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Who Invited Stephen Colbert?
I have been hearing a lot about this video of Stephen Colbert at the White House Press Dinner.
Apparently it’s become a really big deal.
What do you guys think of it? I think I may have heard too much about it before watching it, because by the time I finally did, it didn’t seem like it was quite as shocking and daring as I’d heard.
In fact, to me, even though it may have said some “hard truths”, it seemed very much like it pandered to the audience - almost like the host at a Hollywood awards show would.
What was really so damaging about what he said? That the Iraq war is going badly? That Bush sticks to his guns no matter what? I can’t see how any of this really hurts Bush in any way, and some of it (like Bush’s hardline beliefs) seem only like it’s pushing the same rhetoric that Bush’s team themselves have pushed for so long.
Also, if what Colbert said was really so bad and damaging, why was he allowed to say it? Sure we’re a free country - supposedly, but why would the administration intentionally allow this guy to do what he did? I mean, they had to have known. They couldn’t have been tricked into thinking he was a serious conservative pundit. People who appeared at official events are vetted and selected for particular reasons. This wasn’t a glitch. It was intentional.
So who invited him to that dinner? Why did they do it? And did they get exactly what they wanted out of it?
- Colbert Video Clip Pulled from YouTube & IFILM
- Stephen Merchant As… Daniel Pinchbeck
- Daniel Pinchbeck Colbert Report Video
- Message for the Masses
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May 7th, 2006 at 5:37 pm
I’ve been loathe to watch the video on account of the buzz it’s generated–it seems like if it’s so popular, it must be wrong somehow.
On the other hand, I think that the Stephen Colbert persona is really a potent “media virus” or sigil. His show is clearly a Daily Show spin-off, and while I don’t think it could get out of the shadow of Jon Stewart, I think the Colbert Report is far, far more media saavy. Not only is it using a lot of techniques like juxtaposition etc. during some of the segments, like having Colbert talk about one thing while text on two disparate, tangentially-related topics are running in different parts of the screen–it’s post-modern style but it’s all content, too–the idea of having Colbert’s persona as the right-wing counterweight to Stewart was amazing. Stewart has pretty much, at least amoung the young, not got smeared with “Liberal” yet. That Colbert is the “conservative,” when he’s really just playing a character as funny and harshly analytical as Stewart is, but doing it in a folksy way–it’s very much a form of populism. Stewart is New York, Colbert is St. Louis, but they both get at the same thing.
Anyway, that aside, it’s not that hard to trick the wealthy and powerful. The Ali G Show was able to snare an interview with the FBI and the UK “drug tsar,” and if the FBI couldn’t pick up that they were going to be led to admit to torture by a clown in a training outfit, it can’t be impossible. Apparently, although they’ve been secretive about their methods, all they did was send out a letter saying they wanted an interview for a politically-aware youth program hosted by a moderately successful hip-hop star, then bring out Ali G.
You know the Fool in King Lear? He’s allowed to doubt Lear and point out failings on account of being the “fool.” Maybe that’s part of the dynamic… Or maybe Colbert will be getting a fast-acting, viable form of HIV introduced into his coffee cup one morning.
All that said, I still feel wary about the Colbert thing. I suspect that the Administration and their Superiors in the Reality Priesthood are beginning to tip their hand intentionally, possible to stress-test their grip on things, possibly because we’re approaching something like a Singularity of Spectacle, if you will.
But what’s the intention? You can’t tell what a sigil means by looking at it. Time to reach for the DXM freebase and the scrying mirror.
May 7th, 2006 at 6:31 pm
lame jokes
May 7th, 2006 at 11:23 pm
i think, on some level the satisfaction comes in seeing bush pinned to his chair and forced to actually listen to a list of all his failings. from everything i’ve heard he goes to great leangths to not get a negative word in his ear. that’s what’s so infurating, is his oblivious arrogance. he doesn’t listen and doesn’t think he needs to listen. so tough shit george, guess you got the real news for once. it looked good on him.
