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But what are the facts? Colbert presupposes that there is a set of objective facts to which we are to be responsible. I think there is too, but it’s important to recognize how hard it is to establish these facts and that the easiest ones to establish are the least interesting and helpful. When we’re dealing with clashing political ideologies, it becomes very difficult to settle on facts, since the facts are often understood in radically different contexts. Let’s look at Colbert’s own analysis of the right’s attack on media neutrality:

What the right-wing in the United States tries to do is undermine the press. They call the press “liberal,” they call the press “biased,” not necessarily because it is or because they have problems with the facts of the left—or even because of the bias for the left, because it’s hard not to be biased in some way, everyone is always going to enter their editorial opinion—but because a press that has validity is a press that has authority.86

Is Colbert presenting us with a fact? Is this a factual motivation of the right? I wouldn’t consider myself to be on the right, yet I want to undermine the validity of the press for my own reasons. Indeed, The Colbert Report is a successful indictment of the media as much as it is of politicians. Might the right-wingers actually believe the mainstream press is biased? And wouldn’t it be a justified decision, then, that the press should have some of its ‘authority’ taken away? So the problem with an authority expecting individuals to respect it is that individuals have to grant that authority its legitimacy in the first place in order for the authority to demand respect. Why does the real Colbert trust investigative journalists more than right-wing politicians, while the character Stephen reverses this trust?

Surely there are objective facts that are not so politically loaded. Here’s one: There is a copy of I Am America (And So Can You!) beside me while I type. No problem. Unless I get all crazy skeptical and ask how I know that I’m not really in the Matrix, this is an acceptable fact. And I am very confident that it’s true. So yes, there are facts that are easier to accept and facts that are harder to determine. And typically the easier to accept facts are the least important. You and I may both agree that the day is sunny, but we may not agree whether The Colbert Report is better or worse than The Daily Show. The more complex the judgment, the more we may diverge.

So maybe we should take a look at what kind of realism is involved in Colbert’s presupposition that there are objective facts. If he’s simply saying that there is a reality, some kind of independent way things are that can’t be wished away by us, then Colbert is echoing the John Adams quote with which I started. But does this mean we are committed to what those facts are? No. You and I can both admit that there are such things as facts, but disagree about which claims are indeed facts. What matters is how we justify our own personal claims. We use various methods to justify our claims. One way is through gut intuitions, another through rational analysis, another through accumulating sensory data, and there are others. The difficulty is figuring out how reliable these methods are and how far they can really take us even if reliable. Consider an example of gathering statistics to defend the claim that men are by nature more physically aggressive than women. Say I record how different people respond to a panhandler on the street. Let’s pretend I do find that the men tended to more aggressively repel the panhandler. Does this really show men are more aggressive by nature? Can’t it be that men are allowed and encouraged to act aggressively with their bodies while women are socially penalized for doing so? Statistics are important bits of data, but they are rarely enough to end debate.

So, even if we agree with Colbert that there are facts out there, it doesn’t mean any of us know which facts are facts. It’s hard work thinking through our justifications for our beliefs. But it gets