Blogcritics Comments on "Truthiness"? Stephen Colbert and Comedy as Political Argument

Comment by Al Barger on "Truthiness"? Stephen Colbert and Comedy as Political Argument

Wed, 10 May 2006 22:44:01 EDT

Thank you, Brother Butki. ]]>

Comment by MCH on "Truthiness"? Stephen Colbert and Comedy as Political Argument

Tue, 9 May 2006 23:50:47 EDT

"he is funny but im tired af all these liberal deushbags controling the media." Yeah really, those liberal deushbags are far worse than those conservative cheekenhocks... ]]>

Comment by Scott Butki on "Truthiness"? Stephen Colbert and Comedy as Political Argument

Tue, 9 May 2006 22:09:43 EDT

Al,put a link to your column and to the Colbert video at my new piece on the Daily Show. Roscoe, you're kidding, right? ]]>

Comment by Roscoe collins on "Truthiness"? Stephen Colbert and Comedy as Political Argument

Tue, 9 May 2006 19:58:36 EDT

he is funny but im tired af all these liberal deushbags controling the media. they only have 1 democratic view and never explore the views of other people ]]>

Comment by ss on "Truthiness"? Stephen Colbert and Comedy as Political Argument

Tue, 9 May 2006 15:02:20 EDT

I'm not a regular viewer, but I have seen O'Reilly's show. He may not fit into the groups Republican strategists identify as subsets of the conservative movement, but he is a professional yellow journalist and left-baiter. That's why his show is on Fox News, and why it's the most popular one (or up there, anyway) on that network. ]]>

Comment by JR on "Truthiness"? Stephen Colbert and Comedy as Political Argument

Tue, 9 May 2006 14:30:11 EDT

Al Barger: Again, read this thread, the kool aid drinkers and fools are all Daily Show fans, not O'Reilly watchers. That's an observation of facts and evidence, not a feeling from down in my gut. I've never ever seen anyone chauvinistically defending O'Reilly like some of these Daily Show fans. You want me to believe that they're all independent thinkers, and the O'Reilly watchers are sheep? My experience suggests exactly the opposite. You know much about sampling error? Aside from the fact that the poll CNN cited had over 19,000 responses, it's pretty clear that the relatively small number of responses here is selected for people baited into responding by your obvious bias. (A bias which it is easy to believe also colors the rest of your experience.) Again, I'm not impressed by your methods for determining objective reality. You've made it clear what you believe; what's in it for me? Why should I believe you over Nielson Media Research or the Annenburg Public Policy Center? ]]>

Comment by Dave Nalle on "Truthiness"? Stephen Colbert and Comedy as Political Argument

Tue, 9 May 2006 12:09:07 EDT

SS, I think there are a lot of conservatives who would openly say - from the very beginning - that O'Reilly isn't one of them. If you look at his positions in specific they don't match those of any typical conservative agenda. The mere fact that he's conservative on some social issues, mostly because he's a catholic, doesn't mean that he isn't still pretty moderate to liberal on a lot of other political and economic issues. Dave ]]>

Comment by Deano on "Truthiness"? Stephen Colbert and Comedy as Political Argument

Tue, 9 May 2006 12:08:39 EDT

I think everyone here knows the difference between a live horse and a dead horse. Please stop whipping the latter. The mere fact that people think comparing and contrasting the audience intelligence of Fox News against Comedy Central, and claiming one makes one "better informed" leads me to think they need to get out more. The Daily Show and the Colbert Report are FAKE news, a satarical take on the real events and the media...they are under absolutely NO OBLIGATION to tell the truth, to NOT make stuff up, or to present anything factual, fair or balanced. The mere fact that you are huffing and puffing over their bon fides makes it apparent that you don't have a clue. They are comedy shows! As Jon Stewart himself put it in his infamous Crossfire appearance "The show that leads into me is puppets making crank phone calls." The entire point of both shows is to bring to light the nature of the news - both the makers of the news and the presenters of the news (namely the media) AND HOLD THEM UP TO RIDICULE. It is anti-authoritrianism (I probably spelled that wrong...) that is the mainstay of the Daily Show and the Colbert Report. Do some people get all their news from The Daily Show? Probably. Just as there are some people who readily accept the pre-formed, bite-sized pablum that Fox spews daily. If you have any serious interest in the world around you, you draw your information from multiple sources and keep an inate sense of skepticism about the nature of government and media. For all its faults (and the occasional lame Scooby-Doo joke), The Daily Show and the Colbert Report help feed that sense of question and skepticism. So yes - obviously - FOX provides "more news and more facts" then The Daily Show...it also provides more then my son's morning cartoon show also - Should we compare them too? As shocking as it might be, some of us can watch and appreciate The Daily Show and The Colbert Report without believing it is anything more significant then trenchant, biting satire of the world and its news. ]]>

