Stephen Colbert Rips Glenn Beck to Shreds: Building His Career On 9/11

Posted by Danny Shea, Huffington Post at 9:25 AM on April 1, 2009.

[Editor's note: watch the full clip on the flip side.]

Stephen Colbert ripped apart Fox News host (and New York Times cover boy) Glenn Beck Tuesday night, mocking his 9-12 project, meant to conjure the spirit of compassion and camaraderie Americans felt on September 12, 2001.

"We weren't told how to behave that day after 9/11, we just knew," Beck says to describe the project. "It was right, it was the opposite of what we feel today. Are you ready to be the person you were that day after 9/11, on 9/12?"

"Ready!" Colbert shouted, decked out in a gas mask, holding a gun, and wearing adult diapers.

Colbert then used a classic "Daily Show," exposing the hypocrisy of Beck's 9-12 project by highlighting comments he made on September 9, 2005.

"This is horrible to say, and I wonder if I'm alone in this," Beck said on his radio program that day, "you know it took me about a year to start hating the 9/11 victims' families? I don't hate all of them. I hate probably about 10 of them. But when I see a 9-11 victim family on television, or whatever, I'm just like, 'Oh, shut up!' I'm so sick of them because they're always complaining. And we did our best for them."

"The 9-12 project is not for families directly affected by 9/11, just people building their careers on it," Colbert said.

Colbert went on to mock Beck's now infamous tendency to cry, and to launch his own "democratic experiment, the 10-31 project."

"It will be scare and balanced!" he joked.

Danny Shea is a writer for The Huffington Post