Desperate times require desperate candidates. How do you gauge national desperation? Stephen Colbert is polling in double digits.

For you cable-free readers, comedian Colbert's "The Colbert Report" stars the real Colbert as the character Colbert in a deadpan send-up of the bumptious, righter-than-thou malarkey merchants of cable TV news.

Most dark-comic candidacies emerge in grim times: Pat Paulsen in 1968, Will Rogers in 1932.

Colbert is the comedian of this moment, crusading for "truthiness," whatever the facts. Colbert told fans to change the Wikipedia entry for African elephants to reflect Colbert's "truthy" belief that the elephant population had not declined but tripled in six months. They did. A Bush administration political appointee ordered Interior Department scientists to alter facts in reports on imperiled species. FEMA staged a fake news conference to congratulate itself on its performance in the California wildfires. Truthiness in action.