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Colbert Study: Conservatives don't know he's joking

skeptigirl said:
It would be interesting if the people who scheduled Colbert for the dinner thought the Colbert Report was making fun of liberals.

It's possible the people that were studied were unaware of the Correspondence Dinner.
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IIRC, the next day, The Daily Show said the same thing. Jon Stewart said something along the lines of, "Did they not watch the show?" They made fun of it for several minutes. And, again, IIRC, whoever booked him was apparently one of the conservatives who "didn't get it." Which was coupled with the fact that he was very new, and had not been on the air long enough for anyone to really know who he was. My guess is that one or two people thought he was just a comedian doing a "funny-but-actually-kinda-conservative" counter to The Daily Show's "funny-but-actually-kinda-liberal" schtick, and no one else really bothered to check up on him before booking him.

I would think that, after seeing him at the dinner, it would be obvious to everyone. I mean, Bush walked out as soon as he was done, and he and Laura looked pretty pissed.

I've always wondered about this myself. I remember another incident a long time ago, along the same lines. A coworker of mine at the time was trying to convince me that Matt Groening (of The Simpsons) was really a pretty hard-core, right-wing conservative who constantly used the show to make fun of liberals with harsh, scathing commentary, thinly-veiled as jokes. And of course any time there was a joke that made fun of a conservative view, it was self-deprecating humor - either simply done to be funny and not at all serious, or just to hide how obviously anti-liberal the show was, so that it wouldn't get pulled off the air.

Confirmation bias is rampant, it's something we all have to deal with. If you're aware of it, I guess it helps, but everyone falls victim to it at least some of the time.

I don't though. I always find evidence to back up my views because I'm always right, not because I search out supporting data and ignore conflicting. :rolleyes:
 
That video is one of the best things I have ever seen on TV that featured George W. Bush. I'm suprised Colbert didn't end up audited or in Gitmo for gems like this:

"I believe the government that governs best is the government that governs least. And by these standards, we have set up a fabulous government in Iraq."
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I'm glad if conservatives don't know he's joking. Go Colbert! :USA:
 
stilicho said:
It doesn't just work one way, skeptigirl. I find Prison Planet/Infowars' Alex Jones to be one of the best entertainers in the media today. I don't think he's necessarily making fun of gun nuts and conspiracists but he sure gives them an opportunity to make idiots out of themselves. Glen Beck calls himself a rodeo clown but people still take him seriously.

And don't ignore the regular appearance of celebrities hired to hawk politics on all sides of the political spectrum.

Isn't it a version of the Epimenides Paradox when a comedian says: "I am being serious."
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Let me get this straight. You're saying Glenn Beck is doing satire on Fox News and liberals think he's conservative when he's really a liberal? That doesn't even make sense.


I pay zero attention to Alex Jones and only rarely read anything on PP. And I said it likely goes both ways and was hoping for some examples so this discussion could stay more politically neutral than not.
 
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mazyloron said:
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I don't though. I always find evidence to back up my views because I'm always right, not because I search out supporting data and ignore conflicting. :rolleyes:
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See, that's part of my problem. I've been actively seeking situations where I've ignored the facts in favor of confirmation. But when I find something, I can usually go back to the evidence and say, naahh! I was right.

I was watching Ms Dr Laura whatsherface on Fox News sitting in for O'Reilly. She made a good point (can't believe I wrote that) pointing out the rude things said by Olbermann's guest about the Ms California who didn't believe in gay marriage. It was pretty bad and it is true at first the beauty queen was only expressing her opinion (except at this point the reason she was newsworthy is she had become the spokesperson for an anti-gay rights group). Should people say nasty things about others they don't agree with? No.

Then of course I thought about all the times Dr Laura dissed people and the right wingers always give Anne Coulter a soap box, and O'Reilly said terrible things to the face of that kid who lost his dad in the WTC because O'Reilly didn't like the kid's opinion. Anyway...

