Stephen Colbert Calls Baltimore an “Uninhabitable Wasteland”

As the Baltimore Sun reports, our own fair city was the butt of a Colbert Report joke the other day. After talking about the frightening future that climate change promises to bring, Colbert warned that “The entire country would become an uninhabitable wasteland – not just Baltimore.” Ouch.

I think the reason I’m so disappointed is not so much that Colbert mocked Baltimore; the guy’s so consistently funny that it’s kind of an honor to be mocked by him. It’s more that his joke relied on the stalest, oldest trope of Baltimore humor — that the city is nothing but boarded-up rowhouses and corner boys and whatever else you saw on The Wire. C’mon, Mr. Colbert — you can do better!

(The joke comes around 1:20 in the clip below.)