their books signed primarily to request that I pass along their best wishes to him. It was wonderful to see how much Hitch was loved and admired — and to be able to share this with him before the end. I will miss you, brother."

Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health and former head of the Human Genome Project who helped treat Hitchens' illness, wrote, "I will miss Christopher. I will miss the brilliant turn of phrase, the good-natured banter, the wry sideways smile when he was about to make a remark that would make me laugh out loud. No doubt he now knows the answer to the question of whether there is more to the spirit than just atoms and molecules. I hope he was surprised by the answer. I hope to hear him tell about it someday. He will tell it really well."

British columnist and author Peter Hitchens, who had a tumultuous relationship with his older brother Christopher, wrote that he and Christopher "got on surprisingly well in the past few months, better than for about 50 years as it happens," and praised his brother as "courageous."

Irish-American political journalist Alexander Cockburn, founder of the left-wing political magazine ''CounterPunch'' wrote an obituary critical of Hitchens, criticizing his support for the Iraq War, criticisms of Mother Teresa, and criticisms of their mutual friend Edward Said and concluded, "I found the Hitchens cult of recent years entirely mystifying. He endured his final ordeal with pluck, sustained indomitably by his wife Carol."

Tributes followed from the philosopher Daniel Dennett, the physicist Lawrence Krauss, the actor Stephen Fry, the writer Ian McEwan, the philosopher A.C. Grayling; and ''Vanity Fair'', in which he was remembered as an "incomparable critic and masterful rhetorician".

Film and television appearances

As referenced from the Internet Movie Database, Hitchens Web or Charlie Rose. {|class="wikitable" style="text-align:center" |- ! Year ! Film and/or Television |- |1984 |align="left" | ''Opinions'': "Greece to their Rome" |- |1988 |align="left" | ''Frontiers (TV series)'' |- |1993 |align="left" | ''Everything You Need to Know'' |- |1994 |align="left" | ''Tracking Down Maggie: The Unofficial Biography of Margaret Thatcher'' |- |1994 |align="left" | ''Hell's Angel'' |- |1996 |align="left" | ''Where's Elvis This Week?'' |- |1996–2010 |align="left" | ''Charlie Rose (talk show)'' (13 episodes) |- |1998 |align="left" | ''Princess Diana: The Mourning After'' |- |1999–2002 |align="left" | ''Dennis Miller Live'' (TV show) (4 episodes) |- |2002 |align="left" | ''The Trials of Henry Kissinger'' |- |2003 |align="left" | ''Hidden in Plain Sight'' |- |2003–2009 |align="left" | ''Real Time with Bill Maher'' (TV show) (6 episodes) |- |2004 |align="left" | ''Mel Gibson: God's Lethal Weapon'' |- |2004–2006 |align="left" | ''Newsnight'' (TV show) (3 episodes) |- |2004–2010 |align="left" | ''The Daily Show'' (TV show) (4 episodes) |- |2005 |align="left" | ''Penn & Teller: Bullshit!'' (TV show)(1 episode, s03e05) |- |2005 |align="left" | ''The Al Franken Show'' (TV show)(1 episode) |- |2005 |align="left" | ''Confronting Iraq: Conflict and Hope'' |- |2005 |align="left" | ''Heaven on Earth: The Rise and Fall of Socialism'' |- |2005–2008 |align="left" | ''Hardball with Chris Matthews'' (TV show)(3 episodes) |- |2006 |align="left" | ''American Zeitgeist'' |- |2006 |align="left" | ''Blog Wars'' |- |2007 |align="left" | ''Manufacturing Dissent'' |- |2007 |align="left" | ''Question Time (TV series)'' (1 episode) |- |2007 |align="left" | ''Your Mommy Kills Animals'' |- |2007 |align="left" | ''Personal Che'' |- |2007 |align="left" | ''Heckler'' |- |2007 |align="left" | ''In Pot We Trust'' |- |2008 |align="left" | ''Discussions with Richard Dawkins'': Episode 1: "The Four Horsemen" |- |2008 | style="text-align:left;"| ''Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed '' |- |2009 |align="left" | ''Holy Hell'' |- |2009 |align="left" | ''Presidency'' |- |2009 |align="left" | ''Collision: "Is Christianity GOOD for the World?"'' |- |2010 |align="left" | ''Phil Ochs: There But For Fortune'' |}

Selected publications

1984 ''Cyprus''. Quartet. Revised editions as ''Hostage to History: Cyprus from the Ottomans to Kissinger'', 1989 (Farrar, Straus & Giroux) and 1997 (Verso)

1988 ''Blaming the Victims: Spurious Scholarship and the Palestinian Question'' (contributor; co-editor with Edward Said) Verso, ISBN 0-86091-887-4 Reissued, 2001

1990 ''The Monarchy'', Chatto & Windus Ltd

1990 ''Blood, Class and Nostalgia: Anglo-American Ironies'', Farrar Straus & Giroux (T)(June 1990)

1995 ''The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice'', Verso

1997 ''The Parthenon Marbles: The Case for Reunification'', Verso

1999 ''No One Left to Lie To: The Values of the Worst Family'', Verso

2000 ''Unacknowledged Legislation: Writers in the Public Sphere'', Verso

2001 ''The Trial of Henry Kissinger''. Verso.