May 7th, 2006 at 11:45 pm
Well, really, he doesn’t need to listen. What people like us think doesn’t impact him at all.
I know what you’re saying, but you could also argue that we’re the ones not getting the real news, you know?
May 8th, 2006 at 12:00 am
i suppose. it was mostly a kind of grim satisfaction, mixed with the horror that 99% of the country, the world even could be telling this guy he’s got his head up his ass and it wouldn’t make a difference.
that was the feeling. you can tell the guy he’s an asshole right to his face, but it still doesn’t make any difference. makes you wonder what’ll finally end this disgrace. either he’ll self destruct, or the country will tear itself to pieces to bring him down. fucken waste either way. all cause george can’t take a hint.
May 8th, 2006 at 2:59 am
I think what made this different is that this particular event is historically very tame, very self-congratualatory. It’s kind of the equivalent of having an Oscar presenter declare Hollywood a bunch of phonies- the unwritten rule is you’re not supposed to declare the emperor naked at his own table. It’s worse for Bush than for Colbert, though- because he’s just going to look even more impotent now.
May 8th, 2006 at 8:08 am
Eh. Steven Colbert is ok, although I think Jon Stewart is much funnier.
Colbert has been saying what everyone one else is saying, only he’s been given license to make fun of the president in person and because he ridiculed the media in the process. Besides, Colbert was invited; he didn’t crash the party. Whatever critique Colbert made lost its potency the moment he was invited to publicly make fun of W. As someone said before, it just shows their arrogance and really, how impotent the media and the Democrats really are. They knew about his acerbic humor and they didn’t care.
May 8th, 2006 at 8:54 am
I don’t know if they did realize. They’ve been nothing but oblivious and incompetent to this point. And with that in mind, the fact that he was invited to poke fun at the president makes it that much funnier to me - because ‘poking fun’ is one thing - what Colbert did was something far worse (better), and I doubt what any of them expected. The fact that I was feeling real empathy toward Dubya, despite myself, alongside all the other emotions (shock, respect, awe, laughter, cruel satisfaction).. is not because I’m a sap and think people shouldn’t make fun of people. Colbert was really cutting deep, and he didn’t let up, he cut even deeper, then twisted the knife around in there a bunch of times. And the guy deserved it, and so did the media he was ‘poking fun’ at. Nobody else that I know of has had the guts to give it to them to their faces like that, so I have to give Colbert some sincere respect.
May 8th, 2006 at 9:53 am
This skit picked the wound off of almost every sore that the president has kind of glossed over, it was fuckin brilliant.
“Come, let Poor Tom take the by the arm…” Great allusion.
Problem is, dubya walked out.
-tc
May 8th, 2006 at 10:38 am
nuh uh. did he? I don’t know whether to think that sucks or is awesome!
May 8th, 2006 at 11:27 am
What people like us think doesn’t impact him at all.
Really?
This strikes me as a performative statement on your part.
In other words, what are you trying to do with this statement?
May 8th, 2006 at 12:41 pm
to me it was kind of just the fact that someone finally had the balls to approach not only the President, but all his media lackeys, and challenge this sense of mythic righteousness that these people have - this largely unchallenged story of morality and rightness, even in the face of one catastrophe after another - Bush never has to acknowledge the hard questions, and those people in the press core never ask them. They live in this world where facts are meaningless, where they are in the business of creating reality for huge amounts of people on a daily basis. Colbert simply pointed out this whole farcical nonsensical practice by portraying its natural extreme. It’s hilarious because Colbert (the character) is only marginally more ridiculous than the likes of the right wing pundits also in the business of dispensing such truthiness.
he was invited to the dinner by a high up in the AP (who introduces him at the speech, not all the copies floating around out there have the intro) - earlier the AP had put out something about “truthiness” being the word of the year without mentioning that this is directly because of Colbert’s recent reinterpretation of the term (which is archaic for “truth” as opposed to Colbert’s sense). from what I understand this is always kind of a roast of the President, but I don’t know if they predicted something as brutal as what Colbert delivered.
