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QUESTION OF THE DAY:
Are you ready to accept Stephen Colbert as your personal savior???
IRONY/OBSCENITY OF THE DAY:
The fact that the same media that couldn’t laugh at Colbert’s truthful and accurate deriding of them, laughed heartily when Bush joked about not being able to find the WMDs—a joke about a lie that has cost over 2000 American lives and possibly hundreds of thousands of Iraq lives—a joke about a lie that has cost our country over 320 billion dollars and counting. They were humorless about the shamefully funny truth. But they were able to laugh off a deadly untruth.
MYSTERY OF THE DAY: WHY DID THEY INVITE STEPHEN COLBERT?
Could they have possibly been so stupid that they failed to see the irony in his Colbert report blow hardy Bill O’Reilly caricature and took it to be sincere? No, that’s not possible. I suppose they thought they could defang and appropriate this critical voice by inviting it into the club. I guess the assumption was that he’d cooperate. He’d play ball. He’d take the little honorific bone they were tossing his way and wag his tale like a good dog. But instead the truth crazed dog bit the hand that tried to feed it. Then bit some softer and more meaty bits. To say they miscalculated is like saying that the Challenger flight didn’t go too smoothly. You’d think they’d have learned from Jon Stewart’s experiment at the Oscars. He and Colbert are not looking to appease and entertain. They are not looking to leverage their anti-establishment critical comedic cache into a lifelong membership in the establishment inner sanctum. (At least not yet). For now, they are smart, angry guys who are truly outraged by the course this country has taken.
OBSERVATION OF THE DAY:
We have reached a point in this society where it is hard for people to fathom anyone caring about something more than money, power and fame. To reject these enticements is to truly and dangerously confound.
UNFAIR COMPARISON OF THE DAY:
Jon Stewart at the Oscars vs. Stephen Colbert at the Press Dinner.
Where Jon Stewart seemed a little unprepared for (and knocked off his stride by) the frosty glares and uncomfortable silences he received at the Oscars (and seemed to get a bit lost between his desire to be loved by the live audience and his desire to be truthfully funny about it), Colbert embraced the awkwardness with gusto, escalating the virulence of his assault with each awkward cough, shifting chair and strangled chuckle. Certainly, he was helped by the fact that he spoke from behind the “mask” of a seamlessly constructed character--the bombastic blowhard caricature he’d created for the Colbert Report—and, as such, had an emotional freedom probably unavailable to someone like Stewart who was speaking as and for himself. The genius of the entire affair of course, was that everyone knew that his character voice reflected his own true voice. But—at a psychodynamic level—I am sure the plausible deniability (“Hey I was only playing the part”) helped embolden him for the withering, tour de force performance that he gave.
NEWS SUMMARY OF THE DAY:
It’s one of those days when I can’t update my browser without something intoxicatingly insane having happened. The Red Sox make a desperate overnight trade for the only catcher who can catch Tim Wakefield’s knuckleball. He’s flown into town and given a 100 mph emergency police escort from the airport to Fenway—changing in the back seat of the police car—so he can arrive in time for the Yankees-Red Sox game. Denver Nugget Reggie Evans grabs and clutches L.A. Clipper Chris Kaman’s testicles, incurring a fine for $10,000 or $5000 per nut. A a 33 year old man marries a 104 year old woman. Kobe and Shaq’s daughter’s are born minutes apart. Another actor on the “Sopranos” is arrested. A holy fool exposes the world’s most powerful man as an ass clown and the media as the ass clown’s doting butt boy.
Oh, wait, that one happened but wasn’t actually reported.
QUESTION OF THE DAY #2:
Why is there a near total media blackout on the Stephen Colbert speech?
ATTEMPTED ANSWER OF THE DAY:
The press won’t report on him because he indicts their entire discourse. Their defense is that it doesn’t properly constitute news. In fact, it’s too big and categorical an indictment of the discourse of the news to be contained within the news as a news item. Instead they report of a few amicable, good-natured ribbings by other celebrities and some bits that indicate Bush’s regular guy willingness to poke fun at himself. (But again think of his WMDs joking.) And, of course, they go on and on about the appearance of George Clooney. Morgan Fairchild and others at Bloomberg’s fab after party. In this celebrity addled culture THAT is news.
The President of the United States being mercilessly taken to task in front of the media elite and the world. Uh, that's news.
MAN OF THE DAY: (Which is 24 times as impressive as Man of the Hour.)
Stephen Colbert.
QUOTE OF THE DAY:
"Reality has a liberal bias" -Stephen Colbert
OBSERVATION OF THE DAY:*
When I was down in Tennessee, my female colleague told me she found it so charming and sweet than the southern boys would say “No, Ma’am.” And “Yes, Ma’am.” She’d glaze over and neglect to hear anything else that was said. Which might as well have been. “Yes, ma’am. I raped your daughter. Hit her on the head with a crowbar. Totally violated her. Yes ma’am. That’s what happened.”
“Oh, I just love it when he says “Yes Ma’am.””
*ADDENDUM OF THE DAY:
I had to include the "Yes Ma'am" business because Stephen Colbert told me that he'd be really uncomfortable with my taking the unprecedented step of having my entire blog be about one thing if that one thing was him. And I really didn't want to get on Stephen Colbert's bad side.
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Posted on 5/2/2006
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