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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
I can't even really write a coherent response to this piece, so blinded am I with love for Stephen Colbert. I've watched his show since the inagural episode, fretted over the response, been wild with joy when he had his photo spread and interview in Newsweek, nearly wet myself beneath his ginormous electronic billboard in near Times Square. Hurrah for him! Everything he does is magic.
Usually when someone busts out the phrase, "so funny, [they] forgot to laugh," the implication is that the comedian wasn't funny. It is an insult.
Here, however, it is an apt description of what Colbert accomplished at the White House Correspondents' Association Dinner. He was fantastically amusing, in a mean-spirited sort of way. And the response he received from most of the audience (heartening exceptions included Antonin Scalia, Joe Wilson, and Helen Thomas) was tepid at best. Part of it was that they were the butt of his jokes, and it is hard for anyone to really laugh at herself. But part of Colbert's brilliance was that it was almost too funny for the audience. As Scherer points out, irony is a dangerous form of comedy. But when done right, it leaves the audience with the odd state of being: it was so funny, they forgot to laugh.
When it all gets to be too much, I have Stephen Colbert to fall back on. It's all so delicious! Thank you so much, Stephen, for holding a mirror to the president, the press, and to us in general. Delicious.
Thank you, Mr. Colbert, and thank you, Salon,
Among innumerable citizens who would like to speak up as you do but are silenced by the consumption-bred mass-media machine, which confuses self-interest with silence, I salute you as true patriots for your dutiful reportage.
Mike Scherer's take on "the Colbert bomb" is just perfect. Right on target with no Maggies Drawers. My wife sometimes gets fuzzed when I snarl at television news or take a fish knife to print news. But we both share the same horror at the rot at the top (and bottom) of the MSM.
Colbert's autopsy was immaculate. And the MSM's ignoring him is the most telling thing they could have done to expose their feckless behavior.
After a lifetime of journalism I'm seldom moved to write anything anymore (If I get a notion it's throttled). But Scherer was inspiring enough to move me to thank him for the insight.
Larry Van Goethem
What more can I say...
Had Colbert merely skewered the Bush administration, we'd be hearing more about it. Now that Bush's approval rating is in the low 30s, the press is less afraid to attack him than they were before, at least somewhat.
But what they won't forgive Colbert for is the skewering he gave the press.
"Here's how it works: the president makes decisions. He's the decider. The press secretary announces those decisions, and you people of the press type those decisions down. Make, announce, type. Just put 'em through a spell check and go home. Get to know your family again. Make love to your wife. Write that novel you got kicking around in your head. You know, the one about the intrepid Washington reporter with the courage to stand up to the administration. You know - fiction!"
I think this is a key point:
"White House spinmeisters are used to frontal assaults on their policies, which can be rebutted with a similar set of talking points. But there is no easy answer for the ironist."
To rebut a frontal assault requires no engagement with the arguments or facts or reality underlying the assault. Such a rebuttal can, in fact, be composed before the assault even begins, it's so disengaged from the content of the assault.
For a rebuttal to an ironic attack not to sound like a non-sequitur, however, requires that the rebutter first unpack for his/her audience the underlying points of the ironic attack. And at that point, you either have plausible answers or you don't, but you can't just ignore the questions and plow ahead with your own spin.
This is why irony is so dangerous - the person or institution you attack has only two options: face you and acknowledge your points or consciously concede defeat and retreat. There's no spinning option.
Stephen Colbert has hopefully done this country a massive service by what he did on Saturday night in the White House. He held the administration and the press corps up to the klieg light of truth and demonstrated to the whole country that none of them are wearing any clothes. And that's the reason Colbert didn't get many laughs, they couldn't believe that people outside their little bubble have lost all respect for them. To me, one of his funniest lines was "Decide - announce - type - go home". Absolute brilliance summing up their pathetic performance in four words.
Whether the majority of people who don't surf the internet or watch C-Span will ever find out about it is another matter entirely.
Isn't it interesting that the main stream media have so far ignored what happened - we've all seen the self-congratulary stuff about what a funny guy Bush was with his double, but funnily enough not a word about Colbert's Swiftian take on the whole mess in Washington.
We don't have a fourth estate any more - they're just as much in the pockets of big business as the administration and congress are.
Stephen did with words, what should have been donw with a whip. A brutal and deserved lashing of those who have abandoned their public trusts and responsibiilites. The press and the president got what they deserve and the only tragedy was that it was only one day of the year. They should have to go thru this once a week for their entire careers.
The media controls the populace thru bland news & constant terror and they do so at the instegation of their masters in the ruling class. Aldous Huxley would have loved to have seen this 'event', it stripped the veneer of bullshit off of those in attendance and revealed the box of snakes we have in our midst.
Kudos to Stephen and those who recognize it was about more than humor, including the few brave members of the press willing to confront their own shortcomings and those of their peers, a very tiny number, indeed.
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