May 8th, 2006 at 1:21 pm
when people have been forced to eat shit sandwiches for so long, they’re terribly excited when they’re presented with a bowl of ramen noodles.
shit sandwiches are funny that way: the more bread, the less shit, the more shit, the less bread.
May 8th, 2006 at 2:38 pm
catharsis…….
what if george and the boys set it up themselves? then the lib/dem critics can take something away and it`s business as usual at the white house. the media driven myth has been, from the outset, that gwb is an idiot. what if he`s got the viral video thing sussed and the critics are being played?
and gwb is no idiot. he may be a lot of things but stupid isn`t one of them.
May 8th, 2006 at 2:48 pm
Eye second the fact that usually there’s a faux-sense of propriety at these things that Colbert totally dashed. That being said, the curve between what the Spectacle sells us as Spectacle and what the cult ure sells us as “news” (or the ritual thereof) is shortening up something fierce. In March, there’s the taking the piss out of the prime minister late-night comedy show segment in V for Vendetta; in early May, we’ve got Colbert at the Washington dinner. Now, unlike the movie, he didn’t “joke” that the so-called administrators and so-called president of our so-called government are accomplices to terrorist acts, but who gnos what’ll happen this summer? (and I say so-called because it is only individuals acting these roles and assuming them as identities, it ain’t reality, except by our acceptance and consent).
…another interesting compare/contrast: in V for V, there’s a double of the prime minister in the comedy bit and at the White House Press Dinner, W. comes out with a double of himself. In the movie, the PM is livid at the use of this double and has the late-night host “renditioned” for it (or so we’re led to believe); here in nominal stateside reality, the double is commissioned by the adminstration p.r. hacks with the president’s okay. Syncroni, city.
23 skidooes
–hebrides
May 8th, 2006 at 3:29 pm
Wow, good point. One “gnos” this but it is easy to forget.
May 8th, 2006 at 3:33 pm
Excellent correlation to V for Vendetta. Hadn’t even thought of that!
Well, I’m just about positive they did. Blow off some steam, let everybody relax a little, and then dig back in. It’s like if your company sucks, and your boss throws a pizza party and buys everybody a soda, everybody chills out and stops complaining for a little while…
May 8th, 2006 at 3:35 pm
Yeah, I’ve been thinking about that a lot as well. It’s like people are saying “Colbert is a hero.” But really, “Colbert” is a fiction. He’s a carefully crafted and maintained brand name with an image to maintain and an agenda to push - just like George Bush. One works for Comedy Central. One works for the Central Intelligence Agency. Or maybe “Central Casting”, but I think you get the point either way.
May 8th, 2006 at 3:47 pm
The whole thing remined me of the disfunsional family thanksgiving dinner when the families’ loose cannon says all the things that everyone has agreed NOT to say. The focal point is the cluelessness of the media. To have GW and the people who job is to ask the hard questions in the same room, and to point out to both that they’re not doing their jobs …… brilliant!
May 8th, 2006 at 4:00 pm
Wait, but Colbert IS a member of that same media, is he not? What it seems like was really going on was brand positioning, with the Colbert/Comedy Central camp pointing out very publicly that they are the New Guard and that the Old Guard brand of media is no longer relevant to today’s audiences.
But I still think it’s within Bush’s interests to play both sides in such an in-fighting brand-positioning event.
May 8th, 2006 at 5:15 pm
well, i find it interesting to see that people are so often willing to assume that people are so much samrter than they seem to be, when, almost always, they’re much much dumber than they seem. are at least, not quite so savvy and aware on as many levels as we like to give them credit for.
someone like george has probably got his hands full keeping his various anxieties, insecurities, and seething rages under control under all the pressure, while someone like colbert, like any high end performer, is concerned with polishing his performance and worrying about the response of his audience. the various functionaires, handlers and bookers probably similarly have their hands full with various degrees of sychophantry and internesciene backstabbing.
i doubt any of them have the time to engage in the baroque conspiracy that is attributed to them.
which only makes the horror of the situation that much worse becuase nobody is really thinking about the big picture except a bunch of bloggers with too much time on our hands.
