Among the actors in the following video is Assaf Cohen. To say I know Assaf personally doesn’t quite cover it: we have been friends since we were kids. Assaf and I grew up doing summer theater together during our high school years. To this day he remains one of my closest friends — one I even get to see fairly often, since we both live in Los Angeles.

More about Assaf in a moment. First, here he is with Thomas Lennon and Robert Ben Garant (Lt. Dangle and Deputy Travis Junior, respectively, on Reno 911!) in a segment from Funny or Die Presents… called “Terrorist on Flight 77.”

Assaf’s TV roles include Hooman Jaka on Weeds, Yair Marx on Entourage and Hesam on Heroes, as well as appearances on 24, Criminal Minds: Suspect Behavior, CSI: Miami, Burn Notice, and Ghost Whisperer, among others. His film credits include Flightplan and the Oscar-winning short film West Bank Story. He is a formidable noodge, and a consistent mensch.

My inclusion of this video rather than one of Colbert’s more ballyhooed 2010 moments (the previously-mentioned Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear and his testimony on behalf of migrant farm workers before the House Subcommittee on Immigration, Citizenship and Border Security) may seem counter-intuitive. Taking the satirical brickbat to hypocrites is hardly new for him — in fact, it could be declared as his primary stock in trade since the Report began in 2005. However, it has not become less necessary in that time. I would argue that it is more necessary than ever.

“What I like best about Bill’s argument,” Colbert declares in the video, “is its complete factual inaccuracy.” Funny, cutting, and true enough to be chilling if you think about its implications. With the campaign and eventual election of Barack Obama as U.S. President, the tide of truthiness has risen to unforeseen levels of absurdity: need I even mention birthers, or ludicrous accusations of socialism and “death panels?” While these falsehoods have been of greater consequence than Bill O’Reilly’s quasi-Christian bullshitting, they represent the same syndrome: the determination of conservative ideologues to create a post-factual America.

Conventional American news media, whose objective is not accuracy but profit, therefore does nothing to stem the tide of misinformation and demagoguery. The premise of “balanced” news coverage (or news commentary, often conflated with coverage) is itself a fallacy. The presentation of opposing viewpoints on a news issue under the imprimatur of fairness is a disservice to the viewer when only one of them is factually sustainable, but both are given equal weight… as is usually the case.

The succinct sub-title over at The Reality-Based Community reads, “everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.” Fortunately, we also have satirists like Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart on TV to remind us of this.

One of these is Nick Kroll. Many know him as a cast member of the TV series The League on FX, although I’m still not yet one of them.¹ I don’t know what the correct comedy-speak term is for Kroll’s overall schtick, but I’ll take my best shot by describing him as (mainly) a bag-of-characters comic. His douchebag extraordinaire creation Bobby Bottleservice appears in several Funny or Die videos, including as part of the faux crime-fighting duo the Ed Hardy Boys. In this video, Kroll takes part in the Comedy Fights Malaria effort of Malaria No More by bringing Bobby Bottleservice to West Africa. The result is just wrong enough to be funny.

Of Nick Kroll’s other characters I personally get the biggest kick out of El Chupacabra, although by definition that one is best suited for radio. Fabrice Fabrice almost made the list this year, but I already had one Funny or Die interview video. Maybe next year, Fabrice.

In 2010 The Daily Show also continued to do one of the things it has done brilliantly for several years: point out and mock people who claim to be oppressed, but clearly aren’t. Examples of such people might include certain investment bankers, Christian mega-churches, professional athletes, or many others that generally have it pretty good. In the case of my number six video of 2010, this treatment is given to a richly deserving group: middle-aged white men.²

Samantha Bee, the Daily Show correspodent in this segment, has long been one of my favorites. She had a few things of her own going on in 2010, most notably the publication of her memoir I Know I Am, But What Are You? Her promotion of the book included a wide-ranging interview with Terry Gross on Fresh Air and a cute feature piece in the New York Times Magazine. Daily Show video clips featuring her are here; among those that especially crack my shit up are “Shame Parade,” “John McCain’s Air Quotes” (start at about 2:03 into the clip), and “Long Island Wants to Secede.”

Another important detail about this video: if my #7 video is NSFW (and it is), this one is very NSFW. I’m just sayin’.

So here it is, featuring Rich Sommer (Mad Men), Alison Brie (Mad Men, Community), and my friend Kathryn Joosten (The West Wing, Wedding Crashers, Desperate Housewives, etc).

I’ll tell you one thing: I’ve heard Kathy say far dirtier stuff.