2001 ''Letters to a Young Contrarian'', Basic Books

2002 ''Why Orwell Matters'' also ''Orwell's Victory'', Basic Books, ISBN 0-465-03050-5

2004 ''Love, Poverty, and War: Journeys and Essays'', Thunder's Mouth, Nation Books, ISBN 1-56025-580-3

2005 ''Thomas Jefferson: Author of America'', Eminent Lives/Atlas Books/HarperCollins Publishers, ISBN 0-06-059896-4

2007 "Thomas Paine's Rights of Man: A Biography ", Atlantic Monthly Press, ISBN 0871139553

2007 ''The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Non-Believer'', [Editor] Perseus Publishing. ISBN 978-0-306-81608-6

2007 ''God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything'', Twelve/Hachette Book Group USA/Warner Books, ISBN 0-446-57980-7 / Published in the UK as ''God Is Not Great: The Case Against Religion'', Atlantic Books, ISBN 978-1-84354-586-6

2008 ''Christopher Hitchens and His Critics: Terror, Iraq and the Left'' (with Simon Cottee and Thomas Cushman), New York University Press

2008 ''Is Christianity Good for the World? — A Debate'' (co-author, with Douglas Wilson), Canon Press, ISBN 1-59128-053-2

2010 ''Hitch-22: A Memoir'', Twelve, ISBN 978-0-446-54033-9

2011 ''Arguably: Essays by Christopher Hitchens'', Twelve. UK edition as ''Arguably: Selected Prose'', Atlantic, ISBN 1-4555-0277-4 / ISBN 978-1-4555-0277-6

References

External links

Daily Hitchens, an archive of material on or by Hitchens

in 2010

Drexel Interview (One-hour video interview) with Paula Marantz Cohen, June 2010

Christopher Hitchens collected news and commentary at ''The Boston Globe''

"Journalist Christopher Hitchens fully embraces the Bush war camp" from the World Socialist Website, October 2002

"Christopher Hitchens" feature story in ''Prospect'' magazine, May 2008

"Incendiary Author Spares No Targets" feature story in ''The New Zealand Herald'', May 2008

"Such, Such are His Joys" David Brooks assessment in ''The New York Times'', 1 July 2010

Hitchens on Dying with Cancer, video interview with ''The Atlantic'', August 2010

"Christopher Hitchens: 'You have to choose your future regrets'" ''The Guardian'', 13 November 2010

"Christopher Hitchens's Jewish Problem" feature article on ''Jewish Ideas Daily,'' 13 December 2010

A debate between Hitchens and Berlinski 2010

Outspoken and outrageous: Christopher Hitchens a 60 Minutes profile aired 6 March 2011

''Booknotes'' interview with Hitchens on ''For the Sake of Argument'', 17 October 1993.

;Articles by Hitchens

Contributor page at ''Vanity Fair''

Column archive at ''The Atlantic''

Article archive at ''The Guardian''

Hitchens articles at ''Slate''

Article archive at Journalisted

Category:1949 births Category:2011 deaths Category:Alumni of Balliol College, Oxford Category:Anti-Zionism Category:Anti–Vietnam War activists Category:Antitheists Category:Atheism activists Category:English people of Jewish descent Category:English people of Polish descent Category:British republicans Category:Cancer deaths in Texas Category:Deaths from esophageal cancer Category:English atheists Category:English biographers Category:English emigrants to the United States Category:English essayists Category:English expatriates in the United States Category:English humanists Category:English journalists Category:English Marxists Category:English political writers Category:Genital integrity activists Category:Materialists Category:Naturalized citizens of the United States Category:Old Leysians Category:People from Portsmouth Category:Slate (magazine) people Category:Socialist Workers Party (UK) members Category:The Nation (U.S. magazine) people Category:University Challenge contestants

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name	Stephen Colbert
birth name	Stephen Tyrone Colbert
birth date	May 13, 1964
birth place	Washington, D.C., United States
medium	Theatre, television, film, books
religion	Roman Catholic
nationality	American
active	1984–present
genre	Sketch comedy, news satire, improvisational comedy, character comedy, political satire, observational comedy, blue comedy
subject	American culture, American politics, American conservatism, The Christian Right, political punditry, popular culture, current events, mass media/news media, egomania, xenophobia, anti-intellectualism, sexuality
influences	Don Novello, Bill Cosby, George Carlin, Dean Martin, Jon Stewart, Steve Martin Bill O'Reilly
influenced	Rob Corddry, Ed Helms, Aasif Mandvi
spouse	Evelyn McGee-Colbert (3 children)
notable work	Chuck Noblet in''Strangers with Candy''Stephen Colbert in''The Daily Show'' and''The Colbert Report''Writer,''I Am America (And So Can You!)''Co-writer,''America (The Book)''Phil Ken Sebben and Myron Reducto in ''Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law''Professor Richard Impossible in ''The Venture Bros.''
signature	Stephen Colbert Signature.svg
website	ColbertNation.com

}} Stephen Tyrone Colbert ( or ; born May 13, 1964) is an American political satirist, writer, comedian, television host, and actor. He is the host of Comedy Central's ''The Colbert Report'', a satirical news show in which Colbert portrays a caricatured version of conservative political pundits.

Colbert originally studied to be an actor, but became interested in improvisational theatre when he met famed Second City director Del Close while attending Northwestern University. He first performed professionally as an understudy for Steve Carell at Second City Chicago; among his troupe mates were comedians Paul Dinello and Amy Sedaris, with whom he developed the critically acclaimed sketch comedy series ''Exit 57''.

Colbert also wrote and performed on the short-lived ''Dana Carvey Show'' before collaborating with Sedaris and Dinello again on the cult television series ''Strangers with Candy''. He gained considerable attention for his role on the latter as closeted gay history teacher Chuck Noblet. It was his work as a correspondent on Comedy Central's news-parody series ''The Daily Show'', however, that first introduced him to a wide audience.

