G
Gandalf Grey
Guest
Stephen Colbert's joke is on the press
By Eric Boehlert
Created Oct 31 2007 - 10:04am
Did you notice the contrasting media responses to comedian Stephen Colbert's
announcement [1] that he plans to get his factually-challenged TV namesake
on both the Democratic and Republican ballots for the South Carolina
presidential primary? The mainstream Beltway press could barely contain its
glee as it cheered the stunt on, lavishing all sorts of media attention on
Colbert, and basking in the entertainment industry glow that his act brought
to the White House campaign trail.
By contrast, it was mostly left to non-traditional online outlets to strike
a skeptical chord; to make the grown-up observation that perhaps this wasn't
the best idea. Over at the Huffington Post, Rachel Sklar, a major-league
Colbert fan (as am I), wrote [2] that the comedian's candidacy comes at the
wrong time:
Now is the time for the fringe players to slip away. Bye-bye, Brownback,
so long Kucinich (we predict [3]) and Gravel (we hope). The race is
tightening, stakes are getting higher, and the general feeling is that this
is where things start to count. The distraction of a spoof candidate -- even
the ultimate spoof candidate -- will just get in the way.
And the media website Gawker made a similar point, although with a bit more
snark [4]:
Now, we don't want to sound all imperious and ****, and we get the idea,
add a little levity to the race, distract the cranky reporters, take
everyone down a peg or two. It's good clean fun. But there's a $46 billion
war [5] on, we hear. And! Wildfires [6]! Drought! [7] ...We hope [Colbert's]
not still making the Sunday morning rounds come primary time. We like our
candidates boring, bland, solemn -- and, you know, a smidge electable,
because they'll be the ones in charge of killing foreigners and stuff.
Both feared that Colbert would be an unnecessary distraction. Agreed. But
the Colbert candidacy becomes a distraction only if the press allows it to.
And the sad fact is the press already has allowed it to, because the press
literally drives itself to distraction on the campaign trail. That's not an
unfortunate side effect of the process. That's the goal.
Think of political press corps as that fat kid from Willy Wonka & The
Chocolate Factory, Augustus Gloop. For too many journalists, the lure of the
Colbert candidacy is akin to Wonka's river of chocolate, the one that lured
the candy-loving Gloop into the deep end and got him stuck inside the tubes.
The press already seems to do everything it can to avoid covering campaign
substance. Instead, it pursues trivia such as haircuts [7], and laughs [8],
and cleavage [8], and parking tickets [9], and head movements [10], and
marital sleeping habits [11], and chiseled good looks [12], and cats [13],
and accents [13]. It's clear that the allure of a saccharine story like
Colbert's running gag is simply too tempting.
That's because the press has decided to cover presidential candidates as
celebrities, as personalities. This media phenomenon became enshrined during
the 2000 contest, when the press announced that presidential campaigns were
no longer about how candidates might function as presidents; what they might
actually do as commander in chief. Instead, campaigns were about
personalities -- which candidate was fun to be around and which one was
authentic.
The approach is thriving today. Look at the latest research findings from
the campaign trail: "Just 12% of stories examined were presented in a way
that explained how citizens might be affected by the election," according to
Editor & Publisher magazine. "And just one percent of stories examined the
candidates' records or past public performance." (The study in question is
here [14].)
All of which means the Colbert candidacy, as a news story, fits right into
the media's personality-driven sweet spot.
The Colbert allure also stems from the fact that too many journalists see
themselves as being part of the entertainment business, not in the
information business. They relate to Colbert and they want to be part of his
yuk-yuk world. They want to blur the lines between news and infotainment.
And they want to show everyone that they get the joke.
Why else would NBC's venerable Meet the Press invite Colbert on for an
awkward [15] 15-minute interview? (And why else would anchorman Brian
Williams be hosting Saturday Night Live on November 3?)
The obvious media reaction to the Colbert candidacy should have been to note
it as the book-selling publicity stunt that it was, have a chuckle, and move
on. Instead, the press lingered, giving the story way too much attention,
and often at the expense of more pressing topics.
For instance, ABC's Nightline found time to cover the Colbert candidacy. Yet
Nightline has not found time during the last six weeks to cover the war from
Iraq. I'm just sayin'.
At The Washington Post last week, Howard Kurtz twice led his daily online
media column with the Colbert story. The Boston Globe editorialized [16]
about Colbert's candidacy, announcing it "makes a weird sort of sense." The
Chicago Sun-Times editorial page also cheered Colbert. And the South
Carolina newspaper The State printed [17] a side-by-side comparison between
the stated positions of candidates Colbert and John Edwards.
