Funniest -- and truthiest -- man in late-night.

Amid all the hubbub surrounding the Conan O’Brien-Jay Leno feud last winter, lost was the question of whether either man deserved the title of funniest man in late night.

Most of us sided with Conan, whose offbeat, irreverent comedy is better suited for the times than Leno’s outmoded one-liners and stupid-man tricks. 

But, as Conan returns to late night Nov. 8 at his new 11 p.m. berth on TBS -- with an online sneak preview on Monday -- the question arises again. My answer? No, neither is the funniest.  The true heir to the title, in my view, is Stephen Colbert, who is not just the best late-night comedian on TV, but the funniest person at any time of day.

With a glint in his eye and dagger on his tongue, Colbert sends up blowhards like Bill O’Reilly so thoroughly, conservatives can’t even tell he’s kidding.  He plays the part of a conservative flimflam man whose love for self – along with fame, wealth and rabble-rousing -- far exceeds his love for country, no matter what he says.  He rarely wavers from his persona, speaking fluent gasbaggery while weaving in digs, insults and insights no conservative would say, if he ever really thought about it. Which he wouldn't.

Colbert is as good today as he was four years ago when he skewered George W. Bush to his face at the White House Correspondents Dinner.  He looked straight at Bush, speaking with mock machismo and pretending to be of like minds while questioning if he had one at all:

It is my privilege to celebrate this president, ‘cause we're not so different, he and I. We both get it. Guys like us, we're not some brainiacs on the nerd patrol. We're not members of the factinista. We go straight from the gut. Right, sir?

That's where the truth lies, right down here in the gut. Do you know you have more nerve endings in your gut than you have in your head? You can look it up. Now, I know some of you are going to say, "I did look it up, and that's not true." That's 'cause you looked it up in a book. Next time, look it up in your gut. I did. My gut tells me that's how our nervous system works.

Every night on my show, The Colbert Report, I speak straight from the gut, okay? I give people the truth, unfiltered by rational argument. I call it the "No Fact Zone." FOX News, I hold a copyright on that term.

I'm a simple man with a simple mind. I hold a simple set of beliefs that I live by. Number one, I believe in America. I believe it exists. My gut tells me I live there. I feel that it extends from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and I strongly believe it has 50 states, and I cannot wait to see how the Washington Post spins that one tomorrow.

That took courage, even toward the reviled Bush.  Watching it live, like the C-SPAN geek I am, I alternately laughed and cringed as Colbert gave the most  literal expression of  "speaking truth to power" I've ever seen. Only, in his case, he spoke "truthiness to power,"  satirizing the right's belief that truth is in the eye -- or gut -- of the beholder, particularly if it's theirs. What a coincidence. The media wasn't spared, either, and the starchy reaction of reporters in that room only solidified the view of liberals that they are too close to their sources.  This is another frequent topic of Colbert.  If the media won't discuss it, he will.

Tomorrow's rally in Washington is of a piece with Colbert's correspondents' dinner appearance as well as the satirical bits he does nightly.  While Jon Stewart is hoping for sanity tomorrow, Colbert's alter-ego is counting on fear, not unlike his doppelgangers at Fox News who crave it just as much, though not as overtly. That's Colbert's genius.

Watch, in the upper right corner of this page, this segment from last night on the "Five Fear Groups."  (I haven't figured out how to embed web videos yet. Any clues?) Only Colbert could veer so close to bigotry without being accused of it himself.  (Daniel Tosh, I think, comes a little too close without the accompanying satire to leaven it.) Colbert doesn't believe the things he says but, sadly, all too many people do.