In 2005, he left ''The Daily Show with Jon Stewart'' to host a spin-off series, ''The Colbert Report''. Following ''The Daily Show's'' news-parody concept, ''The Colbert Report'' is a parody of personality-driven political opinion shows such as ''The O'Reilly Factor''. Since its debut, the series has established itself as one of Comedy Central's highest-rated series, earning Colbert three Emmy Award nominations and an invitation to perform as featured entertainer at the White House Correspondents' Association Dinner in 2006. Colbert was named one of ''Time's'' 100 most influential people in 2006. His book ''I Am America (And So Can You!)'' was No. 1 on ''The New York Times'' Best Seller list.

Early life

Colbert was born in Washington, D.C. and grew up in Charleston, South Carolina, on James Island, the youngest of eleven children in an Irish Catholic family. Colbert and his siblings, in order from oldest to youngest, are James ("Jimmy"), Edward ("Eddie"), Mary, William ("Billy"), Margo, Thomas ("Tommy"), Jay, Elizabeth ("Lulu"), Paul, Peter, and Stephen.

Many of his ancestors immigrated to North America from Ireland in the 1800s before and during the Great Famine.

His father, James William Colbert, Jr., was the vice president for academic affairs at the Medical University of South Carolina. His mother, Lorna Colbert (née Tuck), was a homemaker. In interviews, Colbert describes his parents as devout people who also strongly value intellectualism and taught their children that it was possible to question the Church and still be Catholic. The emphasis his family placed on intelligence and his observation of negative stereotypes of Southerners led Colbert to train himself to suppress his Southern accent while he was still quite young. As a child, he observed that Southerners were often depicted as being less intelligent than other characters on scripted television; to avoid that stereotype, he taught himself to imitate the speech of American news anchors.

Colbert sometimes comedically claims his surname is French, but his family is actually of Irish and distant German descent. Originally, the name was pronounced in English; Stephen Colbert's father, James, wanted to pronounce the name , but maintained the pronunciation out of respect for his own father. However, James offered his children the option to pronounce the name whichever way they preferred. Stephen started using later in life when he transferred to Northwestern University, taking advantage of the opportunity to reinvent himself in a new place where no one knew him. Stephen's brother Ed, an intellectual property attorney, retained ; this was shown in a February 12, 2009 appearance on ''The Colbert Report'', when his youngest brother asked him, " or ?" Ed responded "", to which Stephen jokingly replied, "See you in Hell".

On September 11, 1974, when Colbert was ten years old, his father and two of his brothers, Peter and Paul, were killed in the crash of Eastern Air Lines Flight 212 while it was attempting to land in Charlotte, North Carolina. They were en route to enroll the two boys at Canterbury School in New Milford, Connecticut. Shortly thereafter, Lorna Colbert relocated the family downtown to the more urban environment of East Bay Street in Charleston. By his own account, Colbert found the transition difficult and did not easily make new friends in his new neighborhood. Colbert later described himself during this time as detached, lacking a sense of importance regarding the things with which other children concerned themselves. He developed a love of science fiction and fantasy novels, especially the works of J. R. R. Tolkien, of which he remains an avid fan. During his adolescence, he also developed an intense interest in fantasy role-playing games, especially ''Dungeons & Dragons'', a pastime which he later characterized as an early experience in acting and improvisation.

Colbert attended Charleston's Episcopal Porter-Gaud School, where he participated in several school plays and contributed to the school newspaper but, by his own assessment, was not highly motivated academically. During his time as a teenager, he also briefly fronted a Rolling Stones cover band. When he was younger, he had hoped to study marine biology, but surgery intended to repair a severely perforated eardrum caused him inner ear damage. The damage was severe enough that he was unable to pursue a career that would involve scuba diving. The damage also left him deaf in his right ear. For a while, he was uncertain whether he would attend college, but ultimately he applied and was accepted to Hampden-Sydney College in Virginia, where a friend had also enrolled. There he continued to participate in plays while studying mainly philosophy; he found the curriculum rigorous but was more focused than he had been in high school and was able to apply himself to his studies. Despite the lack of a significant theater community at Hampden-Sydney, Colbert's interest in acting escalated during this time. After two years, he transferred to Northwestern University's School of Speech (later named School of Communication) to study performance, emboldened by the realization that he loved performing even when no one was coming to shows.

Early career in comedy

While at Northwestern, Colbert studied with the intent of becoming a dramatic actor; mostly he performed in experimental plays and was uninterested in comedy. He began performing improvisation while in college, both in the campus improv team No Fun Mud Piranhas and at the Annoyance Theatre in Chicago as a part of Del Close's ImprovOlympic at a time when the project was focused on competitive, long form improvisation, rather than improvisational comedy. "I wasn't gonna do Second City", Colbert later recalled, "because those Annoyance people looked down on Second City because they thought it wasn't pure improv—there was a slightly snobby, mystical quality to the Annoyance people". After Colbert graduated in 1986, however, he was in need of a job, and a friend who was employed at Second City's box office offered him work answering phones and selling souvenirs. Colbert accepted, and discovered that Second City employees were entitled to take classes at their training center for free. Despite his earlier aversion to the comedy group, he signed up for improvisation classes, and enjoyed the experience greatly.

Shortly thereafter, he was hired to perform with Second City's touring company, initially as an understudy for Steve Carell. It was there he met Amy Sedaris and Paul Dinello, with whom he often collaborated later in his career. By their retelling, the three comedians did not get along at first—Dinello thought Colbert was uptight, pretentious and cold, while Colbert thought of Dinello as "an illiterate thug"—but the trio became close friends while touring together, discovering that they shared a similar comic sensibility.

