more Colbert

A few thoughts on Stephen Colbert’s skewering of the White House and the press…

Humor is a subjective thing. Something you may find funny, I may find totally disgusting, and vice versa. It’s kind of hard to judge what’s funny and what’s not, based upon how many people laugh, or how many say they thought it was hilarious. One has to consider WHO those people are, and WHAT was the subject at hand, whether they were predisposed to think it funny or not.

Those who focus on whether or not Colbert’s performance was successful because it made (or didn’t make) people laugh are missing the point completely. Humor had nothing to do with what Colbert did. It was witty, but it wasn’t meant to be humorous. Someone wrote an article about that; I don’t recall who, but do a search for humor vs. wit and Colbert to find it.

Personally, I read the transcript before I got a chance to watch it, and I will admit that I found it funnier to read than watch (not that I didn’t laugh either time.) But the main focus to me, which can be totally lost in the “argument” about whether Colbert was funny or not, was that it was a well-incised camouflaged-yet-very-obvious reminder to the president and the press corp that they ain’t doing DIDDLY and that they should not stick their heads in the sand too much anymore, because we aren’t buying it. This wasn’t about being liked by anyone there, this was about getting a message across to the people you want to hear it. Colbert could have said all those things the same way many of us do; to our friends and people who think like us…and no one else would have heard or cared. You think Bush gives a fig about Michael Moore? However, Bush got a dose of reality that he would not have gotten any other way because he doesn’t listen to anyone who doesn’t agree with him; they all get pushed away or ignored or otherwise put out of focus. Now all of a sudden one of those people gets a chance to tell him the whole truth guised in truthiness? OOOOOOH man.

Stephen Colbert had the titanium cojones to speak the truth to the captive audience, and that’s the story. It’s not about how funny he was, it’s about the way in which he preached his message. Anyone focusing on anything but that is trying to cover themselves, because they know they got dinged in his words and the truth HURTS.