Stephen Colbert and Philosophy - Aaron Allen Schiller [78]
FLANAGAN: The original subtitle was, “How Feminism Shortchanged a Generation,” but the publisher said that wouldn’t sell. So we have a softer title. But I think it’s the notion that feminism sold a lot of women out, and sold us a bill of goods, and a lot of women are unhappy because they’re not valued at home the way they once were.
COLBERT: Right, I mean it used to be you were valued at home because if mom wasn’t at home taking care of stuff, dinner wouldn’t be on the table when you came home, right?
FLANAGAN: You’re darn right about that. You’re darn right.
COLBERT: I mean there was a time when if you were my wife and you weren’t giving it up, I could say, “She’s crazy. Lock her away, right?”
FLANAGAN: If I was your wife and I wasn’t giving it up, I would be crazy.
COLBERT: But you know those were the golden days. In this hazy, misty time you’re talking about, I could have you lobotomized just by saying that you were unbalanced, right?
FLANAGAN: Absolutely.
COLBERT: When women who needed money had to depend on their husbands because even if their relationship wasn’t good they weren’t independent.
FLANAGAN: Right.
COLBERT: And this is the golden age you’re talking about.
FLANAGAN: Yes, it’s an eternal golden age, really. Yes.
COLBERT: So better for you for women to be dependent on their husbands no matter what the situation.
FLANAGAN: Well, certainly you press the point when you put it that way.
COLBERT: I’m trying to press the point.
FLANAGAN: And you’ll not find any refutation from me. More or less you’re on target there.
COLBERT: Really?
FLANAGAN: Ya.
COLBERT: You are a perfect woman.
FLANAGAN: I’ve been told that.135
Colbert’s strategy here is clear. He invites Flanagan to state her thesis, and then he proceeds to implode it by pretending to agree, only to reveal its untenable logical implications as he develops the idea in ways she does not. As long as it’s in her mouth and dressed up in anti-feminist rhetoric, Flanagan’s view can seem reasonable: feminism may have caused women unrecognized harm by leaving them unappreciated at home. But once Colbert gets this idea in his clutches, the charade immediately comes undone.
Flanagan says Colbert “presses the point” when he puts it this way, but she ultimately accepts his development of her view. And the audience can’t believe it. Several men erupt with deep-throated growling praise, while the women are either silent or openly disgusted. If you listen to this interview closely, you can hear one young woman in the audience groaning with disapproval—“Oh my,” she says viscerally—as Flanagan agrees that women ought to be dependent on their husbands no matter what the situation. Colbert’s ploy has worked: he has revealed the anti-feminist’s view to be male chauvinism in disguise, a celebration of women’s traditional subservience to men and a rejection of gender equality.
Colbert’s interview with noted conservative and Harvard professor Harvey Mansfield is similar. First he asks Mansfield to state his thesis. Then he adopts it as his own belief in order to reveal its weaknesses. We live in a gender-neutral society, Mansfield explains. Gender matters as little as possible. It doesn’t give us our rights, our duties, or our place in society. His book, Manliness, is “a challenge to the gender-neutral society.”
COLBERT: What is that quality of manliness? What best defines manliness?
MANSFIELD: I would say confidence in a situation of risk. It could either be danger, or it could be a situation where your authority is contested or disputed.
COLBERT: President Bush must be the most manly man of all. Because he’s taken all kinds of risks over the last five years. It takes some real confidence to go