When Sedaris and Dinello were offered the opportunity to create a television series for HBO Downtown Productions, Colbert left The Second City and relocated to New York in order to work with them on the sketch comedy show ''Exit 57''. The series debuted on Comedy Central in 1995 and aired through 1996. Despite only lasting for 12 episodes, the show received favorable reviews and was nominated for five CableACE Awards in 1995, in categories including best writing, performance, and comedy series.

Following the cancellation of ''Exit 57'', Colbert worked for six months as a cast member and writer on ''The Dana Carvey Show'', alongside former Second City cast mate Steve Carell, as well as Robert Smigel, Charlie Kaufman, Louis C.K., and Dino Stamatopoulos, among others. The series, described by one reviewer as "kamikaze satire" in "borderline-questionable taste", had sponsors pull out after its first episode aired, and was canceled after seven episodes. Colbert then worked briefly as a freelance writer for ''Saturday Night Live'' with Robert Smigel. Smigel also brought his animated sketch ''The Ambiguously Gay Duo'' to ''SNL'' from ''The Dana Carvey Show''; Colbert provided the voice of Ace on both series, opposite Steve Carell as Gary. Needing money, he also worked as a script consultant for VH1 and MTV, before taking a job filming humorous correspondent segments for ''Good Morning America''. Only two of the segments he proposed were ever produced, and only one aired, but the job led his agent to refer him to ''The Daily Show's'' then-producer, Madeline Smithberg, who hired Colbert on a trial basis in 1997.

Television career

''Strangers with Candy''

During the same time frame, Colbert worked again with Sedaris and Dinello to develop a new comedy series for Comedy Central, ''Strangers with Candy''. Comedy Central picked up the series in 1998 after Colbert had already begun working on ''The Daily Show''. As a result he accepted a reduced role, filming only around twenty ''Daily Show'' segments a year while he worked on the new series.

''Strangers with Candy'' was conceived of as a parody of after school specials, following the life of Jerri Blank, a 46-year-old dropout who returns to finish high school after 32 years of life on the street. Most noted by critics for its use of offensive humor, it concluded each episode by delivering to the audience a skewed, politically incorrect moral lesson. Colbert served as a main writer alongside Sedaris and Dinello, as well as portraying Jerri's strict but uninformed history teacher, Chuck Noblet, seen throughout the series dispensing inaccurate information to his classes. Colbert has likened this to the character he played on ''The Daily Show'' and later ''The Colbert Report'', claiming that he has a very specific niche in portraying "poorly informed, high-status idiot" characters. Another running joke throughout the series was that Noblet, a closeted homosexual, was having a "secret" affair with fellow teacher Geoffrey Jellineck despite the fact that their relationship was apparent to everyone around them. This obliviousness also appears in Colbert's ''Daily Show'' and ''Colbert Report'' character.

Thirty episodes of ''Strangers with Candy'' were made, which aired on Comedy Central in 1999 and 2000. Though its ratings were not remarkable during its initial run, it has been characterized as a cult show with a small but dedicated audience. Colbert reprised his role for a film adaptation, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2005 and had a limited release in 2006. The film received mixed reviews. Colbert also co-wrote the screenplay with Sedaris and Dinello.

''The Daily Show''

Stephen Colbert joined the cast of Comedy Central's parody-news series ''The Daily Show'' in 1997, when the show was in its second season. Originally one of four correspondents who filmed segments from remote locations in the style of network news field reporters, Colbert was referred to as "the new guy" on-air for his first two years on the show, during which time Craig Kilborn served as host. When Kilborn left the show prior to the 1999 season, Jon Stewart took over hosting duties, also serving as a writer and co-executive producer. From this point, the series gradually began to take on a more political tone and increase in popularity, particularly in the latter part of the 2000 U.S. presidential election season. The roles of the show's correspondents were expanded to include more in-studio segments, as well as international reports which were almost always done in the studio with the aid of a greenscreen.

Unlike Stewart, who essentially hosts ''The Daily Show'' as himself, Colbert developed a correspondent character for his pieces on the series. Colbert has described his correspondent character as "a fool who has spent a lot of his life playing not the fool — one who is able to cover it at least well enough to deal with the subjects that he deals with". Colbert was frequently pitted against knowledgeable interview subjects, or against Stewart in scripted exchanges, with the resultant dialogue demonstrating the character's lack of knowledge of whatever subject he is discussing. Colbert also made generous use of humorous fallacies of logic in explaining his point of view on any topic. Other ''Daily Show'' correspondents have adopted a similar style; former correspondent Rob Corddry recalls that when he and Ed Helms first joined the show's cast in 2002, they "just imitated Stephen Colbert for a year or two". Correspondent Aasif Mandvi has stated "I just decided I was going to do my best Stephen Colbert impression".

Colbert has appeared in several recurring segments for ''The Daily Show'', including "Even Stevphen" with Steve Carell, in which both characters were expected to debate a selected topic but instead would unleash their anger at one another. Colbert commonly hosted "This Week in God", a report on topics in the news pertaining to religion, presented with the help of the "God Machine". Colbert filed reports from the floor of the Democratic National Convention and the Republican National Convention as a part of ''The Daily Show's'' award-winning coverage of the 2000 and 2004 U.S. Presidential elections; many from the latter were included as part of their ''The Daily Show: Indecision 2004'' DVD release. In several episodes of ''The Daily Show'', Colbert filled in as anchor in the absence of Jon Stewart, including the full week of March 3, 2002, when Stewart was scheduled to host ''Saturday Night Live''. After Colbert left the show, Rob Corddry took over "This Week in God" segments, although a recorded sample of Colbert's voice is still used as the sound effect for the God Machine. Later episodes of ''The Daily Show'' have reused older Colbert segments under the label "Klassic Kolbert". Colbert won three Emmys as a writer of ''The Daily Show'' in 2004, 2005, and 2006.