If someone can show me the evidence I think I can recognize my confirmation bias. I do think about why I believe this guy and automatically dismiss that guy and so on. We definitely choose who is credible without necessarily checking every fact. You think you know the facts from previous checking and that you are believing this guy over that guy because what they are saying fits with your pre-existing knowledge, not just your bias.
 
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skeptigirl said:
Let me get this straight. You're saying Glenn Beck is doing satire on Fox News and liberals think he's conservative when he's really a liberal? That doesn't even make sense.
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I didn't say he was a rodeo clown. He did.

Performers in the media are driven by ego and not by politics or principles. Not even by money.

You probably know this already but you really don't see the parody in every tear that Glenn Beck sheds?

As for Colbert, you probably know that in "real life" he is a committed Christian. Kind of the anti-skeptigirl. He is really the sort of person that you would call a liar because he is smart enough to know that God (or whatever) doesn't exist.

Comedy Central gave Colbert his own show to satisfy his ego, to make sure he didn't escape to the big screen, and to create a lead-in from the lagging ratings for The Daily Show after his departure.

I take it you've never been in the entertainment industry or you'd know all this already.
 
stilicho said:
Comedy Central gave Colbert his own show to satisfy his ego, to make sure he didn't escape to the big screen, and to create a lead-in from the lagging ratings for The Daily Show after his departure.
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And here I'd been thinking that the reason they gave him his own show was because they thought many people would watch it and they'd get lots of money from advertising.

stilicho said:
and to create a lead-in from the lagging ratings for The Daily Show after his departure.
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And I always thought they tended to put the show that needed help on following the show with get the good ratings.
 
skeptigirl said:
See, that's part of my problem. I've been actively seeking situations where I've ignored the facts in favor of confirmation. But when I find something, I can usually go back to the evidence and say, naahh! I was right.

I was watching Ms Dr Laura whatsherface on Fox News sitting in for O'Reilly. She made a good point (can't believe I wrote that) pointing out the rude things said by Olbermann's guest about the Ms California who didn't believe in gay marriage. It was pretty bad and it is true at first the beauty queen was only expressing her opinion (except at this point the reason she was newsworthy is she had become the spokesperson for an anti-gay rights group). Should people say nasty things about others they don't agree with? No.

Then of course I thought about all the times Dr Laura dissed people and the right wingers always give Anne Coulter a soap box, and O'Reilly said terrible things to the face of that kid who lost his dad in the WTC because O'Reilly didn't like the kid's opinion. Anyway...

If someone can show me the evidence I think I can recognize my confirmation bias. I do think about why I believe this guy and automatically dismiss that guy and so on. We definitely choose who is credible without necessarily checking every fact. You think you know the facts from previous checking and that you are believing this guy over that guy because what they are saying fits with your pre-existing knowledge, not just your bias.
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I was of course joking...mostly.

I know I fall for confirmation bias (probably more often than I realize). I try my best to avoid it, and am generally willing to re-evaluate a judgment or decision I've made, if I think it was overly or unnecessarily biased, or if there is new evidence, or if the old was somehow flawed.

But, like you said, we tend to assess credibility without really checking every single bit of evidence. Of course, if we really did that, no one would get much of anything accomplished, we'd all be researching whether it really is a "nice" day out, or whether our neighbor was trying to trick us.

We have to make judgment calls without all of the facts - it's virtually impossible not to, there's just too much data to take it all in on every single subject. Media personalities are especially tricky, however. We only see the face they want us to see, for the most part. Many talk show hosts or news show anchors take on a character role when on camera or on the radio. They want us to think they are a specific kind of person, with these views. Or, some are deliberately vague enough that people from various ends of the political spectrum will find reasons to agree with them, which builds a larger fan base.

Now, of course not everyone in the media is playing a character, in fact I would guess that most are not. Or, not exactly. There's a good chance that many are just exaggerating beliefs they do have, because being inflammatory tends to get them more attention than if they just say something moderate and non-controversial.

