The Line About the Glaciers
...was one of the few points in Stephen Colbert's WH Correspondents Dinner address at which I laughed (I can't imagine that anyone reading this hasn't seen it by now. But if you haven't, it's available in full and reasonably viewable form here). Mostly it was too uncomfortable to laugh at. I just sat in stunned silence.
But I don't mean that as a criticism. I'm pretty much with this point of view: what Colbert does in his routine here is as close to a pure satire as one is likely to come across these days, at least in the world of television. The Daily Show and The Colbert Report (as well as The Onion, which shares with those programs a good bit of intellectual DNA) all use satire, but they are mixed bags -- there's satire, and there's yuks, in a proportion that tries to keep us as entertained as possible. Colbert's routine at the dinner was much more aggressive, and carried out in the sure spirit that the performer would make his audience uncomfortable.
That seems obvious enough -- many quickly noted it. The bit I'd like to chip in is that satire is (or is often characterized as) a morally conservative genre. Swift, quoted here, is the guy we typically think of with regard to this sort of satire, and he says of his own purpose that the satirist works toward restoring an endangered moral order:
As with a moral View design'd
To cure the Vices of Mankind:
His vein, ironically grave,
Expos'd the Fool, and lash'd the Knave.,
I point this out only to help us remember that what we see in this administration is not only ideological "conservatism", a retrogressive and moralistic worldview that takes its cues from Grover Norquist-style tax-haters, homophobes, and Darwin-bashers. This administration (and its leader) are indeed knaves -- more concerned with politically and financially looting the world, and justifying their theiving, than in anything else. Those who have played their game (in this case, the press), are the fools.
And why do I bother with this two-cent exegesis? Because the corruption has run so deep and the abuses of power have grown so severe (and indeed byzantine) that this has now become about morality, just as the radical right-wingers often say. Just not in the way they'd have you believe...