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Posted on 01/19/2012 2:21:16 PM PST by La Enchiladita
He may be running a fake candidacy, but Stephen Colbert is having a very real rally in South Carolina — co-hosted by Herman Cain.
The Comedy Central personality announced on his show Wednesday that he would unite with the former Godfather’s Pizza CEO for the "Rock Me Like a Herman Cain!" rally to get voters — and fans — excited for the comedian and Cain's "non-candidacies".
"There will be speeches, there will be cheerleaders, there will be a marching band and a gospel band — this is going to be even better than my rally in D.C.," Colbert said on the show, referring to a rally he held in Washington last year.
...Colbert’s support of Cain adds another layer to the joke — which Cain's spokespeople insist he's in on, his spokeswoman told Fox News.
"On Stephen Colbert's endorsement of himself as Herman Cain, I find it very clever and humorous, as it should be," Cain said on Fox411. "Anyone who finds what Mr. Colbert is doing offensive should simply lighten up. To be perfectly clear, I will not be assuming Stephen Colbert's identity. We are very different when it comes to the color of our — hair."
(Excerpt) Read more at nydailynews.com ...
I tried to tell people that Cain is a carnival barker.
This time, Cain was my pick.
My horrible record of choosing presidential candidates is equaled only by my choice of women. On the other hand, I've had two really great dogs.
WTF is wrong with Herman Cain for giving attention to this serious leftist?
“Herman Cain is a player. But, he tossed us a little red meat to swallow, and we are suckers for a silver tongue with no record. E-V-E-R-Y T-I-M-E”
BINGO!
the Economist cover from a couple of weeks ago pegged this joker perfectly:
http://www.economist.com/printedition/covers/2011-12-28/e-eu-la-me-na-uk-0
(lower right)
I think Cain wants a FoxNews and/or bigger talk radio contract and his name in the paper.
I’m disappointed in Herman Cain. He and Gingrich held a very civil, rational one-on-one debate. If Cain could not maintain a viable candidacy, why not through his support to Gingrich, whether than squandering his remaining media attention on a sour grapes rally? He could have done some good, but chose self-indulgence instead.
I find Colbert funnier than John Stewart, but just as far to the left if not moreso. As one who rode the Cain-train (and a fellow Purdue alum), I find it baffling that Cain would join Colbert in denegradig the remaining GOP field, rather than playing a constructive role.
I’m disappointed in Herman Cain. He and Gingrich held a very civil, rational one-on-one debate. If Cain could not maintain a viable candidacy, why not through his support to Gingrich, whether than squandering his remaining media attention on a sour grapes rally? He could have done some good, but chose self-indulgence instead.
I find Colbert funnier than John Stewart, but just as far to the left if not moreso. As one who rode the Cain-train (and a fellow Purdue alum), I find it baffling that Cain would join Colbert in denegradig the remaining GOP field, rather than playing a constructive role.
How would that read? "Suspected philanderer throws support behind avowed philanderer"?
Really. I don't think that would have played well in the end.
IMagine if Colbert’s idea took hold, and Cain got 5% of the vote, and that kept Gingrich from beating Romney.
Would the Cain folks still think this was hilarious?
And here’s the weird thing: when he would sub for Neal Boortz I was just happy and mesmerized, and wondering why Cain wasn’t involved in policy. What the hell happened?
I was not ever on the Cain Train. Never trusted the guy. He seemed to have too much attention whore-itis, and slick showmanship motivational speaker schtick for my tastes.
Maybe my gut was right.
It always seemed to me that Herm was just on a publicity tour. Newt, a serious candidate, most likely just appeared with Cain so as to get free media (something that Romney with his establishment backing doesn’t have to worry about).
Although I’ve never ran for office or been involved in a campaign, all indications point to it being a rather emotionally draining experience. I’d imagine it to be particularly hard when you go from being the front runner to dropping out. It happened to Cain in a particularly humiliating manner.
Sometimes the best way to deal with humiliation is to poke fun at yourself and have a good laugh. It takes away from the punch of having your critics laughing at you when you’re standing there laughing with them. It tends to help that people generally like people who can laugh at themselves. It’s effective because it’s a display of the greatest of the seven virtues: humility.
There is understandably a lot of disdain for Colbert around here. After all, he mocks and satirizes conservatives. I’m not going to defend the guy. The thing about mockery and satire, however, is that they are only effective tools when (A) they resonate with popular perception and (B) the targets in question take themselves way too seriously.
I’m 30. I’m part of the younger generation that is old enough to be taken seriously. I’m going to be blunt and I’m going to take fire for this but we, as conservatives, oftentimes take ourselves way too seriously. You can accuse me of anything you like so long as you reflect on the fact that what Colbert does works as well as it does for a reason.
We will make fun of the left and are willing to push them to the margins but if they say even the smallest thing about us, even in good fun, we cry foul and complain about persecution. We can dish it out but we refuse to take it. Worse, we refuse to acknowledge our many shortcomings and instead choose to project them on the left while playing the part of saints. It used to be that the conservative response to criticism was to man up and take responsibility for our mistakes. Instead, our default has become to deny any and all accusations of even the slightest wrongdoing as being propaganda from some vast left wing conspiracy. It turns people off and it’s hurting our cause. When someone gives us a good-natured ribbing our our first response is to call that person a vicious liar, it might be that there is something in ourselves we need to reflect on.
The worst of the Seven Deadly Sins is Pride, for that is the sin of the devil and the sin from which all other sin proceeds. The greatest of the Seven Virtues is Humility, for it is in humility that one dies to one’s self and takes up Christ’s cross. It is humility that leads one to lay aside human reason to embrace the Reason of God to approach Christ as little children. It is in humility that one confesses one’s sins before God and man and repents of them.
