WHY COLBERT WAS REALLY FUNNY AND WHY
THE DC PRESS CORPS JUST DOESN'T GET IT

The man who bravely took my position as theater arts teacher at Sterling High School in Baytown recently referred me in Real Art comments to an interesting discussion about Colbert's blistering speech at the White House Press Correspondents' dinner over at his blog, Great Blogs of Fire. It is, indeed, an interesting bunch of comments, which inspired me to try to figure out why, exactly, Colbert's routine was so funny.

Here's the comment I dropped over there:

I don't think either Stewart or Colbert would be really funny if it weren't for the politics. That is, I think Kyle's right, that you have to be on their side to find their jokes to be amusing. They make me laugh for the same reason that I think booger and dooky jokes are funny. They violate taboos, and I think indignant, arrogant, offended elitists are really funny. But take away the political angle and these guys are just another couple of comedians.

Fortunately for me, I'm pretty much on their side, so I think that within the narrow confines of their style of faux-news as political humor they're pretty brilliant--they're really good at making me imagine the responses of indignant, arrogant, offended elitists, who, as I said, make me laugh. Colbert's performance last Saturday went miles further than I've ever seen him go: he actually managed to employ real indignant, arrogant, offended elitists as part of the show. His jokes were only okay. The rip-roaring humor came from the situation he created, a nervous and indignant mass of self-important blowhards, whose collective actions have resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands of Iraqi citizens and thousands of American soldiers, forced to sit and listen to a nerdy guy in glasses make fun of them while simultaneously calling them out for their horrific sins. That's FUNNY!!! It's even funnier that these guys still don't seem to realize what hit them. Fools are funny.

In other words, Colbert wasn't at all trying to make that audience laugh. Indeed, while there was certainly an audience there, they weren't his audience; they were his victims. We were his audience. It was postmodern humor at its absolute finest. So, of course, the politicians and DC journalists in attendance didn't think it was funny. They weren't supposed to. Instead, they were made laughingstocks all for our benefit. And they're just too fucking stupid to understand that they were actually part of the performance. Meanwhile, Colbert's brilliant stunt continues without him: numerous outraged journalists, in a clueless haze of idiocy, continue to criticize him as being unfunny. God, I love it. Really, the whole thing ended up being a piece of performance art on the scale of environmental artist Christo. Bravo.

But don't just take my word for it. Here's some more analysis from Consortiumnews courtesy of Hullabaloo:

Colbert & the Courtier Press

“Colbert was not just a failure as a comedian but rude,” Cohen wrote. “Rudeness means taking advantage of the other person’s sense of decorum or tradition or civility that keeps that other person from striking back or, worse, rising in a huff and leaving. The other night, that person was George W. Bush.”

According to Cohen, Colbert was so boorish that he not only criticized Bush’s policies to the President’s face, but the comedian mocked the assembled Washington journalists decked out in their tuxedos and evening gowns.

“Colbert took a swipe at Bush’s Iraq policy, at domestic eavesdropping, and he took a shot at the news corps for purportedly being nothing more than stenographers recording what the Bush White House said,” Cohen wrote. “Colbert was more than rude. He was a bully.” [Washington Post, May 4, 2006]

Yet, while Cohen may see himself defending decorum and civility, his column is another sign of what's terribly wrong with the U.S. news media: With few exceptions, the Washington press corps has failed to hold Bush and his top advisers accountable for their long record of deception and for actions that have violated U.S. constitutional principles and American moral standards.

Click here for the rest.

This is so damned funny! I love it! These morons go on and on about "decorum" not realizing that the whole point was to utterly destroy their "decorum." This is the gag of all gags; the joke that keeps on giving. Everytime one of these blowhards blasts Colbert, they just keep the funny alive. This is the funniest thing I've ever encountered.

Ultimately, I think the best explanation of the humor here was given by Krusty the Clown during the Simpsons episode relating why Bob got the Sideshow job instead of his brother, who is a highly trained clown. Bob, a smug elitist, was extraordinarily funny attempting to maintain his dignity while he had pie all over his face. His brother never stood a chance: deflating the self-important is always funny, and much of the reason why is due to the fact that the victim isn't in on the joke; we're laughing at the victim, instead of with him.

Ha! We live in wonderful times.



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