Meanwhile, The Atlantic contacted nearly half-a-dozen election pros and
posted a detailed, 1,700-word breakdown of the possible Colbert effect in
South Carolina, assuming the candidate's able to get on the ballot there.
Boosting the significance of Colbert's stunt, The Atlantic reported [18]
that "[t]he real threat to the rest of the field is the possibility that
Colbert might win a delegate or two (and show up at one or both of the
national conventions)." But why? What possible impact would Colbert have on
either convention if he showed up with one delegate or two? (And trust me,
he's not going to.) He would somehow throw the conventions into chaos?
Please. The simple answer is it would be meaningless.
The Atlantic went on to suggest that Colbert's best chance for capturing a
Republican delegate would come from the coastal district that stretches from
Charleston (Colbert's hometown) to Myrtle Beach, despite the fact it is
"heavily conservative." So, conservative Republicans in South Carolina are
going to vote for a liberal comedian who mocks conservative ideas on a
nightly basis through a thinly veiled impersonation of right-wing talker
Bill O'Reilly?
It could happen, according to The Atlantic, because "The district also has a
pronounced weakness for political gimmicks. Its congressman, Republican
Henry Brown, got elected in 2000 after distributing 20,000 "Oh Henry!" candy
bars to boost name recognition." Weak South Carolina voters elected Henry
Brown to Congress because he passed out candy bars?
Honestly, sometimes I worry that journalists think voters take elections as
un-seriously as the journalists themselves do. For instance, ABC's World
News, working hard to pump up interest in the story, reported Colbert might
"appeal to those who find politics a theater of the absurd." I'd suggest
that the notion that South Carolinians who are committed to participating in
the state's upcoming primary (i.e. voters who take their politics most
seriously) are not going to vote on a comedian executing a joke.
In fact, when one of Colbert's staffers contacted the owner of a South
Carolina beauty salon, which had been featured in the press as being a
hotbed of local political discussion, and asked if Colbert could visit the
salon in advance of the primary, the owner was emphatic: No. "This is a
serious issue for us," she told [19]
the producer.
The salon owner thinks elections are serious business. Colbert does not. And
that's fine; he's a comedian. So what's the media's excuse?
Meanwhile, ABC News online posted [20] a detailed investigation into the
federal campaign fundraising implications of Colbert's faux run, as did
Politico in a lengthy piece [21], which was the featured article at the
outlet's website on October 26. Picking up on that thread, The New York
Times editorial board blog, after cheering [22] on the Colbert candidacy ("a
stroke of comic genius"), examined its legal implications:
If a television personality who is not a comedian were to run for
President, it could be a serious candidacy (and we can think of a few we'd
be seriously worried about), using the exposure given to him by his
television network to campaign and win votes. [Emphasis added.]
Since Colbert clearly is a comedian, what exactly was the point of The New
York Times highlighting campaign rules that don't apply to Colbert's PR
stunt? Here's a hint: The Times blog urged Colbert to keep his campaign
going "for the sheer fun of it." It's true, the press loves to have fun on
the campaign trail. As one Chicago Tribune reporter assured CNN, "Everybody
is going to cover Stephen Colbert to a certain extent, because it's going to
be fun."
But what about news consumers? After another writer at The Atlantic
dissected [23] the possible electoral implications of the Colbert run,
suggesting the key voting block for Colbert would be "liberal young
Republicans" (do they even exist?), one online commenter beseeched:
Seriously. Please stop. Please tell your friends in the [mainstream media]
to stop. Real news should stay real news and fake news should stay on Comedy
Central. This...is just freaking me the hell out and seriously wondering if
you all are engaging in pharmaceuticals.
But they can't stop. Partly because they don't want to (the story is fun),
and partly because news corporations have built these enormous
news-gathering machines around this never-ending presidential campaign; a
campaign that, day in and day out, produces very little actual news. But the
machines must be fed, and what's easier (and more fun!) to feed it than
Colbert stories?
Still, journalists strain to justify the attention Colbert receives. From
[24] washingtonpost.com:
Yes, we know that Colbert's bid is satire and nothing more. But anyone who
follows politics as closely as we do knows that it even serious politics
often devolves into theater of the absurd. So why shouldn't Colbert be
another actor in the real 2008 race?
Again, when campaigns descend into the absurd it's usually because the press
drives them there. (Did we mention the great Cleavage Debate of 2007?) And
why shouldn't Colbert be another actor in the 2008 presidential race?
Because he's a comedian pretending to be a candidate.
That fact doesn't seem to matter. Howard Kurtz at the The Washington Post
wrote [25]: "Holy cow! Stephen Colbert is surging. He's on fire. Truthiness
rules! In a new poll [26], he's at 2.3 percent in the Democratic primary.