Mockery and satire only hurt the proud, while those who are truly humble cannot be mocked or satirized. This is why Galatians 6:7 tells us that God will not be mocked — he could not be, no matter how much the devil might mock. The devil, on the other hand, is easily mocked and takes offense to even the smallest of slights.
The Colberts of the world would be ineffectual if we truly were as humble as Christ calls us to be. The insidious thing about pride is that it easily masquerades as humility. If one is offended at being told one is not humble, one is not humble, for the humble already know they are not as humble as they ought to be.
If America is a Christian nation (and it is) then the heart of America should be Christ and the role of conservativism is to preserve that. The cause of Christ is not advanced by what symbolic causes we embrace but rather in how we follow Christ in our daily lives. Our greatest sin as conservatives has been in playing the same game as the left, relying on human machinations and dirty politics instead of simply embracing the simplicity of Christ and allowing God to do the heavy lifting. This seems impractical and politically suicidal and yet it is exactly what Christ in the Gospels tells us to do. His Kingdom is not of this world and thus our concerns should not be for this world. Someone infinitely wiser than myself once said, “And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin: And yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which to day is, and to morrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith?
I admit to not being much of a fan of Herman Cain over the course of the campaign. With that said, I think more of us can afford to poke fun at ourselves and that what he is doing is not bad. It is no sin to admit one’s shortcomings and failures — it’s among the highest of virtues. The conservative cause will only be saved and advanced by embracing the virtues Christ demands of us. God will do the hard part. But as long as we insist on playing the left’s game of vicious politicking, we will lose. This country is headed downhill. Such has nothing to do with “not fighting hard enough” or the fact that the left lies about us on a constant basis. Instead, the problem is that we have tried to fight too hard out of concern for this earthly realm when God has commanded us to focus on how we live our own lives and our entrance into His Heavenly Kingdom and to let Him take care of what happens in this world. The more we focus on how others live rather than ourselves and the more we fight to advance Christ’s cause here in this country, the more we will fail.
We can’t save our own souls and we can’t save our country. Only Christ can do that. Let God do His job and take no heed at those that mock. If we take offense to when we’re mocked and slandered we’re just not doing “it” right.
Colbert is a libtard, Cain is apparently an imbecile.
You're kidding, right? Hesh is a full-time douchebag.
If regular viewers of both shows instead spent just one of those nights every week reading the great books of conservatism, there would never be another Democrat president and Comedy Central would be out of business.
I don’t disagree with your point. What I will say, however, is that it is easy to point the finger at younger voters rather than admit a failure to communicate on behalf of us conservatives. This is where the pride I mentioned comes in. I find it very disconcerting that we, as a movement, have gotten so good at blaming everyone except ourselves for our failures.
Our defense has become this: if our ideas are not more popular or widely understood, it’s because the liberals play dirty and control public education, the media, and popular culture. It’s the fault of those that don’t embrace our message that they haven’t explored our ideas — never mind the fact that we haven’t particularly gone out of our way to attract them to our message! Have you ever heard of an advertiser who said, “You have a great product — it would sell a lot better if people would stop watching commercials for other products and just pick up our product information sheet!”
I believe in American Exceptionalism. We live in a country we should be proud of, greater than any other on God’s earth. Rather than complain about rampant anti-Americanism, however, what exactly have we done to make American Exceptionalism a more attractive option to our youth? We spend more time blaming our detractors for all our woes than accepting responsibility for our faults and finding ways to spread our message in a manner that will attract people to it. It’s easy to say, “We shouldn’t have to do that,” as though the truth of what we advocate is self-evident. It isn’t and to take that position is exactly the sort of pride to which I was referring. It’s killing us.
If the study of communications teaches us anything, it’s that we rely upon different media to communicate our message to different audiences. For too long, the conservative approach to communicating our message was, “People would understand us better if they would just shut off the TV and read our books,” rather than simply find ways to effectively communicate our message over the television. When people don’t like our shows, we say, “Oh, the viewers are idiots and are mislead by liberal lies,” rather than tailor our delivery method in a way where they will actually like our shows. Communication is about reaching out to others. We can’t reach out to other people by expecting them to come to us on our terms. We can’t ignore the fundamentals of communication and then blame people for not hearing our message.
Being a conservative is about taking responsibility for our actions and failures to act. We might do that as individuals but, over the past ten years, we have shown a marked failure to do that as a movement. If we are in a weak position vis-a-vis liberalism, it is not merely because liberals have dominated the message. Instead, it is because, in our insistence that we are blameless in all our woes and our refusal to acknowledge our mistakes, we have created the appearance that we are detached from reality. That’s an ugly thing and it is rooted in an ungodly pride. Libs haven’t suckered our society away from American Exceptionalism — we’ve PUSHED it away. Our failures to communicate have simply allowed the left to frame our failures in a manner that is even more unattractive than might have otherwise been the case.
We are right much of the time but we are not right all of the time or necessarily even most of the time. Most of the time no one is right. We are simply right more often than the other guys. The only one who always right is God and we would do well to remember that. Our people aren’t necessarily better than the people you will find in the other camp — we just follow better principles because our principles are rooted in God. Such says nothing regarding our ability to obey said principles.
The devil was once the highest of the angels, closest to God and goodness of all of Creation. His sin was pride, in which he tried to make himself as God. Only God is always right and always perfect. Pride is the downfall of the godly. Rather than embrace pride and blame others for all that goes wrong, let us instead come to repentance and admit wherein we err. In doing that, we become human.
Colbert is successful mocking conservatives because we’ve made ourselves suitable targets for said mockery. We might do well to note his success as an indicator that we are perhaps doing something wrong rather than point the finger at everyone but ourselves.
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