• Quick note - the problem with Youtube videos not embedding on the forum appears to have been fixed, thanks to ZiprHead. If you do still see problems let me know.

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

I don't think it's at all surprising that folks on the right interpret Colbert differently than those on the left. After all, the two sides are constantly looking at the same world and coming up with completely different ideas about how to respond to it.
 
Prometheus said:
I don't think it's at all surprising that folks on the right interpret Colbert differently than those on the left. After all, the two sides are constantly looking at the same world and coming up with completely different ideas about how to respond to it.
Click to expand...

That's why fence sitters have no reaction to Colbert.
 
Cicero said:
And yet Bill Cosby thought Norman Lear's show was not only not funny, but did much more harm than good.
Click to expand...
As much as I love Bill Cosby, think he is hilarious, and can quote his early albums line-for-line, I can't think of a single show or movie that he has done that is socially relevant. He is like the Jello Pudding he advertised. Fun and tasty, but not much substance.
 
Tricky said:
As much as I love Bill Cosby, think he is hilarious, and can quote his early albums line-for-line, I can't think of a single show or movie that he has done that is socially relevant. He is like the Jello Pudding he advertised. Fun and tasty, but not much substance.
Click to expand...

I don't care about comedy being socially relevant, but Cosby's 1980's show had a lot of nerve calling it self a sitcom. It was all sit and no com. The situation wasn't comical, the characters weren't comical, and the dialogue didn't provoke humor. I don't know who the audience was that kept that show on the air when there were still basically three networks.

And yet the reason he was selected to be the spokesman for General Mills aspic is because he supposedly made this Mr. & Mrs. Whitebread staple....cool.
 
Cicero said:
I don't care about comedy being socially relevant, but Cosby's 1980's show had a lot of nerve calling it self a sitcom. It was all sit and no com. The situation wasn't comical, the characters weren't comical, and the dialogue didn't provoke humor. I don't know who the audience was that kept that show on the air when there were still basically three networks.
Click to expand...
Oh, there was comedy, but it was pretty lame. It was a throwback to Ozzie and Harriet. But it was a family show that parents could watch with their kids. Every now and then, Cos would get off on a riff that was good, but the rest of the cast were just filler.

Cosby's best TV work was I-Spy. THAT was funny. Still not socially relevant though.

But the thing about All in the Family and Colbert and, yes, even Family Ties, is that they make us think and re-evaluate our own prejudices. And laugh at them.
 
Tricky said:
Oh, there was comedy, but it was pretty lame. It was a throwback to Ozzie and Harriet. But it was a family show that parents could watch with their kids. Every now and then, Cos would get off on a riff that was good, but the rest of the cast were just filler.

Cosby's best TV work was I-Spy. THAT was funny. Still not socially relevant though.

But the thing about All in the Family and Colbert and, yes, even Family Ties, is that they make us think and re-evaluate our own prejudices. And laugh at them.
Click to expand...

You should play the DVD "I SPY" special features of Robert Culp talking about the show. He backed having Cosby as a co-star when there were no black faces on TV in starring roles. That was what was socially relevant about the show.

Hell, "The Rockford Files" had many more laughs and it wasn't even a sitcom. "The Odd Couple" made "The Cosby Show" look like C-SPAN's coverage of Congress.
 
Cicero said:
You should play the DVD "I SPY" special features of Robert Culp talking about the show. He backed having Cosby as a co-star when there were no black faces on TV in starring roles. That was what was socially relevant about the show.
Click to expand...

That was socially relevant from a real world perspective, but nothing on the show touched any sensitive themes.

Cicero said:
Hell, "The Rockford Files" had many more laughs and it wasn't even a sitcom. "The Odd Couple" made "The Cosby Show" look like C-SPAN's coverage of Congress.
Click to expand...

The Rockford Files was about 50% comedy. James Garner has always been a comedic actor. The old "Maverick" westerns were laugh-out-loud funny.

But Cosby has never done anything risky. He never (to my knowledge) played a controversial character. That's not a big deal, because many comedians never do that. I'm just saying that you can't use Cosby's evalutaion as a measuring stick of what is funny. He does one kind of comedy. Lenny Bruce, Tom Lehrer, The Smothers Brothers, Carrol O'Conner, George Carlin, Bea Arthur, Carlos Mencia and Stephen Colbert do another.
 
m_huber said:
It is his site. I know it isn't satire, but when there are music videos titled "50 ways to eat your baby", it's hard to take seriously.
Click to expand...

