Stephen Colbert

Last night, only a week after I included them both in my post Punditry is Dead, Stephen Colbert and Geoffrey Nunberg met in person on The Colbert Report. Zowie. I’d like to believe that Stephen and the Comedy Central producers are taking cues from my blog when selecting guests for the show… but my sense is that this would be reaching just a bit.

I suppose the “interview” went into about as much depth as could be reasonably hoped for, since the whole idea on the show is that Colbert uses his guests’ answers as comedic jumping-off points. I was kind of hoping they would get around to discussing Colbert’s word “truthiness,” which I know Nunberg loves; then again, I’m not sure where they would have been able to go with it, so c’est la vie.

I recently made a surprising discovery. Meandering through the blogosphere, I perused fellow liberals’ objections to statements of right-wing pundits, and the subsequent responses of conservatives. At first glance these would seem to be perfectly ordinary events, just the latest round of political mis-course. However, a closer look revealed to me that something essential has changed, something that must be recognized: Punditry is dead.

The signs of lifelessness are clear enough. As I wrote this post last evening, CBS’s 60 Minutes was running a profile segment on Stephen Colbert, the ascendantly popular satirist of Comedy Central’s The Colbert Report. In his pose as a self-important conservative talking head Colbert cuts a scythe-stroke through the very image of the Fox News-style punditry, exposing its hypocritical, mendacious underpinnings in all their ridiculousness.

Correspondingly, pundits have taken the deadly misstep of responding to their satirical detractors. A recent episode of The O’Reilly Factor contained the following exchange:

GERALDO RIVERA: You know, Comedy Central is now a big hit, Stewart and the Colbert guy.

O’REILLY: Yeah, they do OK. They do OK.

RIVERA: They make a living putting on video of old ladies slipping on ice and people laughing. That’s their life. That’s their life. They exist in a small little place where they count for nothing. The history will be made by those who have affirmative thoughts, who make, you know, innovative suggestions in life and are inclusive.

When you lob “Stewart and the Colbert guy” a comedic softball like that, they don’t miss it.

Comedians have not been the only voices pointing out Punditry’s status as an emporer without clothes. Not long ago I remarked upon the recent work of Geoff Nunberg, who inventoried contemporary pundits’ collective bag of tricks. An acting teacher with whom I studied some years ago used that same phrase, “bag of tricks,” to describe the tendency of bad actors to rely on gimmicky personal flourishes when playing a scene, as opposed to making a choice that seeks the human truth in the character. Just as hack actors do, pundits seek to draw attention to themselves - “Look at me - pretty good one, huh?” - rather than to discover the truth of the given subject matter. Also applicable to both is their audience’s inevitable realization that the pony only knows so many tricks. Indeed, Coulter, Hannity, Limbaugh, O’Reilly (and yes, Al Franken on the other ideological end of things) all rely on the same essential gambit of petty provocation; the only difference is how each of them pronounce it. The act has gotten old, and their artifice is showing. Punditry occupies the place in political journalism that professional wrestling does in sports - that of a show business replica passing itself off as the genuine article.

The demise of the pundit, however dramatic, is nevertheless the result of what we generally term “natural causes.” Pundits hitched their credibility to the fortunes of their champion, President Bush, the failure of whose administration left them with a lose-lose dilemma: Standing by their man, Tammy Wynnette-style, means sharing in the slings and arrows of 30% job approval. The alternative of jumping off before the ship goes down leaves the pundits on the receiving end of their own perjorative favorites, e.g. “flip-flopper,” “cut and run,” etc. Most appear to be choosing the former, which may indeed be the better option. Still, it is no easy manouver to edge yourself away from an increasingly lame duck and simultaneously maintain support for his core policies. Particularly when the policies in question have resulted in colossal messes - military, financial, diplomatic and otherwise. Long after George W. has retired to his porch rocker in Texas and resumed whittling, the rest of America, pundits included, will still be responsible for the cleanup. My experience in such situations has been that those who cheered loudest for the original mess-making are not looked upon fondly when mops and toilet brushes come out.

The defibrillator has been turned off. It’s over. The PR monkeys will surely issue the standard denials, and they may be able to manufacture a momentary public uncertainty (perhaps long enough for Ann Coulter to get her resume posted on Monster). At this early moment, of course no word has been issued regarding services or funeral proceedings. I assume that they will be open to the public, although for my part I’m not sure I’ll attend. I will, however, make sure to be at the wake.

