Late Night: Stephen Colbert warns of Mexican bologna threat

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On Thursday night, Stephen Colbert warned his carnivorous viewers of an insidious new threat making its way into America’s lunchboxes, or what he called “the most terrifying scourge to cross the Rio Grande since Cesar Millan.”

As Colbert explained, last year a smuggler was caught trying to bring 385 pounds of bologna across the U.S.-Mexican border.

Shocking, yes, but that’s just the tip of the meat-berg, according to Jim Gilchrist, founder of the activist Minuteman Project. “Without a proper border fence from San Diego, Calif., to Brownsville, Texas, there’s really no way to control the amount of bologna that’s coming across our border illegally every day.”

What’s so dangerous about Mexican bologna, you might ask? Colbert spoke to the extremely good-natured Janet Riley, president of the National Hot Dog and Sausage Council, to find out.

While she emphasized the safety of regular old American bologna — technically defined as “comminuted, semisolid sausage prepared from one or more kinds of raw skeletal muscle meat” — Riley cautioned that illegally imported meat is a threat to public health.

Relentless truth-seeker that he is, Colbert then met with a handful of the pint-sized bologna fiends whose habits are allegedly fueling the illegal cold-cut trade — and maybe just threatening American life as we know it.

Their confessions were harrowing. One crazed tot claimed he could “eat a hundred pounds of bologna,” while another wild-eyed youngster admitted, “I don’t care where my bologna comes from.”

Colbert seemed just as disturbed by the revelations, ending the segment with an ominous question: “How long ‘til my bologna has a first name … and it’s Carlos?”

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