''The Colbert Report''

Since October 17, 2005, Colbert has hosted his own television show, ''The Colbert Report'', a ''Daily Show'' spin-off which parodies the conventions of television news broadcasting, particularly cable-personality political talk shows like ''The O'Reilly Factor'' and ''Glenn Beck''. Colbert hosts the show in-character as a blustery right-wing pundit, generally considered to be an extension of his character on ''The Daily Show''. Conceived by co-creators Stewart, Colbert, and Ben Karlin in part as an opportunity to explore "the character-driven news", the series focuses less on the day-to-day news style of the ''Daily Show'', instead frequently concentrating on the foibles of the host-character himself.

The concept for ''The Report'' was first seen in a series of ''Daily Show'' segments which advertised the then-fictional series as a joke. It was later developed by Stewart's Busboy Productions and pitched to Comedy Central, which greenlighted the program; Comedy Central had already been searching for a way to extend the successful ''Daily Show'' franchise beyond a half hour. The series opened to strong ratings, averaging 1.2 million viewers nightly during its first week on the air. Comedy Central signed a long-term contract for ''The Colbert Report'' within its first month on the air, when it immediately established itself among the network's highest-rated shows.

Much of Colbert's personal life is reflected in his character on ''The Colbert Report''. With the extended exposure of the character on the show, he often references his interest in and knowledge of Catholicism, science fiction, and ''The Lord of the Rings'', as well as using real facts to create his character's history. His alternate persona was also raised in South Carolina, is the youngest of 11 siblings, and is married. The actual Colbert's career history in acting and comedy, however, is often downplayed.

Politics

2006 White House Correspondents' Association Dinner

On Saturday, April 29, 2006, Stephen Colbert was the featured entertainer for the 2006 White House Correspondents' Association Dinner. Standing a few yards from U.S. President George W. Bush—in front of an audience the Associated Press called a "Who's Who of power and celebrity"—Colbert delivered a searing routine targeting the president and the media. In his politically conservative character from ''The Colbert Report'', Colbert satirized the George W. Bush Administration and the White House press corps with such lines as:

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Colbert received a chilly response from the audience. His jokes were often met with silence and muttering, apart from the enthusiastic laughter of a few in the audience. The major media outlets paid little attention to it initially. ''Washington Post'' columnist Dan Froomkin and Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism professor Todd Gitlin claimed that this was because Colbert's routine was as critical of the media as it was of Bush. Richard Cohen, also writing for ''The Washington Post'', responded that the routine was not funny. The video of Colbert's performance became an internet and media sensation, while, in the week following the speech, ratings for ''The Colbert Report'' rose by 37% to average just under 1.5 million total viewers per episode. In ''Time'' magazine James Poniewozik called it "the political-cultural touchstone issue of 2006". Writing six months later, ''New York Times'' columnist Frank Rich referred to Colbert's speech as a "cultural primary" and called it the "defining moment" of the 2006 midterm elections. The performance earned Colbert the "Gutsiest Move" Award on Spike TV Guys' Choice Awards on June 13, 2007.

2008 Presidential bid

Under his fictional persona in ''The Colbert Report'', Colbert dropped hints of a potential presidential run throughout 2007, with speculation intensifying following the release of his book, ''I Am America (And So Can You!)'', which was rumored to be a sign that he was indeed testing the waters for a future bid for the White House. On October 16, 2007, he announced his candidacy on his show, stating his intention to run both on the Republican and Democratic platforms, but only as a "favorite son" in his native South Carolina. He later abandoned plans to run as a Republican due to the $35,000 fee required to file for the South Carolina primary, however he continued to seek a place on the Democratic ballot and on October 28, 2007, campaigned in the South Carolina state capital of Columbia, where he was presented with the key to the city by Mayor Bob Coble.

After announcing his presidential ticket, he asked his viewers to cast their votes by donating to DonorsChoose.org, an online charity connecting individuals to classrooms in need. Colbert's promotion inspired $68,000 in donations to South Carolina classrooms, which benefited over 14,000 low-income students. Colbert teamed up with DonorsChoose.org again in 2008 by asking supporters of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton to do the same. As a lead-up to the Pennsylvania primary, he created a "straw poll that makes a difference", where people could donate to Pennsylvania classroom projects in honor of their favorite candidate. Colbert viewers donated $185,000 to projects reaching 43,000 students in Pennsylvania public schools.

On November 1, 2007, the South Carolina Democratic Party executive council voted 13–3 to refuse Colbert's application onto the ballot. "The general sense of the council was that he wasn't a serious candidate and that was why he wasn't selected to be on the ballot", stated John Werner, the party's director. In addition, he was declared "not viable", as he was only running in one state. Several days later he announced that he was dropping out of the race, saying that he did not wish to put the country through an agonizing Supreme Court battle. CNN has reported that Obama supporters pressured the South Carolina Democratic Executive Council to keep Colbert off the ballot. One anonymous member of the council told CNN that former State Superintendent of Education Inez Tenenbaum had placed pressure on them to refuse Colbert's application despite his steady rise in polls.

