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Dr. Shermer on Colbert tonight

steve s

Philosopher
steve s
Joined
Feb 16, 2006
Messages
5,865
Colbert's show just started and Dr. Michael Shermer will be on. If you miss it they'll have a couple of reruns tomorrow.

Steve S
 
The standup German ambassador? Will be at Caroline's and the euthenasian center tomorrow?
 
For those who missed it (or who don't have cable), it should be on Hulu.com tomorrow. Looking forward to seeing it!
 
I'm an unabashed Colbert fan, but i have to watch these things a day late because I live in the Netherlands. What struck me most is how well an opponent to the Colbert character Michael Shermer was. There's only a handful of people each year that Colbert lets get the better of him, but in this case it seems he had no choice.
 
I saw it. It was very quick. Shermer squeezed a couple of points in, but I didn't see this "getting the better of Colbert" that other people seem to have seen. It was mostly Colbert bouncing jokes off him.
 
I thought he got some good points in, especially the one about science being different than all other systems because it has a mechanism to correct itself.

Steve S
 
Ersby said:
I saw it. It was very quick. Shermer squeezed a couple of points in, but I didn't see this "getting the better of Colbert" that other people seem to have seen. It was mostly Colbert bouncing jokes off him.
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That's about what they are going for, guest gets their main points in and Colbert plays off of them for plenty of jokes. He's said that he tones up and down the character depending on the guest to get the right mix.
 
Ersby said:
I saw it. It was very quick. Shermer squeezed a couple of points in, but I didn't see this "getting the better of Colbert" that other people seem to have seen. It was mostly Colbert bouncing jokes off him.
Click to expand...

At the end of nearly every interview Colbert will raise a question or assert something that is hard to answer/rebut in a soundbite on the spot without making it look like Colbert trounced you. He did the same in this interview by asserting that Jesus told him that he misses Michael Shermer. Dr. Shermer didn't let himself get derailed into something like "well how do you know" but retorted by saying that that is all in Stephen's head and his book explains it.

Now I know that for Michael Shermer this was not a hard decision, figuring out which route to take (and I'm sure there's more I haven't described, but the "how do you know that" answer is an obvious skeptical route in my opinion"). He was plugging his book while answering Colbert's question. Stephen Colbert's response was just to dismiss the book, and then end the interview. Because that was the maximum value he could get out of this interview.

This is not something that happens often in interviews conducted by Stephen Colbert. Usually he will make sure he manoeuvres his guests into a position in which he stumps them, or at least appears to. It didn't work this time, and I do not think it was by design, although I cannot discount that possibility.
 
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FWIW, Colbert is on colbertnation.com within hours of airing, with limited commercial interruptions
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Turgor said:
I'm an unabashed Colbert fan, but i have to watch these things a day late because I live in the Netherlands. What struck me most is how well an opponent to the Colbert character Michael Shermer was. There's only a handful of people each year that Colbert lets get the better of him, but in this case it seems he had no choice.
Click to expand...

Turgor said:
At the end of nearly every interview Colbert will raise a question or assert something that is hard to answer/rebut in a soundbite on the spot without making it look like Colbert trounced you. He did the same in this interview by asserting that Jesus told him that he misses Michael Shermer. Dr. Shermer didn't let himself get derailed into something like "well how do you know" but retorted by saying that that is all in Stephen's head and his book explains it.

Now I know that for Michael Shermer this was not a hard decision, figuring out which route to take (and I'm sure there's more I haven't described, but the "how do you know that" answer is an obvious skeptical route in my opinion"). He was plugging his book while answering Colbert's question. Stephen Colbert's response was just to dismiss the book, and then end the interview. Because that was the maximum value he could get out of this interview.

This is not something that happens often in interviews conducted by Stephen Colbert. Usually he will make sure he manoeuvres his guests into a position in which he stumps them, or at least appears to. It didn't work this time, and I do not think it was by design, although I cannot discount that possibility.
Click to expand...



You know Colbert in NOT actually a conservative/Republican/theist... right?

:)
 
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