Posted on 04/15/2014 8:36:57 AM PDT by Dave346
One of the tender mercies of Stephen Colbert's ascension to the "Late Show" set at CBS is his shedding of the faux-conservative "high-status idiot" character. To conservatives, this "Colbert" has never seemed authentic or sustained cleverness -- how many times can you say you don't read or even like books? It mostly marks the deep ruts of liberal arrogance in their own mental superiority. Colbert has perpetually had trouble staying inside this character, always winking at and mocking it more than inhabiting it.
To liberals, abandoning this thin charade is far too much sincerity for an ironic age. They love their idiot conservative, and aren't dealing well with its departure. Hendrik Hertzberg at The New Yorker, a former Carter speechwriter and Newsweek reporter, is putting on a black armband in mourning. He sincerely believes "The Character" is a "miraculous and unparalleled intellectual and political achievement." Break out the smelling salts:
"For eight years—for every minute of every half-hour of every edition of “The Colbert Report”—“Stephen Colbert” has been the exuberantly prim, indefatigably dim, supremely confident faux-conservative pundit who, brandishing a rippling, man-size American flag, has swooped thrillingly down at us four nights a week. Soon he will be gone. And we, his fans, will be bereft, deprived of the consolations he offers us for, among other afflictions, the existence of Fox News....
If Colbert’s interviews—meta-interviews, really—tend to be a little edgier, a little more unpredictable, than either Stewart’s or Letterman’s, one can’t help assuming that it’s because they are conducted by The Character, not the everyday husband and father. What will happen when the interviewer is Stephen Colbert, not “Stephen Colbert”? If an E! Online compilation of Colbert-as-Colbert is any guide, he’ll be charming, intelligent, and amusing. But the hint of lethality, if not altogether gone, is likely to be attenuated. The Character hasn’t had to worry about being likeable, any more than Elmer Fudd did. He’s been free to go places that an actual person can’t. The Character’s very one-dimensionality has given his interviews an interestingly three-dimensional quality....
Stewart will now have to soldier on alone. The immediate loss is for liberals, for whom “Stephen Colbert” has played a unique role as a fifth column. The Character has been a miraculous and unparalleled intellectual and political achievement, sustained for a very long time at a very high level. But if the intelligence, discipline, and hard work that Colbert invested in The Character can be brought to bear on revitalizing the variety show, then the polity’s loss may turn out to be the culture’s gain. If Colbert can truly reinvent the genre, if he has the freedom and the inclination to blow it up and build on the rubble, then perhaps The Character will not have died in vain. For the moment, though, excuse me while I put on my black armband."
Colbert the Joe Biden of comedy.
Hard to believe they hired a guy based on one character that he plays. To me the "fake Colbert" was never more than what I'd call "skit humor". His character might have been funny in small doses, like a SNL character in skits such as "Wayne's World" or the "Church Lady", or like Red Skelton's various characters. But these sorts of characters are not funny IMO outside of the normal skit time frame.
It is considered poor taste to mock a group one is not a part of. Colbert is a liberal, so it s rude for him to play a conservative, unlike, say Jeff Foxworthy and his band of redneck comics. Liberals, who have no class, don’t know the difference.
There are two kinds of satire, which I’ll call real satire and faux satire.
Real satire takes on the ideals and pretensions of its audiences, puncturing them and showing them up.
Faux satire is a lot more like a group of junior high girls mocking an outsider. “Let’s all show how clever and wonderful we are because we’re not like her!”
It’s self-congratulation and (worse) flattery of the audience as commentary and comedy. I think I’ve handled possibly an hour altogether, in several attempts, of Colbert before having to change the channel in disgust.
I assume the author of this essay is correct about the intellectual effort needed to maintain this pose over such a long period.
Now what could have been REALLY funny would be if Colbert had played two characters: one liberal and the other conservative, on alternate nights. Which could have been true satire.
But that would have defeated the primary charm of the show for its audience, self-congratulation.
His thing is playing a straw-man fool ..a right wing piñata for cheap and easy low brow entertainment for the left.
Archie Bunker was better and the classic example that had legs...but that was because it become boorish unless you start being honest in how you write for your straw man and then he quits being your straw man
but either way its still a one trick bit that I don't see how it translate to a talk show.
Really if your ego need your straw-man as your primary entertainment ever night its the intellectual equivalent of marriage to your blow up love doll
Not that the left cares our opinion but Jon Stewart would of been a better tool for them..
how many times can you say you don’t read or even like books? It mostly marks the deep ruts of liberal arrogance in their own mental superiority.
Where do they even get their prejudiced stereotypes?? Put a right wing political tome up against a liberal one and only one will become a best seller — not the lefty.
Holy crap. He was no better than the steppin fetchit crude stereotypes of blacks in early years of film. The only people stupid enough to enjoy him were insensitive mocking liberals who thought his stereotypes were actually funny. Comedy Central fans, newsflash: blacks did not think all those depictions of them as stupid, lazy, and eating watermelons were very funny either. That’s all Colbert did to fellow humans who happen to have different political orientations than yourselves. You so tolerant people, you.
The three of us hit the nail on the head. We all paralleled early racist acts. Colbert’s act was indeed a prejudiced blackface act, trying to humiliate someone of a different “orientation.” Political, this time.
The funniest ethnic jokes are performed BY THE ETHNICITY. We all love to laugh at ourselves and our foibles.
IT IS CRUDE AND BULLYING TO MOCK OTHER GROUPS. It’s not humor, it’s (said by someone prior in this thread) self congratulation. See how we are better than THEY ARE??
That’s a lot of praise for some clown who got rich satirizing Bill O’Reilly. Not exactly a hard target to spoof. Doesn’t take much to impress lefties.
I have a saying:
“Reading is food for the mind, thinking is exercise for the mind”
The this is if you eat/ read everything with out the exercise/thinking you effectively become mental obese. .a fat head
You have to tread your reading just like food..it can have facts that have nutrition, and it can be junk that is unhealthy... (I like to read the footnotes like a list of ingredients)
But either way mass consumption does not make you intelligent or strong.
Its the muscle building /thinking that does
Einstein is not famous for his intelligent because he READ about the theory of relativity...it fact he effectively rejected a large quantity of what was written at the time..so you could say his path to effective intelligence was in part because he did not just read and accept everything his peers suggested
The article is somewhat misleading. The author gives the impression that this feeling is widespread among liberals but then gives only ONE example.
Remember, these are the same idiots than believe Sarah Palin said “I can see Russia from my porch”.
I bet she got mad before she saw “Titanic” and someone told her the ship sinks.
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