Before you scoff, that's 0.4 percent behind Joe Biden but ahead of Bill
Richardson, Dennis Kucinich and Mike Gravel." What Kurtz left unsaid was the
fact that Colbert's 2.3 percent easily fell within the poll's hefty margin
of error (5 percent), which meant the findings were statistically
irrelevant.
Colbert's race did momentarily seem to gain newsworthiness last week when a
Rasmussen poll [27] showed the Comedy Central host grabbing an impressive 13
percent when positioned as an independent candidate. (Even though Colbert
claims he's not going to try to run as an independent.)
None of the news reports I saw about the polling results mentioned it, but
what exactly is the point of conducting a national poll since Colbert is
only trying to get on the ballot in one state? Meaning, of the 1,200 people
Rasmussen polled, it's likely that, based on census data, maybe 10 or 20 of
the respondents were actually from South Carolina. It's like running a
national poll on who Americans would prefer to be the next senator from New
York; it's perfectly pointless exercise except, of course, that in the case
of Colbert it's fun and entertaining.
Nonetheless, on October 29, Good Morning America host Diane Sawyer, in an
apparent reference to the Rasmussen poll, suggested that, "If [Colbert]
keeps gaining at the rate he's gaining, by the end of November he could be
the leading candidate." [Emphasis added]
Question: In the history of modern-day American presidential campaigns, has
a new candidate ever entered the race polling at roughly 10 percent and then
proceeded to pick up an additional 10 percent each week for four weeks
running? Ever? Why would anybody suggest that a late-night comedian might be
able to accomplish what no other candidate has ever done in American
politics? What would prompt somebody to suggest that Colbert, by next month,
might soon be garnering 40 percent and be the leading candidate for
president?
Answer: Because it's fun.
--
NOTICE: This post contains copyrighted material the use of which has not
always been authorized by the copyright owner. I am making such material
available to advance understanding of
political, human rights, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues. I
believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of such copyrighted material as
provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright
Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107
"A little patience and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their
spells dissolve, and the people recovering their true sight, restore their
government to its true principles. It is true that in the meantime we are
suffering deeply in spirit,
and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public
debt. But if the game runs sometimes against us at home we must have
patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an opportunity of winning
back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are at
stake."
-Thomas Jefferson
By Eric Boehlert
Created Oct 31 2007 - 10:04am
Did you notice the contrasting media responses to comedian Stephen Colbert's
announcement [1] that he plans to get his factually-challenged TV namesake
on both the Democratic and Republican ballots for the South Carolina
presidential primary? The mainstream Beltway press could barely contain its
glee as it cheered the stunt on, lavishing all sorts of media attention on
Colbert, and basking in the entertainment industry glow that his act brought
to the White House campaign trail.
By contrast, it was mostly left to non-traditional online outlets to strike
a skeptical chord; to make the grown-up observation that perhaps this wasn't
the best idea. Over at the Huffington Post, Rachel Sklar, a major-league
Colbert fan (as am I), wrote [2] that the comedian's candidacy comes at the
wrong time:
Now is the time for the fringe players to slip away. Bye-bye, Brownback,
so long Kucinich (we predict [3]) and Gravel (we hope). The race is
tightening, stakes are getting higher, and the general feeling is that this
is where things start to count. The distraction of a spoof candidate -- even
the ultimate spoof candidate -- will just get in the way.
And the media website Gawker made a similar point, although with a bit more
snark [4]:
Now, we don't want to sound all imperious and ****, and we get the idea,
add a little levity to the race, distract the cranky reporters, take
everyone down a peg or two. It's good clean fun. But there's a $46 billion
war [5] on, we hear. And! Wildfires [6]! Drought! [7] ...We hope [Colbert's]
not still making the Sunday morning rounds come primary time. We like our
candidates boring, bland, solemn -- and, you know, a smidge electable,
because they'll be the ones in charge of killing foreigners and stuff.
Both feared that Colbert would be an unnecessary distraction. Agreed. But
the Colbert candidacy becomes a distraction only if the press allows it to.
And the sad fact is the press already has allowed it to, because the press
literally drives itself to distraction on the campaign trail. That's not an
unfortunate side effect of the process. That's the goal.
Think of political press corps as that fat kid from Willy Wonka & The
Chocolate Factory, Augustus Gloop. For too many journalists, the lure of the
Colbert candidacy is akin to Wonka's river of chocolate, the one that lured
the candy-loving Gloop into the deep end and got him stuck inside the tubes.