Which leads me to my questions: when all the data that is coming our way about one person is biased, how can we even make a rational, unbiased judgment? If all we see of Colbert is his show, or Glenn Beck or Alex Jones, how do we - no, how can we make an accurate evaluation of their beliefs? We do not know the truth of the matter regarding their beliefs, or their intentions with their respective shows, all we know is the end result. We have to guess at the motivations behind it, and that's where confirmation bias rears its ugly head. We're forced to make judgments not only without all of the facts, but with very few actual "facts." So we sift through all of this data and find things that make sense to us - and, of course, our pattern-matching brain tends to find familiar patterns more easily than unfamiliar ones, so we will notice data that supports ideas and opinions that we already hold more often than not. And thus, our decisions will be biased.

Note that this doesn't mean necessarily that we're always going to think that someone is agreeing with us, merely that we're highly likely to pigeonhole people whom we don't know that much about. And when that person is a loud-mouthed, semi-famous TV or radio personality, the choices tend to be: "s/he's pretty smart, and I'd like to hear more" or "what an idiot, I can't believe anyone listens to him/her."

With categories that broad, with biased data being all or mostly all that we have to go on, and confirmation bias happening for the most part subconsciously...well, that's just a lot of factors trying to mess up our decision-making process.
 
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skeptigirl said:
Huffington Post comments on the study

The Olbermann segment (definitely funny segment)
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Thanks for the link.
That was great!

eta:

I recall reading an article in Playboy a while back on how a particular personality type (can't recall the specifics of the categorization system they used, sorry) tended to be very conservative politically. If that is true, that might have a correlation with their sense of human and impact on their ability to pick up on satire.
 
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Modified said:
The first time I saw Rush Limbaugh (back when he had a TV show, and I had never heard of his radio show) I assumed it was a comedy bit. I kept waiting for the punch line. It probably had nothing to do with the nature of his politics though. I had never seen anyone on TV, outside of Pat Robertson, present one opinion after another as though they were facts and with total blowhard confidence. It didn't fit with my experience that such a thing could be serious. I did get it after a few minutes though.
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An initial viewing of Keith Olbermann's "Countdown" prompted the same assumption; this has to be a parody of a soporific and vitriolic liberal. The reason why I know it isn't an act is that KO would have sued Raychill Maddow for ripping-off his Vaudeville style and stale material.
 
skeptigirl said:
It would be interesting if the people who scheduled Colbert for the dinner thought the Colbert Report was making fun of liberals.



It's possible the people that were studied were unaware of the Correspondence Dinner.
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Whoever scheduled him for the White House Correspondence Dinner in the Bush administration must have had some thick goggles on because everybody in that audience knew what was going on.

If the people involved in the study had seen it, I'm sure the results would be different. So you're probably right, they most likely didn't see it.
 
stilicho said:
I didn't say he was a rodeo clown. He did.
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And this is supposed to mean he is doing satire we don't recognize? I don't think so.

stilicho said:
Performers in the media are driven by ego and not by politics or principles. Not even by money.
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A bit of an over generalization I would think.

stilicho said:
You probably know this already but you really don't see the parody in every tear that Glenn Beck sheds?
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He uses sarcasm a lot, but not every tear is intended to be sarcastic. Whether they are fake or not is another question.

stilicho said:
As for Colbert, you probably know that in "real life" he is a committed Christian. Kind of the anti-skeptigirl. He is really the sort of person that you would call a liar because he is smart enough to know that God (or whatever) doesn't exist.
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That's very hard to believe. He has some of the boldest god sarcasm on TV. I'm wondering if you aren't one of the people the study was talking about mistaking satire for real Christian rhetoric?

Where's your evidence?
 
Slayhamlet said:
This really wasn't that hard to find
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If I had the time. The first couple sources I found weren't clear if Colbert was role playing his character. This one seems a bit more certain:
SC: I love my Church, and I'm a Catholic who was raised by intellectuals, who were very devout. I was raised to believe that you could question the Church and still be a Catholic. What is worthy of satire is the misuse of religion for destructive or political gains. That's totally different from the Word, the blood, the body and the Christ. His kingdom is not of this earth.
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But that last sentence could be more satire or more devout than one would guess. Lot's of Catholics are more ritualistic about their beliefs and less 'jesus devotees'.
 
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