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

Colbert is the most trustworthy and accurate source of news available!!!(exhales..................)
 
Wait? What? Are you joking? Stop kidding man, seriously, what's up with that? I thought I knew you dude. Man, what a bummer.
 
applecorped said:
Colbert is the most trustworthy and accurate source of news available!!!(exhales..................)
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The sad thing is that that the above is almost true...















Not so much a statement supporting his veracity, but the lack thereof in the rest of the news...
:D:D:D:D:D (for the humor impaired)
 
GreNME said:
Oh, the irony.

And the actual study being discussed? Everyone who took part in the study stated that they knew his character was satire. ....
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His personal beliefs don't change the fact he was still making fun of religion in the show. Are you claiming he wasn't?
 
applecorped said:
Colbert is the most trustworthy and accurate source of news available!!!(exhales..................)
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.
The two shows aren't necessarily "trustworthy and accurate", but they do point out the daily about faces of the politicians with their clips of the windbags spouting about X=Y today, and X=/=Y yesterday, which the "prime time news" guys don't get into all that much.
 
GreNME said:
The entire study displayed confirmation bias among its participants. The results basically pointed out that people of a given political ideology are going to focus more heavily on what they perceive as confirming to that political ideology.

That why I'm scratching my head at the claims like "Conservatives don't know he's joking." The actual study shows that they do know he's joking, and much like the liberal or the independent participants felt that his jokes affirmed their own political ideas, conservatives felt that his jokes affirmed their own political ideas. Not really all that amazingly ground-breaking, if you ask me.
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They know he's joking, but they don't know the jokes on them.

But your point about the title is well taken.
 
Cicero said:
As rwguinn has stated, that assessment has been duly noted ad nauseam on JREF. Skeptigirl made the charge that conservatives are confused about differentiating from Cobert's TV character and the off-camera Colbert.
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I'm not sure how you got that out of what I've posted.


Cicero said:
O'Reilly has been on Colbert and vice versa. I....
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Dragging this conversation back to the thread topic..... This is an interesting point. Bush knew the joke was on him at the White House dinner event also. So it seems if the satire gets personal, the confirmation bias has less effect?
 
GreNME said:
Well, yeah. They operate in different modes, and for different reasons. Both are quite good at what they do, but Colbert's character enables him to have more leeway in really reaching for buttons with people to see if an entertaining outcome can be had, while Stewart tries to find the entertainment within the contextual theme of his interviewees. Each requires a good bit of ability to randomly associate silly or funny stuff at the drop of a hat.
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I've always said that Jon Stewart is political commentary that includes humor, and Colbert is humor that includes political commentary.
 
rwguinn said:
Why?
In fact, the entire purpose of this thread was an Ad Hom attack on Republicans, and the old "GW Bush is so stupid..." fertilizer...
Does anyone actually b'leeve that GWB did/does NOT know Colbert is a caraciture of the evil conservative?
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That's your confirmation bias talking there. If I wanted to take the conversation in that direction, I would have posted in the politics forum.

And I just noted above that Bush's response, as O'Reilly's differed from the people in the study.

Just to get away from the politics here before the thread goes astray, who here thought the Landover Baptist site was real when they first read something from it? I did. I can't recall which article I read. The home page and most of the articles are obviously satire. But a few of their articles are pretty slick and the first one I read tricked me.

The confirmation bias was in the opposite direction. I was willing to believe how hateful the Evangelicals were toward people they don't agree. But I think it's the same thing missing the satire because of the confirmation bias.
 
applecorped said:
Colbert is the most trustworthy and accurate source of news available!!!(exhales..................)
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I got absolutely all of my US Election news through Stewart and Colbert. They're my source for American politics. They are the only way that American politics can be entertaining. And believe me, laughing at American politics is really fun.
 
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.
...
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I find myself having to consciously remember not to do that. But I don't have any trouble recognizing I'm talking about a small subset of conservatives.

As for this being in the d'uh category, yes but I'm interested in the brain mechanisms behind it. When I deal with the lack of critical thinking skills I think the JREF is about changing, I see a huge barrier in reaching people whose confirmation bias is so great it's impenetrable. We get nowhere by throwing up our hands and saying this is an unsolvable problem. But if we are ever going to address it, we need to better understand it.
 
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Actually now that I think about it the title of this is a little bit off. The woman interviewed stated that those interviewed KNEW he was being sarcastic but that they felt that deep down inside he might agree with some of the sentiments that he felt. Now honestly we don't really know if that is true or not, only Colbert does.

You do have to wonder why he felt this way to go with it and if he really felt strongly about everything he said as not being true.

For example Carrol O'Connor (sp?) who played Archie Bunker probably didn't agree with most of what he was scripted to say, but can we really say he didn't agree with all of it? That not a thing that come out of his mouth he believed?

I can see the point that is being made about the confirmation bias of the liberals suggesting that Conservatives are so stupid they don't know he's joking. Seems to me that's not what the study showed, it showed they knew he was joking but suspected him of deep inside believing some of the things he said.

Additionally we didn't see the study. This is why I take "studies and statistics" with a grain of salt. They could be worded a number of different ways.

Ex there could be a question that stated

Steve Colbert actually believes the things he is saying

A Strongly Disagree
B. Disagree
C Unsure
D. Agree
E. Strongly Agree

The woman who gave the study stated that the more conservative a person was the more they believed that he was not joking.

I'd like to see the study to see if I agree with her position.
 
arthwollipot said:
I've always said that Jon Stewart is political commentary that includes humor, and Colbert is humor that includes political commentary.
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I think that's a great way of putting it. Thanks for condensing my thoughts for me! :)
 
skeptigirl said:
They know he's joking, but they don't know the jokes on them.

But your point about the title is well taken.
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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.
 
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.
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Looks like projection on the part of some posters:
They have no sense of humor, and can't believe that anyone can laugh at themselves...
 
arthwollipot said:
I got absolutely all of my US Election news through Stewart and Colbert. They're my source for American politics. They are the only way that American politics can be entertaining. And believe me, laughing at American politics is really fun.
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It's almost shameful, poking fun at the willfully disabled, the way Comedy Central does.
But the windbags in politics need to have their idiot-synchricies exposed.
 
I started watching Colbert and Stewart before I became an atheist. They were funny then. They're funny now. Really, neither does that much with regard to religion. Every once in a while, they go on a tangent, but usually only if it's news related, and then they deal with it from that perspective. If you watch the clip of Penn on Colbert, Penn comes on strong as an atheist, and Colbert seems to me to be honestly annoyed with him ("I'm a libertarian too. And you're free to leave.")

The bottom line is that he is a professional. The ideal actor can become any personality and sell it. He says in interviews that he's a moderate. We can do nothing but believe that. Some of his stories recently have featured sharp criticism of Obama. When he interviews congressmen, they get ripped apart no matter which side of the aisle they're on. He exposed the Republican and Democrat presidential nomination process by running for president. Colbert is going for laughs. Is he a flaming liberal? Is he a true conservative, hiding behind jokes about conservatives? No. He's a moderate -- like he says in real life.

When we try to pick apart what he is from watching his persona on tv, we are working with not enough information to actually figure it out. Therefore, we have to fill in the gaps with our preconceived ideas. Hence, confirmation bias.
 
Ok, speaking of sites where it's hard to tell if it's satire or not, how about godhatesfags.org? It looks stupid, but...
 
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rwguinn said:
Looks like projection on the part of some posters:
They have no sense of humor, and can't believe that anyone can laugh at themselves...
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Yeah, that's pretty bad. I mean, I can laugh at yourselves just fine. ;)
 
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