What Stephen Colbert Had To Say About Taco Bell's Giant Cheez-It
A string of U.S. Supreme Court decisions has made this a particularly heavy news month. There was last week's Roe v. Wade ruling that reversed the constitutional right to abortion (per The New York Times), which was announced just days after the reversal of a New York State gun law that purportedly limited the right to carry firearms in public. This week, we learned that the Court's 6-3 West Virginia v. E.P.A. ruling will waylay Biden's climate agenda by limiting the Environmental Protection Agency's ability to regulate carbon emissions from power plants (per The Washington Post).
If you're exhausted just reading that, we probably don't need to tell you that a little laughter can go a long way in times of harrowing news cycles. "The Late Show" audience got just that when host Stephen Colbert kicked off Wednesday night's program with a tongue-in-cheek jab at the limited availability of the new Taco Bell tostada, which features a giant Cheez-It.
Stephen Colbert says giant Cheez-Its are 'a basic American right'
"The Late Show" viewers would be forgiven for thinking Stephen Colbert was about to open Wednesday night's show on a serious note. "America is changing so fast," he began. "Every day seems to bring shocking news that radically unsettles what we believe this country should be. And it happened again," he said, surely causing audience members to hold their breath for the latest Supreme Court news. Thankfully, he pivoted to this: "Taco Bell's latest tostada features a giant Cheez-It." Cue the laugh track.
After expressing his excitement for the oversized cheese cracker ("Behold! The snack of madness! It's like my dreams and my nightmares had a baby and then baptized it in ground beef") and quoting Food & Wine by explaining that Taco Bell's giant version is "16 times larger than a normal Cheez-It, with the same taste and texture," Colbert shared his outrage over the menu item's limited availability. In its current testing phase, the new tostada is only available at one location, and it's all the way in Irvine, California. "Well, I'm sorry ladies and gentlemen," he jests, "I believe that giant Cheez-Its are a basic American right." Evoking the rhetoric of the widespread denial of abortion access, he added, "I have to believe that this restriction is the work of the Crunchwrap Supreme Court and its radical justice Samuel A. Burrito." Perhaps Mr. Colbert will inspire the chain to release its Cheez-It tostadas and Crunchwraps nationwide.