May 8th, 2006 at 9:02 pm
Hi,
As much as I hate to admit it, *some* of the Colbert critics have a point. Colbert is only funny if you agree with him. As I read somewhere, this sort of humor–lineally descended from Saturday Night live, etc. in the 1970s–depends on shared assumptions among performer and audience. Take away those shared assumptions, and you simply have a failure of two widely divergent world-views to communicate. I thought Colbert was hysterical, but then I agree with him. And I enjoy the discomfiture of the repugs and the quisling media. But that’s because I’m me.
May 8th, 2006 at 9:05 pm
Liberals have been accused of simultaneously believing GWB is both an idiot and an evil genius. *This* liberal wholeheartedly accepts the evil genius theory, although I enjoy the odd Bush-as-idiot anecdote as much as the next left-wing moonbat.
May 8th, 2006 at 10:59 pm
I think the evil genius theory arises directly out of the sheer disbelief that the guy really could be THAT MUCH of an idiot, and hold that position of power. I suspect people choose either the idiot theory or the evil genius theory based on which they find more frightening, and that’s a tough one, on which I’m still undecided. More often than not though, as I gain more hindsight with which to view the present, I vote ‘evil genius’.
Or if he really is that retarded, he’s a puppet.
The whole one fuck-up after another.. after another.. thing.. probably due less to stupidity on the part of the administration, more to do with the fact that they just don’t care because they have the power. Honestly I prefer they keep throwing that fact in my face so I can’t FORGET about it, than that they lull me into a sense of complacency as most more ‘discreet’ and perhaps tasteful power-weilders might. Would things be much different if it weren’t Dubya playing the role? Wouldn’t all this shit just be more covert? Maybe a bit more gradual? Perhaps Colbert was being used to placate us for awhile. Then again, if they don’t give a rat’s ass what we think, why would they bother? Then again, why should I give a rat’s ass when..
Back to reality for me now. Or so I like to tell myself. Just another layer…
May 9th, 2006 at 7:23 am
Yes, the puppet theory is another plausible one, but I think he’s conscious of it, and just too vain and greedy to care.
May 9th, 2006 at 1:20 pm
it was def a orchestrated steam blowing off session by the administrations PR handlers, but……. i do think Colbert came with a bit more than they expected, because hes smart, and an artist, not a journalist.
i have issues though with the situation thats developed where the only relevant mainstream media discussion of social & political issues comes in the form of comedy & cartoons. as long as we just joke about it…… joke away!! have a laugh.
but yuh know, laughing is a cool thing. and sometimes things are just funny and we get to smile big, and not to keep from crying, but because shit is FUNNY, and thats always great…
so word, basically, with this one, i think Stephen Colbert did a good enough job that im just happy it happened…. the vibe i got from the video was that people in attendence were not expecting MOST things he said, and the anxiety was really high, which in itself to me is hilarious.
im torn (with this whole comedy thing), but id really rather laugh than be pissed off.
one
human?
May 9th, 2006 at 1:26 pm
but imagine a future where we really do just laugh at crazy shit? like, “Lets invade Iran!!!” BWHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!! wouldnt it be great if we all just laughed at all these (IMO) seriously dumb ass ideas? “Patriot Act?” HAHAHAHAHAHA FUCKIN A!!! “Microchip Implant?” ROFLMFAO LOLOLOL!!!!!! What are you retarded?!?! LOL
we will run into serious problems when we start laughing off taxes though
May 9th, 2006 at 3:09 pm
I’ve been off this board for a while, but I MUST comment because even Colbert’s supporters are missing the point.
The White House Correspondents Dinner is a huge, self-congratulatory orgy of back-patting and toadying. It’s W’s way of trying to show the world that he has a sense of humor and that he is really a nice guy. It comes off as contrived and soulless every year.
One year, Ozzy Osbourne was the big splash. Last year, Bush caught flak for making jokes about locating WMDs during a slideshow that depicted him looking around the Oval Office cluelessly. Yeah, real funny. Tell that to some of the dead soldiers’ families, why don’t you?