Though Colbert's real-life presidential campaign had ended, current Marvel Comics editor-in-chief Joe Quesada established in an interview on ''The Colbert Report'' that Colbert's campaign was still going strong in the fictional Marvel Universe, citing the cover art of a then-recent issue of ''The Amazing Spider-Man'' which featured a Colbert campaign billboard in the background. Background appearances of Colbert campaign ads continued to appear in Marvel Comics publications, as recently as August 2008's ''Secret Invasion'' #5 (which also features a cameo of an alien Skrull posing as Colbert). In October 2008, Colbert made an extended 8-page appearance webslinging with Spider-Man in ''The Amazing Spider-Man'' issue #573.

2010 Congressional testimony

On September 24, 2010, Colbert testified in character before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration, Citizenship, and Border Security. He was invited by committee chairwoman Zoe Lofgren to describe his experience participating in the United Farm Workers' "''Take Our Jobs''" program, where he spent a day working alongside migrant workers in upstate New York. At the end of his often-humorous testimony, Colbert broke character in responding to a question from Rep. Judy Chu, D-CA, and explained why he cares about the plight of migrant workers:

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Democratic committee member John Conyers questioned whether it was appropriate for the comedian to appear before Congress and asked him to leave the hearing. Though Colbert offered to depart at the direction of the committee chairwoman, Rep. Lofgren requested that he stay at least until all opening testimony had been completed, whereupon Conyers withdrew his request.

Conservative pundits took aim at his Congress testimony not long after.

"As John Conyers notes, the media and spectators turned out to see whether Colbert would address the panel seriously as an expert on immigration and make the panel a joke, or stay in character and make the panel a bigger joke," - Ed Morrissey, Hot Air.}}

2010 Washington D.C. rallies

In September 2010, following Glenn Beck's ''Restoring Honor rally'', a campaign developed that called for Colbert to hold his own rally at the Lincoln Memorial. On the September 10, 2010 episode of the ''Daily Show'' and the ''Colbert Report'' Stewart and Colbert made preannouncements of a future event. On September 16, 2010, Stewart and Colbert announced competing rallies on the Washington, DC Mall on October 30, 2010, Stewart's "''Rally to Restore Sanity''", and Colbert's "''March to Keep Fear Alive''". Both were eventually merged into the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear.

Super PAC

In May 2011, Colbert filed a request with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) asking for a media exemption for coverage of his political action committee, ColbertPAC, on ''The Colbert Report''.

In June 2011, during a public meeting, the FEC voted 5-1 to grant ''The Colbert Report'' a limited media exemption. The exemption allows unlimited donations of airtime and show resources to promote the Colbert Super PAC without requiring disclosure to the FEC, but only for ads appearing on ''The Colbert Report''. Following the hearing, Colbert formally filed paperwork for the creation of his Super PAC with the FEC secretary.

Other work

Stephen Colbert is co-author of the satirical text-and-picture novel ''Wigfield: The Can Do Town That Just May Not'', which was published in 2003 by Hyperion Books. The novel was a collaboration between Colbert, Amy Sedaris, and Paul Dinello, and tells the story of a small town threatened by the impending destruction of a massive dam. The narrative is presented as a series of fictional interviews with the town's residents, accompanied by photos. The three authors toured performing an adaptation of ''Wigfield'' on stage the same year the book was released. Colbert appeared in a small supporting role in the 2005 film adaptation of ''Bewitched''. He has made guest appearances on the television series ''Curb Your Enthusiasm'', ''Spin City'', and ''Law & Order: Criminal Intent'', and on the improvisational comedy show ''Whose Line Is It Anyway?''. He voiced the characters of Reducto and Phil Ken Sebben in the Adult Swim's ''Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law'' but left the show in 2005 to work on The Colbert Report. His characters were both killed, though he returned to voice Phil for the series finale. Colbert also has provided voices for Cartoon Network's ''The Venture Bros.'', Comedy Central's ''Crank Yankers'', and ''American Dad!'', as well as for Canadian animated comedy series ''The Wrong Coast''. He appeared as Homer Simpson's life coach, Colby Krause, in the ''Simpsons'' episode "He Loves to Fly and He D'ohs". Colbert filled in for Sam Seder on the second episode of ''The Majority Report'' on Air America Radio, and has also done reports for ''The Al Franken Show''. He appeared on a track on ''Wig in a Box'', a tribute album for ''Hedwig and the Angry Inch''. Colbert read the part of Leopold Bloom in ''Bloomsday on Broadway XXIV: Love Literature Language Lust: Leopold's Women Bloom'' on June 16, 2005 at Symphony Space in New York City. He appeared in a series of TV commercials for General Motors, as a not-too-bright investigator searching for the elusive (and non-existent in real life) "Mr. Goodwrench". He also portrayed the letter Z in ''Sesame Street: All-Star Alphabet'', a 2005 video release.

Colbert is a producer of ''The 1 Second Film'', the world's largest nonprofit collaborative art film. His video request that IMDb list his credit for ''The 1 Second Film'' ("it is as valid as most of my credits") enabled thousands of the film's producers to be listed in the massive movie database until they were removed in early 2007.

Colbert has released one book associated with ''The Colbert Report'', ''I Am America (And So Can You!)''. It was released on October 7, 2007 by Grand Central Publishing. Grand Central Publishing is the successor to Warner Books, which published ''America (The Book)'', written by ''The Daily Show'' staff. The book contains similar political satire, but was written primarily by Colbert himself rather than as a collaboration with his ''Colbert Report'' writing staff.

On November 23, 2008, his Christmas special, ''A Colbert Christmas: The Greatest Gift of All!'', aired on Comedy Central. It was released on DVD in November 2008.