Stephen Colbert’s satirical evisceration of the President at the White House Correspondents Dinner is still making headlines nearly a month later. Conservative wags will point out that this piece comes from their favorite “Liberal Media” whipping boy, the New York Times. I’ll indulge that point of view by linking to the AOL.com reprint of the story and seeing if anyone turns up to tell me how AOL is part of the vast left-wing media conspiracy to destroy America, or whatever.

Since I’m kind of new to this blogging thing, I’ve had to make peace with the realization that I’m just not going to be as current with the news cycle as… um, most of the rest of the blogosphere. Accordingly, it is only today that I finally post about my man Stephen Colbert’s address at the annual White House correspondents’ dinner (complete transcript and links to video have been posted by Frederick at Daily Kos; via Dan Froomkin).

When I first heard, I hit rewind to make sure I hadn’t dreamed it - and, to my delight, I hadn’t. Stephen Colbert had actually been given a live mic in front of a captive audience comprised of George W. Bush, a selection of his cronies and the White House Press Correspondents’ Association. In case you’re not familiar with Mr. Colbert, he is the host of The Colbert Report, wherein he poses as a right-wing blowhard pundit of the Hannity/Tucker Carlson/Bill O’Reilly mold, brilliantly skewering the lot of them. If his hilarious show hadn’t already, his turn at the correspondents’ dinner cemented Colbert’s spot on the short list of my comic idols.

To the surprise of absolutely no one, Bush & Co. are not too happy about Colbert making fools of them - which makes sense when you consider that they have never needed much help looking foolish. Their humiliation has since been compounded by their own partisans, apparently in ignorance of the time-honored political media wisdom that if you find yourself rebutting a comedian, you’ve already lost. The whole scenario begs the question of what the hell they THOUGHT they were going to get when they booked Stephen Colbert. To gripe afterward that he was disrespectful, that he “crossed the line,” is to let the fox into the henhouse and then blame him for being hungry.

Aides and reporters, however, said that [Colbert's speech] did not overshadow Bush’s own funny routine, which featured an impersonator who told the audience what Bush was thinking when he spoke dull speech lines… In fact, some aides crowed over reports that the president easily bested Colbert in the reviews of both comedy acts.

The major media outlets have, again, followed the lead of the White House, bypassing the story of Colbert’s satirical tour de force in favor of warm fuzzies about our funny president and the impersonator. My fellow lefties have sounded off in many a blog with conspiracy theories, but the explanation is simple: the savvier heads in the Bush press office have prevailed, knowing that attention to Colbert can only harm them, and hurried their press room of lemmings along to the next topic. The news industry honchos, also smarting from Colbert’s mockery, were eager to go along (for a more thorough indictmentindictment of the Colbert blackout, see this piece by playwright Christopher Durang, who knows a thing or two about comic absurdity).

Thus emerged the standard spin: Colbert was not funny. President Bush and the impersonator? Now that was funny. I can prove it - he got bigger laughs, and no one squirmed uncomfortably! That’s real entertainment.

Mmm-kay, well, I’ve watched both. Granted, what is and isn’t funny is a subjective thing. Speaking from my professional experience in show business I would advise President Bush not to quit his day job - if it weren’t for the fact that I really, really think that he should indeed quit his day job. As a matter of fact, the prospect of no more Bush is so desirable that I believe an exception is easily merited. Dubya literally running away to join the circus (or to open mic night at the Laugh Shack, whatever) would be such a jackpot for… well, the world, that the affront to Comedy would be a small price to pay. Hey, it I think I can safely speak for Comedy in general to vouch that it would be ready and willing to take one for the team, so to speak.

Here’s the pitch I’m rehearsing:

“Mr. President, I saw the sketch you did with the impersonator at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. Can I just say, you were hi-LAR-ious! You absolutely killed! Seriously - you should be in show business. I absolutely mean it, sir. You have real talent. You are just really, really funny. Like, Three Stooges funny. No sir, I am not fooling with you, I’m serious as a heart attack. Hasn’t anyone ever told you? Naw, come on, sir, you’re just too modest to remember. I’m saying flat out: I know from my professional experience and my instinct, my gut, that you are a gifted comic, and I am never wrong about these things. The Good Lord doesn’t give that kind of gift to everyone. But he has to you. And now he’s put me here in front of you, because I know several agents.”

Too much?