I didn’t even know Colbert was supposed to speak, and if any of you have seen the DREADFULLY UNFUNNY portion of the dinner where Bush has an exchange with a lookalike, you can see why Colbert’s speech was so shocking to the crowd: it was actually an intelligent piece of satire.
Everyone else in that room was afraid to upset the mighty Bush aka The Red Queen who threatens to chop off your head unless you play croquet HIS way. Remember what happened to Helen Thomas when she asked too many poitned questions (she was a co-star in Colbert’s hilarious Press Secretary Application skit shown during the end of Colbert’s speech).
To play down Colbert’s impact is to play into the Administration’s hands. “He wasn’t that funny” or “Maybe the Bush people planned it” just doesn’t cut it. Look at the video yourself– at first people are laughing; then they are laughing with their hands over their mouths; and finally, they stopped laughing altogether.
That means that they were OK with it, until Colbert made it clear that he would not let up. THAT’s what is so awesome about his speech. He didn’t relent. He spared NO ONE.
Everyone has the opportunity to speak up against Bush and his policies, but few do. No surprise that people want to over-rationalize what I consider to be the finest piece of satire written since Swift’s “A Modest Proposal”. Colbert’s speech will be remembered the way Clarence Darrow’s eloquent closing arguments during the Scopes Monkey trial will be remembered… that is, if any of you actually have read the transcripts from that monumental case.
Bottom line: It takes balls to stand less than 10 feet away from the most powerful politican on the planet and say what Stephen Colbert said in front of C-SPAN cameras. None of you would’ve done it, I’m sure of it.
Of course, the cowardly media played it down the next day (some news outlets didn’t even MENTION it). That, more than anything, shows that the problem is not necessarily Bush but the supposed liberal media that lets him get away with his crimes.
My question to anyone here: as members of an online community, do YOU consider yourselves as part of the media? And if so, what does dissecting Colbert’s speech without acknowledging its impact do for you? Most importantly, what side of the fence does it put you on?
I know this is not a political site, but this is the post I chose to respond to.
May 9th, 2006 at 3:28 pm
Which puts me in mind of my question to Tim….
Someone mentioned above that satire rests on shared references and assumptions. If so, politics is just a very expensive substrate for entertainment. At the end of the day we’re all just monkeys banging away on our keyboards.
I really think the answer is to disengage from politics and “news” media altogether. Take away the market for that kind of entertainment, and all that creative energy will find its outlet elsewhere.
May 10th, 2006 at 3:35 am
Wow James nailed it! I actually watched the clip for the first time tonight. Colbert is a genius and resorted to no “shared assumptions” … only facts wrapped up in a brilliantly twisted stab at all the “truthiness” that filled that place by the stinkin’ truck load.
After seeing it I immediately feared for his life.
BTW, while Jon Stewart “hosts” his show, Colbert *is* his show, and carries it all from beginning to end, adding the element of a well crafted character on top. It’s not worth trying to compare the 2.
May 10th, 2006 at 11:09 am
For what its worth, I’ve never liked Colbert’s show either. I just see it as kind of tiring. Although I do think that “the word” segment is sometimes well done. The rest of it I don’t much care for though. Maybe that’s the root issue to my reaction…
May 10th, 2006 at 1:43 pm
Tim, I’m with you in that, before the dinner speech, I was amused by Colbert but not especially wowed.
I don’t want to make him into something he’s not, but at the same time I admire him now that I know he has guts.
And, check this out: C-SPAN is asking sites like YouTube.com to take down the Colbert clip. Nothing sinister (it’s for copyright protection which is legally enforceable) but I’m sure someone on high asked them to do it… mainly because it is probably the most viewed clip that has ever come out of C-SPAN’s archives!
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060509/ap_on_go_ot/colbert_video
May 11th, 2006 at 10:36 am
So Tim, did I miss your answer to Kylark’s question? I’m curious as to your answer.
May 11th, 2006 at 11:29 am
I don’t know. I’m not sure I understand the question…