The press already seems to do everything it can to avoid covering campaign
substance. Instead, it pursues trivia such as haircuts [7], and laughs [8],
and cleavage [8], and parking tickets [9], and head movements [10], and
marital sleeping habits [11], and chiseled good looks [12], and cats [13],
and accents [13]. It's clear that the allure of a saccharine story like
Colbert's running gag is simply too tempting.
That's because the press has decided to cover presidential candidates as
celebrities, as personalities. This media phenomenon became enshrined during
the 2000 contest, when the press announced that presidential campaigns were
no longer about how candidates might function as presidents; what they might
actually do as commander in chief. Instead, campaigns were about
personalities -- which candidate was fun to be around and which one was
authentic.
The approach is thriving today. Look at the latest research findings from
the campaign trail: "Just 12% of stories examined were presented in a way
that explained how citizens might be affected by the election," according to
Editor & Publisher magazine. "And just one percent of stories examined the
candidates' records or past public performance." (The study in question is
here [14].)
All of which means the Colbert candidacy, as a news story, fits right into
the media's personality-driven sweet spot.
The Colbert allure also stems from the fact that too many journalists see
themselves as being part of the entertainment business, not in the
information business. They relate to Colbert and they want to be part of his
yuk-yuk world. They want to blur the lines between news and infotainment.
And they want to show everyone that they get the joke.
Why else would NBC's venerable Meet the Press invite Colbert on for an
awkward [15] 15-minute interview? (And why else would anchorman Brian
Williams be hosting Saturday Night Live on November 3?)
The obvious media reaction to the Colbert candidacy should have been to note
it as the book-selling publicity stunt that it was, have a chuckle, and move
on. Instead, the press lingered, giving the story way too much attention,
and often at the expense of more pressing topics.
For instance, ABC's Nightline found time to cover the Colbert candidacy. Yet
Nightline has not found time during the last six weeks to cover the war from
Iraq. I'm just sayin'.
At The Washington Post last week, Howard Kurtz twice led his daily online
media column with the Colbert story. The Boston Globe editorialized [16]
about Colbert's candidacy, announcing it "makes a weird sort of sense." The
Chicago Sun-Times editorial page also cheered Colbert. And the South
Carolina newspaper The State printed [17] a side-by-side comparison between
the stated positions of candidates Colbert and John Edwards.
Meanwhile, The Atlantic contacted nearly half-a-dozen election pros and
posted a detailed, 1,700-word breakdown of the possible Colbert effect in
South Carolina, assuming the candidate's able to get on the ballot there.
Boosting the significance of Colbert's stunt, The Atlantic reported [18]
that "[t]he real threat to the rest of the field is the possibility that
Colbert might win a delegate or two (and show up at one or both of the
national conventions)." But why? What possible impact would Colbert have on
either convention if he showed up with one delegate or two? (And trust me,
he's not going to.) He would somehow throw the conventions into chaos?
Please. The simple answer is it would be meaningless.
The Atlantic went on to suggest that Colbert's best chance for capturing a
Republican delegate would come from the coastal district that stretches from
Charleston (Colbert's hometown) to Myrtle Beach, despite the fact it is
"heavily conservative." So, conservative Republicans in South Carolina are
going to vote for a liberal comedian who mocks conservative ideas on a
nightly basis through a thinly veiled impersonation of right-wing talker
Bill O'Reilly?
It could happen, according to The Atlantic, because "The district also has a
pronounced weakness for political gimmicks. Its congressman, Republican
Henry Brown, got elected in 2000 after distributing 20,000 "Oh Henry!" candy
bars to boost name recognition." Weak South Carolina voters elected Henry
Brown to Congress because he passed out candy bars?
Honestly, sometimes I worry that journalists think voters take elections as
un-seriously as the journalists themselves do. For instance, ABC's World
News, working hard to pump up interest in the story, reported Colbert might
"appeal to those who find politics a theater of the absurd." I'd suggest
that the notion that South Carolinians who are committed to participating in
the state's upcoming primary (i.e. voters who take their politics most
seriously) are not going to vote on a comedian executing a joke.
In fact, when one of Colbert's staffers contacted the owner of a South
Carolina beauty salon, which had been featured in the press as being a
hotbed of local political discussion, and asked if Colbert could visit the
salon in advance of the primary, the owner was emphatic: No. "This is a
serious issue for us," she told [19]
the producer.
The salon owner thinks elections are serious business. Colbert does not. And
that's fine; he's a comedian. So what's the media's excuse?
