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Tuesday, October 18, 2005

truthiness: welcome to the Colbert Report

So the Colbert Report, the Daily Show spin-off parodying the Bill O'Reilly's of the world as opposed to simple news, debuted last night (it's pronounced: coal-bear re-pore, as Colbert says "it's French, bitch"). In the debut, Steven Colbert did a speech about "Truthiness." The speech was a brilliant send-up of the anti-intellectual, emotional populism that dominates American media today:
I don't trust books, they're all fact, no heart. And that's exactly what's pulling our country apart today. 'Cause face it folks, we're a divided nation. Not between Democrats and Republicans, or conservatives and liberals, or tops and bottoms. No. We are divided between those who think with their head, and those who know with their heart.
Obviously, Colbert is satirically coming down on the side of heart, of the "gut-check," but his point is actually a fairly profound one. Watch the entire two and a half minute video here: windows media player and quicktime.

2 Comments:

At 9:17 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

word to the wise: colbert not only mocked the stereotypical obsequious, white-woman-wanting, limited-english speaking asian man -- but issued a tongue-in-cheek apology including a sarcastic homage to japanese tv...what i heard is that being anti-asian is a-ok.

-- a would-have-been fan.

 
At 9:02 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

It's called SATIRE.

Look it up.

 

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