• gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works
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      28 days ago

      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… 👨‍🍳 💋 )

      • 13igTyme@piefed.social
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        28 days ago

        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.

      • TheRealKuni@piefed.social
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        28 days 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.

      • CharlesDarwin@lemmy.world
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        28 days ago

        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.

        • BertramDitore@lemmy.zip
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          28 days ago

          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.

          • CharlesDarwin@lemmy.world
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            28 days 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/

        • Archer@lemmy.world
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          28 days ago

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

          • CharlesDarwin@lemmy.world
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            28 days 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…

      • wesley@yall.theatl.social
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        28 days ago

        He talked about why he left at one point and this was part of it. Because even if he didn’t mean what he said there were still people that believed him.

      • SulaymanF@lemmy.world
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        27 days ago

        Shhhh, nobody correct him, it’s way funnier that way.

        “You mean Trump cancelled a conservative host?”

        • TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world
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          28 days ago

          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.

          • vortic@lemmy.world
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            28 days ago

            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.

            • TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world
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              28 days ago

              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.

              • AlligatorBlizzard@sh.itjust.works
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                27 days ago

                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.