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[+] 216 points 1 year ago (53 children)
  • [–] 94 points 1 year ago (33 children)

    Same!

    Tangentially, I had a hilarious debate with someone several months ago who was convinced the Colbert Report version of Steven Colbert was just who he actually was, and somehow had a significant amount of difficulty understanding that it was a bit… despite how comically fucking obviously it’s a bit. Low key curious if I accidentally came across the guy who invited Colbert to W’s press correspondents gala all those years ago (and may I just say holy fuck his speech at that event was just… 👨‍🍳 💋 )

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  • [–] 83 points 1 year ago (24 children)

    A lot of conservatives actually believed he was as he was in the show.

    Conservatives historically have never understood sub context, even if it jumps up and slaps them in the mouth.

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  • [–] 35 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    I seem to remember some study that seemed to indicate that conservatives tend to have a hard time understanding satire. It was around the same time as The Colbert Report being on the air.

    You couple this with seeing that cons tend to have overly large/overly active amygdalas, and when you hear them saying that "liberalism is a mental disorder", I think it's yet another example of them projecting, since they seem to have certain mental disabilities.

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  • [–] 27 points 1 year ago (9 children)

    I was a conservative when Colbert Report was on.

    Can confirm. I believed he was a conservative.

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  • [–] 11 points 1 year ago (7 children)

    Honestly curious. Did you ever watch a full episode of the show or multiple episodes of the show?

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  • [–] 17 points 1 year ago (6 children)

    I watched it pretty regularly. It took longer than it should have for me to realize that it was a satire.

    Maybe three seasons in?

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  • [–] 7 points 1 year ago (5 children)

    Curious what made it seem so genuine at the time?

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  • [–] 14 points 1 year ago

    Iirc (it's been some time), the justifications that Colbert gave for why conservatives actually believe certain things were unironically what conservatives believe.

    I began to realize he was making fun of conservatives when the audience would laugh at places that didn't make sense.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    Must have been all those "waving American flags" animations. Oh, and that eagle.

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  • [–] 10 points 1 year ago (2 children)
  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Thanks for responding honestly! It's wild to me as it so was so obviously satire and mocking those beliefs from my point of view. Good job at looking at what was happening and changing your way of thought.

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  • Tbf, and I wish this was more obvious to me back then, a lot of rank and file conservatives often need "marching instructions" like "what is the message we (conservatives) need to say about this incident?"

    I didn't realize I did this until something really confusing happened. I can't remember what it was but I remember the deafening silence from Fox News and other "lead" conservatives.

    I stayed a conservative until around Trump's initial primary bid. When I realized that conservatives would rather vote this guy in over much more experienced politicians, I realized that their criticism of Obama not having enough experience was a bunch of bullshit.

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  • [–] 11 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    That's because they're usually drunk off their ass or one of the grifters.

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  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    Hey! We alcoholics do not support any of this bullshit! Most of the times I’ve been drunk off my ass this year has been because of some shit being done by conservative grifters

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    Not all alcoholics are right wing shit heads, but all right wing shit heads are alcoholics (and/or stupid and/or a grifter).

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  • [–] 25 points 1 year ago

    For what it’s worth, Bush knew it was a roast. Roasting the president is a traditional part of the press correspondents’ dinner (or was, before paper-thin-orange-skin became president). Earlier in that very same dinner, Bush did a bit roasting himself with a Bush impersonator.

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  • [–] 16 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    Every so often, I used to go back and re-watch the entire thing. It was just so good.

    I had to laugh when the "liberal media" was later spinning it the next day (and the hard right outlets like Faux and hate radio picked this up and used this spin - "see, even the liberal media says it was bad!") as not that funny, it got hardly any laughs in the room, etc.

    Yeah, NO SHIT many people in the room weren't erupting in loud guffaws. He was making fun of YOU motherfuckers, too. Right to your smug little faces.

    Just like Orange Jesus didn't erupt into laughter when years later, Seth tore him a new one right to his face, as did Obama. Orange Jesus sat there, seething. Orange Jesus gave it 0 stars, boo, it was terrible, no more discussion. LOL.

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  • [–] 14 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Seth Meyers still apologizes for that, sarcastically of course, but it’s hilarious that enough people blame his joke for jumpstarting Trump’s campaign. Trump seething from his table while everyone around him cracks up is burned into my memory.

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  • [–] 13 points 1 year ago

    I'm sure it makes a convenient narrative for people to blame Seth for this.

    Again, notice that it's another example of Murc's Law here, by the way: as a conservative, Taco has no agency, he was pushed into running by the nasty liberal cracking jokes and poor Taco just had no choice but to run to get revenge against Obama, against Seth, and against any American that doesn't love everything related to Taco.

    In any case, Taco had mulled running multiple times and even tried to run prior, and failed. All that birtherism stuff he was shoveling during Obama's administration was likely his racist way of testing the waters for yet another attempt.

    https://www.tvguide.com/news/donald-trump-presidential-campaign-timeline/

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  • [–] 7 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    I genuinely think Obama roasting Trump at the 2011 White House Correspondents’ Dinner changed the course of history

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  • [–] 15 points 1 year ago

    I doubt it. Orange Jesus was already blowing the racist bullhorn with all his birther bullshit and Obama's election broke the brain of so many Angry White Males. They were bound to rally around someone like Orange Jesus when he ran...

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  • [–] 49 points 1 year ago (13 children)

    That's exactly what he does, dude.

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  • [+] -9 points 1 year ago* (11 children)

    The Colbert Report did real work to normalize a specific right wing framing to politics. I don't think of it as a net positive the way I do The Daily Show. It might have been satire and I too might have enjoyed it from time to time, but it was also part of a normalization of the "both sidesing" of things.

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  • [–] 12 points 1 year ago (9 children)

    It is only both sidesing if you don't understand satire. He is pretending to be a right-wing pundit but rephrasing what they say in such a way as to point out how bad the right-wing talking points are.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (7 children)

    The fact is that this character played an role in normalizing this shift we saw, across the board, towards accepting this kind of right wing framing of politics. The fact that it was satire is irrelevant. The normalization is damage done.

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  • I upvoted you because you're making an interesting argument, but I'm definitely more in the Charlie Chaplin camp on political satire, and that ridiculing fascism is a productive thing to do - The Great Dictator was released before the US entered WW 2. Although Chaplin put a lot of work at the end of that movie to make sure everyone knew it was satire and Colbert was a bit less diligent.

    Hm. A bunch of media illiterate conservative dingdongs watched the Colbert report and politics now visually looks like that... but nationalism to it's extreme tends to look like that and Colbert's team knew that. Fascism and nationalism look like that and I'm not sure satirizing it normalizes it (in general) but neoliberalism and that 'working across the aisle' politics (and journalism) that was also trendy at the time did actively normalize it.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    No the fact is people like you are too dense to understand satire.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (1 child)

    Lemmy seems to be more interested in worshiping its heroes than it is addressing their flaws.

    Go look up what the word normalization means.

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