In January 2010, Colbert was named the assistant sports psychologist for the US Olympic speed skating team at the 2010 Winter Olympics. He was also invited to be part of NBC's 2010 Winter Olympics coverage team by Dick Ebersol, chairman of NBC Universal Sports. In April, Colbert performed as Harry in the revival of Stephen Sondheim's musical ''Company'', presented by the New York Philharmonic at the Lincoln Center. The show, featuring Neil Patrick Harris in the starring role, ran for four nights and was filmed for later showings in movie theaters, which began June 15. In May 2011, Colbert joined Charleston to Bermuda Race yachting race, as the captain of ship "the Spirit of Juno". He finished second, five miles behind leaders "Tucana".

Personal life

Although, by his own account, he was not particularly political before joining the cast of ''The Daily Show'', Colbert has described himself as a Democrat according to a 2004 interview. In an interview at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard Institute of Politics, he stated that he has "no problems with Republicans, just Republican policies". He is also a practicing Roman Catholic and Sunday school teacher.

Colbert lives in Montclair, New Jersey with his wife, Evelyn McGee-Colbert, who appeared with him in an episode of ''Strangers with Candy'' as his mother. She also had an uncredited cameo as a nurse in the series pilot and a credited one (as his wife, Clair) in the film. McGee-Colbert actually met Jon Stewart, later a good friend of Colbert, before she met her husband in 1990. She is the daughter of prominent Charleston civil litigator Joseph McGee, of the firm Buist Moore Smythe McGee. The couple has three children: Madeleine, Peter, and John, all of whom have appeared on ''The Daily Show''. Colbert prefers, however, that his children not watch his show, ''The Colbert Report'', saying that "kids can't understand irony or sarcasm, and I don't want them to perceive me as insincere".

Awards and honors

In 2000 Colbert and the other Daily Show writers were the recipients of three Emmy Awards as writers for ''The Daily Show'' and again in 2005 and 2006. In 2005 he was nominated for a Satellite Award for his performance on ''The Colbert Report'' and again in 2006.

He was also nominated for three Emmys for ''The Colbert Report'' in 2006, including Best Performance in a Variety, Musical Program or Special, which he lost to Barry Manilow. Manilow and Colbert would go on to jokingly sign and notarize a revolving biannual custody agreement for the Emmy on the ''Colbert Report'' episode aired on October 30, 2006. He lost the same category to Tony Bennett in 2007 and Don Rickles in 2008.

In January 2006, the American Dialect Society named ''truthiness'', which Colbert coined on the premiere episode of ''The Colbert Report'', as its 2005 Word of the Year. Colbert devoted time on five successive episodes to bemoaning the failure of the Associated Press to mention his role in popularizing the word ''truthiness'' in its news coverage of the Word of the Year. On December 9, 2006, Merriam-Webster also announced that it selected ''truthiness'' as its Word of the Year for 2006. Votes were accepted on their website, and according to poll results, truthiness won by a five-to-one margin.

In June 2006, after speaking at the school's commencement ceremony, Colbert received an honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts degree from Knox College. ''Time'' named Stephen Colbert as one of the 100 most influential people in 2006 and in May 2006, ''New York'' magazine listed Colbert (and Jon Stewart) as one of its top dozen influential persons in media. Colbert was named Person of the Year by the U.S. Comedy Arts Festival in Aspen, Colorado on March 3, 2007 and was also given the Speaker of the Year Award by The Cross Examination Debate Association (CEDA) on March 24, 2007 for his "drive to expose the rhetorical shortcomings of contemporary political discourse".

Colbert was named the 2nd Sexiest TV News Anchor in September 2006 by Maxim Online, next to Mélissa Theuriau of France and was the only man featured on the list. In November 2006, he was named a "sexy surprise" by ''People'' in the Sexiest Man Alive honors and in the December 2006 issue of ''GQ'' he was named one of ''GQ's'' "Men of the Year".

He was nominated for a TCA Award for ''The Colbert Report'' by the Television Critics Association in 2006 and also received two Peabody Awards for his work on ''The Daily Show: Indecision 2000'' and ''Indecision 2004''. In February 2007, Ben & Jerry's unveiled a new ice cream flavor in honor of Colbert, named Stephen Colbert's AmeriCone Dream. Colbert waited until Easter to sample the ice cream because he "gave up sweets for Lent". Colbert will donate all proceeds to charity through the new Stephen Colbert AmeriCone Dream Fund, which will distribute the money to various causes.

After the Saginaw Spirit defeated the Oshawa Generals in Ontario Junior League Hockey, Oshawa Mayor John Gray declared March 20, 2007 (the mayor's own birthday) Stephen Colbert Day, honoring a previous bet with Stephen. At the event, Mayor Gray referred to the publicity the bet brought the city, remarking, "This is the way to lose a bet".

Colbert was honored for the Gutsiest Move on the Spike TV Guys' Choice Awards on June 13, 2007 for his performance at the 2006 White House Correspondents' Association Dinner. In August 2007, Virgin America named an airplane. "Air Colbert", in his honor. On October 28, 2007, Colbert received the key to the city of Columbia, South Carolina from Mayor Bob Coble.

On December 20, 2007 Colbert was named Celebrity of the Year by The Associated Press. On April 2, 2008 he received a Peabody Award for The Colbert Report, saying in response, "I proudly accept this award and begrudgingly forgive the Peabody Committee for taking three years to recognize greatness".

In 2008 Colbert won the Emmy award for writing again, this time as a writer for the ''Colbert Report''. Colbert delivered the Class Day address to the graduating class of Princeton University on June 2, 2008, and accepted the ''Class of 2008 Understandable Vanity Award'', consisting of a sketch of Colbert and a mirror. He also has been announced as the Person of the Year for the 12th annual Webby Awards.

