They’re stealing the President’s nose!
Kung Fu Monkey responds to all of the people who attack Stephen Colbert’s comic monologue (which has been mirrored everywhere and can be found on BitTorrent, fercryinoutloud). And I couldn’t have done it better myself.
If Colbert “bombed”, it was because the audience didn’t like him. And you know what—they WEREN’T SUPPOSED TO. We have been treated to toothless feel-good comedy for so long, we have forgotten what the court jester’s job was: he was the only guy who could mock the King. And, seeing as we now have a President who acts like a King, it’s only fitting that Colbert revive the tradition in its truest form. If I remember correctly, the toady court followers were also fair game for the Jester, and we could hardly call the modern media anything less these days, can we?
As for Colbert crossing the line—how? Did he make remarks about the President’s wife? About his children? His sex life? His draft dodging, his drinking and drug use before he found the Lord? No. Every joke used a well-known fact of public-record. Does anyone deny the poll numbers cited? Does anyone deny that the government response to previous crisises have been deficient? Does anyone deny that Administration officials outed Valerie Plame (hell, even the Administration officials now have to rely on he idea it was accidental)? Does anyone deny that the Administration has actively opposed global warming discussions? Listen—if the President could do a long routine about not finding WMD’s and laughing about it, while US soldiers died in the resultant war … then to be frank I think he set the bar. Oddly, I think that if Colbert had done the routine the President did a couple years ago, THAT would have been crossing the line for me.
If his sin was incivility, then what the audience/bookers were looking for wasn’t comedy. Comedy is by its nature uncivil. Comedy is, in both linguistic structure and overall psychological impact, hostile. Sometimes overtly, often not. But there is no such thing as a joke structured like: “You know what makes me happy? Yeah, that same thing that makes everybody else happy. (sigh)” There is no laugh there.
Pullquotes don’t do it justice. Read the whole thing here.
Thursday, May 4th, 2006