Leave it to The Colbert Report to always give you something to laugh about, no matter what the subject. When author and journalist Lynn Sherr appeared on the show last night to promote her new book, Sally Ride: America's First Woman in Space, a biography of the first American woman as well as the first known gay person to be sent into space, host Stephen Colbert wasted no time in going for the laugh.
"How come in the Cold War we let the Russkies beat us with the space ladies?" Colbert asked after Sherr observed that two female Russian cosmonauts had already been to space by the time Ride went up. "It's a good question," Sherr replied, noting that at that time NASA didn't consider sending women into space to be a priority.
Colbert also drew laughs asking Sherr if Ride's name worked to her advantage, but got an even bigger reaction from the audience when he mentioned that upon her death in 2012, her obituary reported that she was survived by her partner, Tam O'Shaughnessy. "Not every obituary has a plot twist right at the end. It was revealed she had been a lesbian," Colbert said before asking, "The entire time, or did space do that to her? Because that's what happened to the Fantastic Four. The cosmic rays ... and then they got all fantastic."
The full segment can be seen below, courtesy of Comedy Central.