In 2008, East Carolina University associate professor Jason Bond named a species of trapdoor spider ''Aptostichus stephencolberti'' in honor of Stephen Colbert. In January 2010, Colbert received the Grammy Award for Best Comedy Album for his album ''A Colbert Christmas: The Greatest Gift of All!''. He also announced the nominees for Song of the Year while toting a pre-released Apple iPad. Colbert will be the 2011 commencement speaker for Northwestern University, and receive an honorary degree.

COLBERT Treadmill

In 2009 NASA engineered a new treadmill for the International Space Station. It was brought to the ISS by the Space Shuttle ''Discovery'' during the STS-128 mission in August of 2009. The complex machine is now used eight hours daily by Astronauts and Cosmonauts living aboard the space station in order to maintain their muscle mass and bone density while spending long periods of time in a zero gravity environment. While engineers at NASA where constructing this treadmill it was simply called T-2 for more than two years. However, on April 14, 2009 the treadmill became the most famous piece of exercise equipment in the world when NASA renamed it to the "Combined Operational Load-Bearing External Resistance Treadmill", or COLBERT. NASA named the treadmill after Colbert, who took an interest during the Node 3 naming census for the ISS module, ''Tranquility''.

Colbert urged his followers to post the name "Colbert", which upon completion of the census received the most entries totaling 230,539, 40,000 votes more than the second place choice of Serenity. The COLBERT is expected to last the life of the ISS and will have seen about 38,000 miles when the Space Station is retired in 2020 but was also built with 150,000 mile lifespan if needed till 2028 or longer. Colbert realized he was the recipient of an extremely rare honor when astronaut Suni Williams came on ''The Colbert Report'' to announce that NASA had named the treadmill after him. Despite being an acronym, the COLBERT is the only piece of NASA engineered equipment in space that is named after a living human being.

Filmography

! Year!!Title!!Role!!Notes
1993		Chet Davies	First role
1995	''Exit 57''	Various
1996	''The Dana Carvey Show''	Various
	''Shock Asylum''	Dr. Dewalt
''The Daily Show''		1997–2005 (regular)2005 – present (recurring)
		Happy Successful Guy	Also known as ''Snow Days''
'' Whose Line is it Anyway''	Stephen Colbert
''Strangers with Candy''	Chuck Noblet	1999–2000
2000	''Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law	Myron Reducto / Phil Ken Sebben / The Eagle of Truth	2000–2007
2003	''Nobody Knows Anything''	TV Newsman
2003	''Chalkzone	Himself (paring-up w/ Kurtwood Smith)
	''Curb Your Enthusiasm''	Tourist Man
''Law and Order: Criminal Intent''	James Bennett
''The Venture Bros.''	Professor Richard Impossible	2004–2006
	''The Great New Wonderful''	Mr. Peersall
	Stu Robison
''Outlaw Tennis''	Announcer	Video game
''The Colbert Report''		2005 – present
2006		Chuck Noblet	Feature film based on TV show
	''The Love Guru''	Jay Kell (Hockey Announcer)
''A Colbert Christmas: The Greatest Gift of All!''	Santa Claus, Stephen Colbert
	''Monsters vs. Aliens''	The President (voice)
''The 1 Second Film''	Self/Producer

Bibliography

Colbert, Dinello, Sedaris. ''Wigfield: The Can-Do Town That Just May Not'' (Hyperion, May 19, 2004) ISBN 0-7868-8696-X

''America (The Book): A Citizen's Guide to Democracy Inaction'' (Warner Books, September 2004) ISBN 0-446-53268-1

''I Am America (And So Can You!)'' (Grand Central Publishing, October 9, 2007) ISBN 0-446-58050-3

Discography

''A Colbert Christmas: The Greatest Gift of All!'' in 2008

''Stephen Colbert with the Black Belles — Charlene II (I'm Over You)'' in 2011

References

External links

; General

The Colbert Report Official Site

Stephen Colbert Producer Profile for The 1 Second Film

Wikiality.com, a wiki dedicated to Stephen Colbert and ''The Colbert Report''

Collected news and commentary at ''The New York Times''

Stephen Colbert: His Many Faces - slideshow by ''Life magazine''

; Audio/Video in 2008 in 2005 in 2006

Colbert interview transcript, ''60 Minutes''. (April 30, 2006)

Colbert in an open, hour-long interview and Q & A session arranged by Harvard's Institute of Politics. He speaks about the nature of his TV-show character and the interplay between wearing the mask and using it to make political points.

, (April 30, 1441/59811 Transcript). (April 29, 2006)

A 2007 appearance at the Glamour magazine Women of the Year Awards to honor Nancy Pelosi.

Category:1964 births Category:Living people Category:Actors from South Carolina Category:Actors from Washington, D.C. Category:American people of German descent Category:American people of Irish descent Category:American comedians of Irish descent Category:American film actors Category:American media critics Category:American satirists Category:American television actors Category:American television personalities Category:American television talk show hosts Category:American television writers Category:American voice actors Category:American writers of German descent Category:American writers of Irish descent Category:Emmy Award winners Category:Grammy Award winners Category:Hampden–Sydney College alumni Category:Northwestern University alumni Category:People from Charleston, South Carolina Category:People from Essex County, New Jersey Category:Second City alumni Category:South Carolina Democrats Category:United States presidential candidates, 2008 Category:Writers from South Carolina Category:Writers from Washington, D.C. Category:Writers Guild of America Award winners Category:American Roman Catholics Category:American political pundits

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