Stephen Colbert hits $1 million in Puerto Rico donations thanks to awkward celebrities like Lin-Manuel Miranda
After Puerto Rico was devastated by Hurricane Maria, and then humiliated and bewildered by the supplies-lobbing, mayor-mocking dumbassery of Donald Trump, the good people of that beleaguered island could use some good news. And, on Thursday’s Late Show With Stephen Colbert, that’s what they got (those with restored electricity or internet at this point anyway), as Colbert and recent Late Show guest Nick Kroll took turns one-upping each other in a bit concluding their joint #PuberMe fundraising campaign. Kroll, who pitched the campaign for currently rich and beautiful celebrities to reveal their most awkward and cringeworthy teenage pictures on Colbert’s show last week, called in from Argentina (for reasons unexplored on the show), a picture of his own bespectacled young self standing in as he and Colbert comically tried to outdo each other in their generosity arms race. Colbert, noting that his annual Ben & Jerry’s ice cream charity donation would all go to Puerto Rico this year, explained that his AmeriCone Dream Fund is donating a thousand bucks for every pimply, mullet-sporting, brace-faced celebrity picture, which had raised an initial total of around a quarter-million. Kroll pledged a hundred grand from himself and his Big Mouth castmates, and the race was on, until Colbert’s announcement that CBS was matching their combined total brought the whole thing up to a great-but-unsatisfyingly-jagged $999,000.