Stephen Colbert and Philosophy - Aaron Allen Schiller [80]
Colbert’s character is a parody of this general attitude, but sometimes he addresses specific behaviors or stories in the media as exemplary of truthiness and thus worthy of special attention. He subjected ABC to withering criticism for its moderation of a debate between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. As usual, his method is ironic mirroring.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Can you explain that relationship [with William Ayers] for the voters?
OBAMA: This kind of game in which anybody who I know, regardless of how flimsy the relationship is, is somehow—somehow their ideas could be attributed to me—I think, the American people are smarter than that.
COLBERT: Smarter than that? No thank you … Consider this: Senator Obama has been endorsed by Ted Kennedy. Ted Kennedy is a Catholic. Catholics are led by the Pope. The Pope was a Nazi Youth. Ergo, Barack Obama loves Hitler. Check … mate!138
ABC’s debate moderation was almost universally criticized. George Stephanopoulos and Charles Gibson, the two debate moderators, spent the first hour of the debate asking Clinton and Obama questions about issues with little relevance to the presidency. Critics described their performance as “shoddy and despicable,” “shameful,” “embarrassing,” “tawdry,” “disgusting,” “a train wreck.” But instead of adding directly to these criticisms, Colbert pretends to side with ABC. “I think ABC did a great job.” By doing so, and by developing ABC’s reasoning to the point that Obama ends up “loving Hitler,” Colbert makes a mockery out of “Gibsonopoulos,” reducing ABC’s work to a freak show of bad reasoning and infantile guilt by association games. The audience eats it up. They recognize the poor reasoning. They can see the media’s obsession with hot button issues and impatience with policy substance, and they find it amusing.
At the end of the day, Colbert elevates his audience to a position of cool ironic detachment and superiority. Their culture, their most exalted institutions, and especially their loftiest authority figures, are all full of it. They are charlatans, and America is a cesspool of hypocrisy. Colbert illustrates this. He lets his audience in on his clever deconstructive insights, and he lets them take pleasure in unmasking the pretenders to wisdom and moral authority as nothing more than ordinary phonies.
There’s no question that Colbert “wins the battle.” He embarrasses many of his most confident guests. He refutes the bad arguments made by politicians and members of the media. He goes after higher education, the Catholic Church, modern science, and many others. And he exposes American culture in general as an increasingly irrational society awash in a sea of truthiness. Maybe the Democratic Party isn’t very democratic. Maybe manliness is foolhardiness. Maybe anti-feminism is chauvinism in disguise. Maybe our system for choosing our presidents is broken and our media is deadening our democracy. These are serious topics, not just light entertainment. But to what end? Does Colbert achieve his aims as a critic of American culture?
Colbert’s War on Truthiness
Colbert may achieve some influence within the system of political punditry, but he doesn’t appear to be winning his war on truthiness. If anything, he may be reinforcing its grip on us—why should we worry about truthiness if it’s good for a few laughs every night?
In this respect Colbert and Socrates share at least one thing in common: they’re both failures. Socrates