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What do you mean—like there are other dimensions? Extra? This, obviously, this … this makes my brain break. What’s that mean? Why would you study this? What purpose does it serve to think about things that we cannot see or touch?24

With his indignation, Colbert not only assumes that only sensory data count, but betrays an attitude of utter discomfort with being curious about anything not already obvious. When we get truly curious, by contrast, we move towards the things we don’t understand, trying to find out more.

But to Colbert, nothing demands more sympathy than a mind forced to become informed. He highlights a caption from pundit Neil Cavuto’s news show that reads, “Students forced to watch An Inconvenient Truth or fail,” then comments about one complaining student named “Barry”:

At a ‘college’, Barry was forced to think something that he didn’t already think … Of course he’s bitter: he’s enrolled in a class where the professor thinks he knows more about the subject than the students. The last time I checked, that is the definition of elitism… . That’s why all colleges should be forced to advertise every element of their curriculum—so students are guaranteed that when they leave college they’ll be exactly the same as when they went in. That, folks, is what I believe college is for. You take these young unformed lumps of clay, leave them unformed lumps, then fire them in the kiln of unchallenged thought so they become rigid and never move again.25

By describing Barry as forced to think something he didn’t already think, Colbert satirizes the assumption that people should never have to confront their preconceptions. Labeling knowledge and learning as “elitism,” he avoids the attitude of trying to stay informed.

Being inquisitive demands exactly that we avoid becoming the rigid and unmoving “lumps of clay” Colbert wishes for, and instead that we actively seek out what we don’t know. A risk is that openly questioning everything can lead to a wishy-washy relativism, an “anything goes” lack of foundational beliefs. But it doesn’t have to. It’s possible to both find things out and make decisions, to both commit to values and keep probing and learning more.

To end the segment (and even end inquiry), Colbert comments, “That’s how you get well educated like Barry,” and shows a clip of Cavuto interviewing the student:

CAVUTO: What was your grade?

BARRY: Umm, my grade was well. (sic)

COLBERT: See? His grade was “well.” Now, he make double-plus-think, despite unwell-school. Let’s just hope our future generations can do the same.26

Besides discrediting the source as uneducated, Colbert’s parody refers to Orwellian “doublethink.” In the novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, the government endlessly reiterates the equivalence of concepts with their denials, in slogans like “War Is Peace” and “Freedom Is Slavery.” What a school says was taught, Cavuto says was “forced.” Colbert lauds the student for his “double-plus-think” in the face of “unwell” schooling because he doesn’t want the student to seek actual information about things like global warming. In effect, Colbert the performer uses Colbert the character as a caveat or warning of how we can let ourselves be controlled by other forces if we don’t keep up a habit of asking questions and seeking out information.

Giving Everyone the Chance to Agree with You

Open-minded:

• regard for divergent world views

• flexibility in considering alternatives and opinions

• willingness to reconsider and revise views where honest reflection suggests that change is warranted

When one guest disagrees with him, Colbert replies, “It’s one thing to express your views. It’s another thing for those views to be different than mine.”27 Here Colbert brooks no dissent, embodying the very opposite of the “open-minded” disposition. Colbert suggests instead that others may have a right to free speech, but not the right to differ with him.

As to raising a family, Colbert offers his own