Meanwhile, ABC News online posted [20] a detailed investigation into the
federal campaign fundraising implications of Colbert's faux run, as did
Politico in a lengthy piece [21], which was the featured article at the
outlet's website on October 26. Picking up on that thread, The New York
Times editorial board blog, after cheering [22] on the Colbert candidacy ("a
stroke of comic genius"), examined its legal implications:
If a television personality who is not a comedian were to run for
President, it could be a serious candidacy (and we can think of a few we'd
be seriously worried about), using the exposure given to him by his
television network to campaign and win votes. [Emphasis added.]
Since Colbert clearly is a comedian, what exactly was the point of The New
York Times highlighting campaign rules that don't apply to Colbert's PR
stunt? Here's a hint: The Times blog urged Colbert to keep his campaign
going "for the sheer fun of it." It's true, the press loves to have fun on
the campaign trail. As one Chicago Tribune reporter assured CNN, "Everybody
is going to cover Stephen Colbert to a certain extent, because it's going to
be fun."
But what about news consumers? After another writer at The Atlantic
dissected [23] the possible electoral implications of the Colbert run,
suggesting the key voting block for Colbert would be "liberal young
Republicans" (do they even exist?), one online commenter beseeched:
Seriously. Please stop. Please tell your friends in the [mainstream media]
to stop. Real news should stay real news and fake news should stay on Comedy
Central. This...is just freaking me the hell out and seriously wondering if
you all are engaging in pharmaceuticals.
But they can't stop. Partly because they don't want to (the story is fun),
and partly because news corporations have built these enormous
news-gathering machines around this never-ending presidential campaign; a
campaign that, day in and day out, produces very little actual news. But the
machines must be fed, and what's easier (and more fun!) to feed it than
Colbert stories?
Still, journalists strain to justify the attention Colbert receives. From
[24] washingtonpost.com:
Yes, we know that Colbert's bid is satire and nothing more. But anyone who
follows politics as closely as we do knows that it even serious politics
often devolves into theater of the absurd. So why shouldn't Colbert be
another actor in the real 2008 race?
Again, when campaigns descend into the absurd it's usually because the press
drives them there. (Did we mention the great Cleavage Debate of 2007?) And
why shouldn't Colbert be another actor in the 2008 presidential race?
Because he's a comedian pretending to be a candidate.
That fact doesn't seem to matter. Howard Kurtz at the The Washington Post
wrote [25]: "Holy cow! Stephen Colbert is surging. He's on fire. Truthiness
rules! In a new poll [26], he's at 2.3 percent in the Democratic primary.
Before you scoff, that's 0.4 percent behind Joe Biden but ahead of Bill
Richardson, Dennis Kucinich and Mike Gravel." What Kurtz left unsaid was the
fact that Colbert's 2.3 percent easily fell within the poll's hefty margin
of error (5 percent), which meant the findings were statistically
irrelevant.
Colbert's race did momentarily seem to gain newsworthiness last week when a
Rasmussen poll [27] showed the Comedy Central host grabbing an impressive 13
percent when positioned as an independent candidate. (Even though Colbert
claims he's not going to try to run as an independent.)
None of the news reports I saw about the polling results mentioned it, but
what exactly is the point of conducting a national poll since Colbert is
only trying to get on the ballot in one state? Meaning, of the 1,200 people
Rasmussen polled, it's likely that, based on census data, maybe 10 or 20 of
the respondents were actually from South Carolina. It's like running a
national poll on who Americans would prefer to be the next senator from New
York; it's perfectly pointless exercise except, of course, that in the case
of Colbert it's fun and entertaining.
Nonetheless, on October 29, Good Morning America host Diane Sawyer, in an
apparent reference to the Rasmussen poll, suggested that, "If [Colbert]
keeps gaining at the rate he's gaining, by the end of November he could be
the leading candidate." [Emphasis added]
Question: In the history of modern-day American presidential campaigns, has
a new candidate ever entered the race polling at roughly 10 percent and then
proceeded to pick up an additional 10 percent each week for four weeks
running? Ever? Why would anybody suggest that a late-night comedian might be
able to accomplish what no other candidate has ever done in American
politics? What would prompt somebody to suggest that Colbert, by next month,
might soon be garnering 40 percent and be the leading candidate for
president?
Answer: Because it's fun.
--
NOTICE: This post contains copyrighted material the use of which has not
always been authorized by the copyright owner. I am making such material
available to advance understanding of
political, human rights, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues. I
believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of such copyrighted material as
provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright
Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107
"A little patience and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their
spells dissolve, and the people recovering their true sight, restore their
government to its true principles. It is true that in the meantime we are
suffering deeply in spirit,
and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public
debt. But if the game runs sometimes against us at home we must have
patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an opportunity of winning
back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are at
stake."
-Thomas Jefferson