Wednesday, May 03, 2006
"Singe, don't burn"... unless you want to actually do something
The best post on
L'affaire Colbert is written, unsurprisingly, by
jonnybutter at
TIA. In fact, he wrote two brilliant posts about this, which should be read in their entirety. Currently (1:20pm CST Wed) not a single commenter had piped up to thank jonny for daring to ask the correct question, and putting the performance in the right context. What exactly were we seeing, there, anyway? Something uncommon, certainly.
From
TIA:If you think the way to evaluate the event in question is to answer the question 'Did Colbert bomb?' - no matter how clever you are about it - the joke is on you.
...
Real satire - like politics itself - is not mere entertainment; it draws blood. Not 'kind of'; not 'sort of'. Really. Ever get frustrated with our stultifyingly boring American culture? Our crappy, disposable, derivative, remake-stripmined pop music and movies, for instance? Long for the olden days when things 'really happened' - long for them via either envy or its twin (a too-virulent scorn)? Know what the effective synonym is for the words 'quirky' and 'snarky'? It's 'harmless'. Also 'tame'. And 'tractable'. If you're smart enough to know that the Culturo-commercial Borg co-opts and commodifies everything (you are, and it does), you are certainly smart enough to see that, since it will eat anything, there is utility in putting a little 'poison' in its food when you can. Perhaps you are smart enough, but don't care.
Read jonny's posts about Colbert
here and
here.
---
Update: Kung Fu Monkey makes much the same point as Jonny, but from a comedian's angle. (Via
Sideshow.)
---
And if, afterwards, you want an evil, cringe-inducing laugh with no political value (like I do from time to time) here's a
clip to view. Thanks to
jkas.
4 Comments:
Aw, hell, he was obviously invited to speak, and frankly, was in a damned-if-you-do situation. If he had lobbed softballs, he would have been skewered by one side. If he lobbed grenades, he would be skewered by the other. He chose to lob grenades.
It's good to know that the 1st Amendment is alive and well.
God, I'm flattered Oyster. Thanks.
Glad you found Kung Fu Monkey's take. Cursor linked to it as well.
"At the recent White House Correspondents Dinner, master comedian Stephen Colbert performed magnificently. With the rapier of wit and the mace of truth, he respectively skewered and censured the presidency of "dum'ass botch".
Talk about wonderful lagniappe! Mr Colbert made that nincompoop's lap dogs in our national conventional media run for cover with their tail between their legs. And that's not all Mr Colbert accomplished.
Tucked away in his address to the dinner's flabbergasted attendees, like a ticking time bomb, there was an "easter egg", which we had absolutely . . . here "we" is a polite nod . . . NO right to expect. Like the Easter Bunny in a mischievous mood, Mr Colbert camouflaged a bon mot, so profound as to approach philosophical.
oh, before I reveal Mr Colbert's casual accomplishment, I should like to preface with a cave-- . . . "
The above blue text, which is enclosed within quotes, can be found appended to the article, which is located on the other side of the below hyperlink.
thanking you in advance for your gracious patience,
toodles
...../
.he who is known as sefton
http://hewhoisknownassefton.blogspot.com/2006/04/rehabilitation-of-and-by-and-for-right.html
. . . oh, yeah, I should add that the full title for that post is "rehabilitation of and by and for the right wing" . . .
