Posted on 04/15/2014 8:36:57 AM PDT by Dave346
One of the tender mercies of Stephen Colbert's ascension to the "Late Show" set at CBS is his shedding of the faux-conservative "high-status idiot" character. To conservatives, this "Colbert" has never seemed authentic or sustained cleverness -- how many times can you say you don't read or even like books? It mostly marks the deep ruts of liberal arrogance in their own mental superiority. Colbert has perpetually had trouble staying inside this character, always winking at and mocking it more than inhabiting it.
To liberals, abandoning this thin charade is far too much sincerity for an ironic age. They love their idiot conservative, and aren't dealing well with its departure. Hendrik Hertzberg at The New Yorker, a former Carter speechwriter and Newsweek reporter, is putting on a black armband in mourning. He sincerely believes "The Character" is a "miraculous and unparalleled intellectual and political achievement." Break out the smelling salts:
"For eight years—for every minute of every half-hour of every edition of “The Colbert Report”—“Stephen Colbert” has been the exuberantly prim, indefatigably dim, supremely confident faux-conservative pundit who, brandishing a rippling, man-size American flag, has swooped thrillingly down at us four nights a week. Soon he will be gone. And we, his fans, will be bereft, deprived of the consolations he offers us for, among other afflictions, the existence of Fox News....
If Colbert’s interviews—meta-interviews, really—tend to be a little edgier, a little more unpredictable, than either Stewart’s or Letterman’s, one can’t help assuming that it’s because they are conducted by The Character, not the everyday husband and father. What will happen when the interviewer is Stephen Colbert, not “Stephen Colbert”? If an E! Online compilation of Colbert-as-Colbert is any guide, he’ll be charming, intelligent, and amusing. But the hint of lethality, if not altogether gone, is likely to be attenuated. The Character hasn’t had to worry about being likeable, any more than Elmer Fudd did. He’s been free to go places that an actual person can’t. The Character’s very one-dimensionality has given his interviews an interestingly three-dimensional quality....
Stewart will now have to soldier on alone. The immediate loss is for liberals, for whom “Stephen Colbert” has played a unique role as a fifth column. The Character has been a miraculous and unparalleled intellectual and political achievement, sustained for a very long time at a very high level. But if the intelligence, discipline, and hard work that Colbert invested in The Character can be brought to bear on revitalizing the variety show, then the polity’s loss may turn out to be the culture’s gain. If Colbert can truly reinvent the genre, if he has the freedom and the inclination to blow it up and build on the rubble, then perhaps The Character will not have died in vain. For the moment, though, excuse me while I put on my black armband."
They’ll still have Ted Baxter, five nights a week.
Colbert has been sticking his thumb in the eye of half the country for a decade. Pardon me if I don’t give a damn about him now.
I named the character Mr Strawman.
He’s done - committed suicide
The fake Colbert was starting to wear thin, and few will watch him out of character in Letterman’s time slot
These people are INSANE.
Interesting that liberals go into paroxysms of bereavement over a fictional character, yet can’t spare a tear for 60 Million Preborn Americans who are murdered before drawing their first breath.
Just sayin.
Colbert was always a “faux-Conservative”, or perhaps also a “foe-conservative”, much like Archie Bunker was for an earlier generation. A straw man set up for ridicule and for being burned in effigy when convenient, mouthing all the worst kind of slurs and what liberals prefer to believe are axioms of conservatives. Making a mockery of others is supposed to signify some kind of sophistication.
Sort of “funny”, but not necessarily in a humorous way.
I thought Colbert as “The Conservative” was funny, and showed the idiocy of what liberals thought conservatives were far more frequently than it actually mocked conservatives
Its like a white man trying to mock a black man by sitting down with a pile of watermelon in front of him all the time. It just shows their mindless conception of the stereotype more than anything else.
I like the Archie Bunker comparison.
There are others out there - Jane Lynch’s character on Glee is obnoxious, scheming, etc....and the only one that leans conservative in her role - mostly fiscally conservative.
I’m sure there will always be a straw man bogeyman out there in TV land, to make us forget the Rats are the true party of racism and closed mindedness.
Reminds me of a lefty loon at the office.
He nearly shed tears when the dog on Family Guy got killed off.
Agreed. Prediction: fail.
Oh My...that IS sad! LOL!
Why do so many people over-analyze what is a plain and simple jackass?
Liberals can ponder their own armpit odor.
I never thought of it that way...and if you are correct, he is mocking his audience, because the majority of them don’t get the joke.
The people I know that watch him think he’s hilarious...because he is mocking conservatives.
These are the same people who got angry that Dan Quayle was criticizing Murphy Brown....and somehow morphed it into a common notion that Quayle was the one who thought Brown was a real person.
Nobody could stand to be around him that day - he was so angry and short tempered. Now if one of the company owners has a stroke or breaks a leg, he doesn’t care....because rich people deserve a little adversity in their lives.
But don’t dare mess with his cartoon dog.
Oh my LORD. That is not only sad but sick.
But, then again, when I was a little kid, I found myself rooting for Frankenstein, Godzilla, and Moby Dick! LOL. I was sad when they were killed. Moby, of course won that round and swam into the sunset! Huzzah!
Remember...i was just a little kid at the time. hahaha
He’ll flop . . big time
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