Oh, he's hard to take seriously no matter what. If it wasn't for his son speaking out against him, I might actually be convinced this was some sort of Kaufmannesque comedy routine.
 
GreNME said:
No, the joke is on everyone. Colbert doesn't pull punches with either side of the political spectrum. Don't mistake his character's obvious bias for bias in his satire.

That you seem to be of the impression that "the jokes on them" is why I mentioned the irony in the first place.
Click to expand...
That's not what the comments on The Daily Show after the White House Corr. dinner indicated.

So you think Colbert is making fun of liberals? Can you give an example we can evaluate?
 
skeptigirl said:
That's not what the comments on The Daily Show after the White House Corr. dinner indicated.

So you think Colbert is making fun of liberals? Can you give an example we can evaluate?
Click to expand...
Both Colbert and Stewart have a liberal bias, but they basically make fun of politicians. Both had a field day with Elliot Spitzer and Blago. The first law of political humor is, "attack whatever is on the front page".
 
Tricky said:
Both Colbert and Stewart have a liberal bias, but they basically make fun of politicians. Both had a field day with Elliot Spitzer and Blago. The first law of political humor is, "attack whatever is on the front page".
Click to expand...
And They seem to have also perfected the second law of political humor, "attack whoever wrote the front page"
 
Tricky said:
Both Colbert and Stewart have a liberal bias, but they basically make fun of politicians. Both had a field day with Elliot Spitzer and Blago. The first law of political humor is, "attack whatever is on the front page".
Click to expand...

joobz said:
And They seem to have also perfected the second law of political humor, "attack whoever wrote the front page"
Click to expand...
Sort of. It's a different world now. Everything is a "personality". In the old days, you might attack a newspaper or a columnist, but now, with people like O'Reilly and Olberman as frontmen, it becomes so much easier to attack them than attacking a masthead.
 
Tricky said:
Both Colbert and Stewart have a liberal bias, but they basically make fun of politicians. Both had a field day with Elliot Spitzer and Blago. The first law of political humor is, "attack whatever is on the front page".
Click to expand...

Exactly. A lot of Colbert's over-the-top-isms are ambiguously double-entendre-like in their make-up, in order to make both extremes look ridiculous. Stewart tends to go straight for displaying the absurdity in the headlines themselves. We're going to begin to see more and more satire focused on liberal targets as this administration goes forward, and that's fine-- it's what political satire is meant to do.
 
Tricky said:
I'm just saying that you can't use Cosby's evalutaion as a measuring stick of what is funny. He does one kind of comedy. Lenny Bruce, Tom Lehrer, The Smothers Brothers, Carrol O'Conner, George Carlin, Bea Arthur, Carlos Mencia and Stephen Colbert do another.
Click to expand...

Right- they did the kind that was funny.
 
Bob Klase said:
Right- they did the kind that was funny.
Click to expand...
Bill Cosby is funny. Very funny. If you can hear his very non-biblical "Noah and the ark" routine without laughing, you have a very strange and limited sense of humor. The man is a comic genius. He's just not political.
 
Tricky said:
Bill Cosby is funny. Very funny. If you can hear his very non-biblical "Noah and the ark" routine without laughing, you have a very strange and limited sense of humor. The man is a comic genius. He's just not political.
Click to expand...

Right!...
What's a cubit? :D
 
gumboot said:
It would appear that some liberal types have meanwhile practised their own confirmation bias by interpreting the study as evidence that conservative types are stupid or have no sense of humour or similar.

Irony indeed.

I don't see what the big fuss here is. Nothing particularly new or interesting, and the notion that anyone might think such bias doesn't affect us liberals is hysterical. We're all biased. The more extreme your position, the more difficulty you have distinguishing variations in position. This is a long-established phenomenon. That's why radical right wingers see all liberals as radicals, and why all radical left wingers see all conservatives as radicals.

In simple terms; people suck at the brain.
Click to expand...


It's polite, considerate, and more genteel than fashionable to say that while this studys shows that conservatives who see ambiguous satire interpret it as agreeing with them, that does not prove that liberals are somehow immune when the shoe is on the other foot.

However, while I can think of Swift, Twain, Horatious, Colbert, Dr. Seuss, and numerous other satirists who skewered the establishment of their time, and can think of times they were conservative (Aristophenes's The Clouds and Seuss's WWII recruitment posters come to mind) I can't think of a single popular satirist who was predominantly conservative - either by contemporary standards or those of their time.

Is satire mainly progressive and anti-establishment, or is that my bias?
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top Bottom