I can't leave Jon Stewart's (MM #12) partner in crime at right, out of our discussion of late-night TV journalistic satire. How come we're so lucky, lo these politically-fraught last five years or so, to have these two guys back-to-back, four hours a week? (Need to do a little DVR-ing to get the mandatory "Letterman-fix," however.) Both shows are based in media satire, both are on the side of current moral/social/civil consensus ... if not the angels. But here's the difference: Monsieur Colbert pretends to be on the OTHER side. The irony is thus double-edged, and about twice as funny for it. This is all best illustrated in their divergent takes on the "Birthers," which I'll get to in a minute.
Colbert models his persona on Bill O'Reilly, in fact, whom he defers to as "Papa Bear," but it could be any other self -righteous, opinionated, wing-nut pundit like Hannity or Beck (not the rocker). He assumes a parodic character: you might call him UberConservativeMensch--who satirizes himself at the same time he's taking right-wing ideas over the top ... reductio ad absurdum style... while not once breaking character, or revealing the true liberal bent of the show.
(Even his name is invention: it pretends to somehow connect with the Huguenots of his Charleston SC upbringing and hence the Frenchified pronunciation of "coal-BEAR," when in actuality the man himself is of Irish-Catholic stock born in the nation's capital, no less; and the rest of the family pronounces the name as spelled. In a funny but revealing moment on a recent show, Colbert asks his guest, none other than younger brother Ed, how he pronounces his surname. Answer: "COAL-burt." "See you in hell," responds "coal-BEAR"--not dropping his mask for a moment)
We can clearly see the difference in satirical mode between Stewart and Colbert in the treatment of the Birther movement this week. His boss had the easier task: as mentioned in that earlier post, Stewart can for the most part let the video clips speak for themselves and expose the Birthers for the fools they are--punctuated with a few incredulous grins and disapproving grunts. On the other hand, when Colbert took up the topic yesterday, he became one of them. Perfect irony. His guest was Orly Taites, a Russian emigree' and so-called "mother" of the faux Obama-birth-certificate movement. As introduction he played a clip where she declaims that "You have to have two parents who are citizens; Obama's father was not a citizen of the US." Colbert "agrees"--"Yes, everybody knows both parents must be citizens. It may not be in the constitution, but it's a basic fact taught to every school-child growing up with Ms. Taites in the Soviet Union."
When she enters and sits for the interview, Stephen assures her that he's on her side; that Obama is a bad President; and we need to get him out of office "by any weird loophole we can make up." She proceeds to make her case, which is weird enough to allow Colbert to sit back and let her self-immolate for a time. After her inevitable comparisons to Stalin and Hitler, which he declares to be "fresh and new," he takes her point into woo-woo land. "We wouldn't want another Chester A. Arthur [whom she'd never heard of--perfect again] would we? Mutton-chops [as he gestures along his face] and all that. His father was not a naturalized citizen when he was born. He was a terrible President. Do we really want a return to mutton-chops."
The Zeitgeist will out-- no matter the guest or subject: Colbert will hyperbolically OVER-agree on the right, and illogically DIS-agree on the left. Case in point for the latter--Arianna Huffington, who was his very next guest after Orly Taites. The HuffPost lady-in-chief was on to plump the newly updated re-issue of her 2003 Pigs at the Trough, which chronicled corporate greed and political corruption in and around the Enron era--this edition uncovering even "more bacon" in and around the Washington DC beltway today.
"We can't let these guys go back and do business as usual and ruin the country," says she.
"Yes," says he, "but it was working so well ... for awhile. I made so much MONEY ... for awhile. Why can't we just let them go back to what they were doing and then everybody just jump out before it all goes to hell? A red flag or something."
When asked earlier about her own citizenship status (since she, like Orly Taites, has an "unbelievable, ridiculous accent," according to Colbert), the Greek-born Ms. HuffPost captures the essence of Colbertian Irony in appropriately ironic form. She claims that
"Actually, I was born in the United States and cultivated this accent to give the air of a minority, which is very, very big now."
"Well, wait a minute, how do you really talk?"
"No, no, I never break character. Just like you, I never stray from character.
"You never break character ... that must be hard."
"I learned from the best, Stephen."
************
No comments:
Post a Comment