the whole colbert thing

[rone]

Amidst the fawning of the moonbats and the shrill criticism of the wingnuts over Colbert's performance, the point is lost that satire isn't necessarily funny.  I thought Colbert's speech was really well delivered and hit all the spots it wanted.  Chutzpah, yes.  Courage, no.  Biting satire, yes.  Funny, rarely.  To claim that Colbert "was hilarious" or "bombed" is to misunderstand what he was doing; it wasn't stand-up, it was put-down.

And while one person thinks that "it's a failing prospect to attempt to direct satire at those who are beyond it," i say that perhaps he's confused about who the satire is directed at.  While Bush and the media were the subjects of the satire, that doesn't mean that they're the targets.  The target is, as always, the American people.  (Yes, i know, "But they're beyond satire!"  I disagree.)

Comments

party lines

[vardissakheli.livejournal.com]

You're coming awfully close to spilling the truth here.

It's not that successful satire isn't necessarily funny or that Colbert's satire was less than successful. It's that one side of those party lines has in the past 15 years or so become swarming with people unashamed to laugh out loud at photos of a girl soldier pointing at tortured brown-skinned prisoners' exposed genitals, people who think that masking their own self-aggrandizement in ostensibly self-mocking expressions like "dittohead" is wickedly funny while the humorist's tool (regardless of political stripe) of masking self-mockery in self-aggrandizement is just boastful, people whose sense of humor is on the level of chuckling at the schoolroom bully bashing the nerd in the face. Satirical humor from their own side would be just as lost on them.