Stephen Colbert and Philosophy - Aaron Allen Schiller [83]
There are many ways to answer these questions, but here is one that might teach us something about Stephen Colbert and Socrates equally. It is possible that, for Plato, the tragedy of the human condition is our inbuilt, predetermined resistance to those who might liberate us from our ignorance and existential shortcomings. In the cave allegory the liberator is “destined” to fail, but he tries anyway, and he loses his life because of it. The people he intends to help rise up and kill him to preserve their ignorance and prolong their imprisonment. This is comic because the liberator is like Sisyphus: he is condemned to a task he cannot complete but is determined to complete it anyway. And it’s tragic because the cave dwellers’ conditions could improve unimaginably but don’t improve at all. Nobody needs help more than they do. Their bodies and minds are trapped. Everything about their condition is controlled. Socrates reaches out to his friends and neighbors in an effort to turn them around, away from imperial conquest toward virtue and philosophy, but they ignore him. And they end up losing their freedom to Sparta and their liberator to their own madness.
In Colbert’s case, the pattern is the same. He illustrates America’s various hypocrisies. He points out his guests’ flaws. But, in the end, they sell more books or raise more money after appearing on his show. In some cases this doesn’t matter, but in others it couldn’t matter more. For example, it is a tragedy for us and for the rest of the world that we don’t act on something as serious as Colbert’s diagnosis of our broken presidential election system, or that we don’t demand that our media produce better, less truthy journalism. Our inverted priorities are unjustifiable. Our bland disapproval of our corrupt institutions is inexcusable. But there is something amusing about our failures when Colbert enters the picture. How can one not laugh at people (us) who are laughing at others (Americans) for the ignorance they (we) exhibit in their (our) laughter? This is the joke Colbert tells about us, his audience. When we laugh with him, he laughs at us, because we are the consumers of the truthiness he disparages.
Alexander Nehamas suggests Plato’s irony is deep, dark, and disdainful. He despises his audience for their self-satisfaction. But if the Colbert-Socrates comparison is apt, shouldn’t we imagine Plato wringing his hands and laughing at Socrates’ unsuccessful attempts to lead Athenians out of the cave? Doesn’t he regret Athens’s failure at the same time that he takes pleasure in observing and mocking its absurd self-satisfaction? And isn’t this just what Colbert is doing for America with his show? If so, perhaps we should revise the question in the title of this chapter and ask whether Colbert, the real Stephen Colbert behind the ironic mask on The Colbert Report, is America’s Plato: he is condemning us at the same time that he makes us laugh, and he is trying to turn us away from the shadows on the wall of the cave despite knowing that he is predetermined to fail.
Perhaps Colbert is America’s Plato, and not America’s Socrates, or perhaps he is both. Either way, we must admit it takes some “balls” for him to bite the hand that feeds him by telling his audience some bitter truths. Whether his “balls” measure up to Plato’s or Socrates’s, however, is still an open question, and it will probably remain open unless Colbert meets Socrates’s fate. Only then would we know for certain that he had really challenged his country.
Well, Stephen, if you are reading, consider yourself on notice. In the meantime we’ll be waiting to see just how big your “balls” really are.141
11
Why Is Stephen Colbert So Funny?
SOPHIA STONE
The Colbert Report maintains a huge following for its comic parody of cable news bloviating, but what is it exactly that makes Stephen Colbert funny? His Wit?