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I'm not sure that this is exactly a great example of "how often" politicians are able to laugh at someone's satire of them. Canada has the equivalent to this every year, where the leaders essentially take the piss out of each other without any ill will (in fact, all parties involve generally find it funny). And there's a great tradition of presidents appearing on late night talk shows as well as cameos on shows that make fun of them on a weekly basis. I'm not sure I get what you're saying. Are you suggesting Colbert saw this reaction coming before he started, and was just trying to make a point? Or that Colbert was really average and got laughs not by his own virtue but the reaction of the administration? Because one way he's not doing what he was paid to do (basically, entertain these humorless bastards), and the other he just got lucky. Either way, it hardly qualifies as classic Colbert, especially for someone who is so funny in his own element.

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Guest Bluesman

That's in Canada, not down here. Most people aren't overly accepeting of questions/criticisms of their beliefs (which is what they are, not ideas), particularly when made fun of in a satrical manner. You can take it one step further: people who don't agree on something aren't likely to laugh at it, even outside the realm of politics.

It wasn't what he said that was funny, but what he did. The Press Secretary skit was, stand alone, not very funny. However, when understood in the context of a scathing critique of the press corps and how weak and spineless they have been, their inability to chase after important/relavent facts about Iraq (think BBC finding out the truth about Jessica Lynch), etc. it becomes a hell of alot funnier. It's the same with the Colbert Report, without understanding what it is he really is doing/saying, it's not terribly funny. That's why I fail to understand how you can say something like 'he was outside his element' because this is what he always does, this was classic Colbert.

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I don't know what crack you were smoking. I thought his whole routine was pretty funny. The Press Secretary Bit was the weakest, only because I had already seen it on Colbert's show.

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I think it's actually great as a form of self-fulfilling prophecy at work:

Throughout the Bush years, two of the major knocks about it are that they are, in layman's terms, "fucking clueless" and that, in addition, they have no sense of what the average American is like.

They hire Colbert, he does his thing, and they get pissed off at it. This proves that, since they're angry at his comedy, they logically must have hired him thinking that he was a legitimate right-wing pundit when anyone who's even seen a little bit of Colbert knows that his entire gimmick is that he's making fun of right wing pundits (in short, proving the Bush Administration is fucking clueless), and moreover, that there was also no one in the place who knew that this was Colbert's gimmick to tell them (in short, proving they're out of touch with the average American...)

I'm not following. Since a self-fulfilling prophecy is a prediction that, in being made, actually causes itself to become true, is that a knock on the critics? Or was that just a misinterpretation of a self-fulfilled prophecy?

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What oldskool said just made me click into your point, but if the laughs are a result of the GOP's fuck up, and not really anything Colbert did, I fail to see how it's "classic Colbert". It's not even really funny, it's just another pathetic mess up that is The Republican Party in 2006.

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Guest Bluesman

What oldskool said just made me click into your point, but if the laughs are a result of the GOP's fuck up, and not really anything Colbert did, I fail to see how it's "classic Colbert". It's not even really funny, it's just another pathetic mess up that is The Republican Party in 2006.

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I think it's actually great as a form of self-fulfilling prophecy at work:

Throughout the Bush years, two of the major knocks about it are that they are, in layman's terms, "fucking clueless" and that, in addition, they have no sense of what the average American is like.

They hire Colbert, he does his thing, and they get pissed off at it. This proves that, since they're angry at his comedy, they logically must have hired him thinking that he was a legitimate right-wing pundit when anyone who's even seen a little bit of Colbert knows that his entire gimmick is that he's making fun of right wing pundits (in short, proving the Bush Administration is fucking clueless), and moreover, that there was also no one in the place who knew that this was Colbert's gimmick to tell them (in short, proving they're out of touch with the average American...)

I'm not following. Since a self-fulfilling prophecy is a prediction that, in being made, actually causes itself to become true, is that a knock on the critics? Or was that just a misinterpretation of a self-fulfilled prophecy?

Edited by Plankton
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