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From the Ministry of Truth to Your Ears

You've got to love this take on Colbert's performance (see below).

My sense is that the blogosphere response is more evidence of a new Stalinist aesthetic on the left--until recently more common on the right--wherein the political content of a performance or work of art is actually more important than its entertainment value.

Considering that he insists that the joke in the "press secretary audition" video is that Helen Thomas is batty and old (as opposed to grimly focused on the real question the administration won't answer), I know it's obvious that this is a braindead response. However, the choice of epithet in the bit quoted above bears at least some note. Coming from a self-described Bush critic, it's pretty shocking.

Let me get this straight -- in our political satire, we should be privileging giggles over the execution of penetrating critique? In our aesthetics, we should choose a warm chuckle over provocation, discomfort, and the potential for being offended? And in a political atmosphere where legitimate debate over the executive's actions is stymied at every turn, under the ever-growing aegis of the presidential power to "wage war," it's now Stalinist to applaud someone for calling the President out in public?

(What does that make people who like This Modern World? Persistent Maoist insurgents? Sort of Shining Path types?)

My fluency in doublespeak just isn't good enough to go any further with this one, but I challenge anyone to come up with a more bizarrely inverted take on Colbert's speech.

Posted by BT on May 2, 2006 07:50 AM |

Comments

Saw the "WHCD" on youtube this morning. I agree with your points, Bill; comedy is serious business. The quest for "entertainment value" offers only some kind of sad bait-and-switch that wants only for intelligence to be turned off. I hadn't heard of Colbert before (from this part of the world) but he must have balls of steel to deliver such a routine to such an audience. I may not have laughed out loud a lot (well, I did enjoy the "chocolate city with the marshmallow center...and graham cracker crust of corruption" bit) but I was certainly stimulated, thinking about others whose goal seems only to make the audience uncomfortable, a theatrical tradition of sorts. And a hallmark of my kind of comedy.

Posted by: art [TypeKey Profile Page] | May 3, 2006 04:00 AM

I challenge anyone to come up with a more bizarrely inverted take on Colbert's speech.
Can't say as they're particularly intelligent, but here are some grimly fascinating ones.

I can't seem to find the redstate one that really made me crazy... basically, it took about 50 really redundant posts of ditto-head-style slammin' until they figured out that Colbert is actually NOT a conservative who simply bombed.

Oh, and Brian Lerher had a pretty predictable call-in piece yesterday about the performance---most all callers agreed it was funny but not hilarious, but the whole point of SAYING THAT SHIT IN FRONT OF W. didn't seem to sink in too deeply. Though more than a few callers did make the Mark Twain analagy.

This is such a refreshing change of pace from high gas prices and bad war news, I'm completely besotted.

Also, have you seen the Bush-Bush speech from the same Correspondents' Dinner? Naturally the right wing loves it, and thinks it's far more hilarious than Colbert. They don't seem to understand the difference, really.

Did not anyone think the rearranging the deck chairs on the Hindenburg line was as hilarious as I did? Not to mention his "I killed 'em last night---you could tell by the respectful silence" comment the next day.

I'm truly babbling. Ciao!

Posted by: bootsy3000 [TypeKey Profile Page] | May 3, 2006 04:31 PM

Stand ups are always referencing Lenny Bruce as their idol. But during his peak, (between the one liners and the reading of the court transcripts) he wasn't really as *funny* as he was thought provoking. It's tough to be both. I thought the Colbert roast was at times funny but always thought provoking.

Posted by: james [TypeKey Profile Page] | May 5, 2006 09:54 AM

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