Comment by zingzing on "Truthiness"? Stephen Colbert and Comedy as Political Argument

Tue, 9 May 2006 12:05:11 EDT

christ, al... what is your world called? the land without a past? do you write your own dictionaries and encyclopedias? create your own languages? alphabets... ]]>

Comment by ss on "Truthiness"? Stephen Colbert and Comedy as Political Argument

Tue, 9 May 2006 11:09:56 EDT

You haven't seen anyone chauvinistically defending O'Reilly- Lately. Colbert is often compared to O'Reilly because Bill is the most high profile of the type of 'journalist' Colbert set out to deflate. I know alot of conservatives, Al, and there was a time when their love affair with the likes of Rush and O'Reilly was pretty open. Most distance themselves from those hacks these days, or add qualifiers that they never used to. That's because the medicine show has been discredited, not by the real journalists, and certainly not by Democratic pols. O'Reilly has finally been relegated to the status he always deserved because of Cobert showing, and mocking, the mechanism O'Reilly works by at exactly the same time as the plunge in Republican poll nummbers. I'm not saying Cobert caused the plunge, the Republicans did that to themselves. Moderates will forgive alot for a tax cut, including the Duke's bribery scandals. But partisan bickering WITHIN party ranks (Meyers nomination, immigration, ports deal) while the country suffers from bad management (slow rescue operations after Katrina, insurgents still killing Iraqis and US soldiers, high gas prices), that really pisses'm off. ]]>

Comment by Al Barger on "Truthiness"? Stephen Colbert and Comedy as Political Argument

Tue, 9 May 2006 03:27:40 EDT

Yes JR, my own experience will tend to count more than someone else's so-called studies. If someone claims to have a study proving something contrary to my experience, I'll tend to be hard to convince. It'll take more than someone claiming in a blog thread that they have a study proving something for me to be convinced that it's true and meaningful if it goes strongly against my experience. Again, read this thread, the kool aid drinkers and fools are all Daily Show fans, not O'Reilly watchers. That's an observation of facts and evidence, not a feeling from down in my gut. I've never ever seen anyone chauvinistically defending O'Reilly like some of these Daily Show fans. You want me to believe that they're all independent thinkers, and the O'Reilly watchers are sheep? My experience suggests exactly the opposite. ]]>

Comment by JR on "Truthiness"? Stephen Colbert and Comedy as Political Argument

Tue, 9 May 2006 01:48:00 EDT

Al Barger writes: In the real world of America 2006 though, it is the Bush haters — the core cheering section for Stewart and Colbert — who are most clearly getting their truth from down deep in their guts rather than anything to do with external evidence. Then: Somebody might claim that they have a study, but I'm not believing it. Rather, I judge more based on my personal experience. ]]>

Comment by Al Barger on "Truthiness"? Stephen Colbert and Comedy as Political Argument

Tue, 9 May 2006 01:10:05 EDT

But Zingzing, that's all dependent on believing that Daily Show fans are smarter or thoughtful than O'Reilly viewers. Somebody might claim that they have a study, but I'm not believing it. Rather, I judge more based on my personal experience. O'Reilly draws an audience, but not seemingly so much in the way of followers. I've never, ever seen an O'Reilly watcher gush on about how he's got it all figured out. But just look at how some of these Stewart/Colbert fans are carrying on about speaking truth to power and other such nonsense. The direct evidence I see indicates that Stewart/Colbert are peddling some really dumb kool aid- moreso by far than O'Reilly. ]]>

Comment by zingzing on "Truthiness"? Stephen Colbert and Comedy as Political Argument

Mon, 8 May 2006 19:01:55 EDT

what you have to look at is the amount of people who watch o'reilly thinking it is "fair and balanced news" and then look at the amount of people who watch the daily show and think that they are watching the news. daily show watchers, being the "better informed," according to the above study, probably realize that they are watching a comedy show (on a comedy network) and are thus seeing the "news" from an angle, while o'reilly watchers seldom realize that they are watching an "opinion talkshow," and thus are getting slanted "facts." ]]>

Comment by JR on "Truthiness"? Stephen Colbert and Comedy as Political Argument

Mon, 8 May 2006 18:53:15 EDT

Al Barger: What suppositions of mine here are incorrect? Well... Dear Duh- This right here is a ridiculous and absolutely untrue statement: "They are actualy more intelligent and more knowledgable about current events than people that watch news comentaries such as the O'Reilly Factor." There's no evidence for that, and the opposite is true based on the content of the two shows. Furthermore, why would you think you can base your estimate of the intelligence of the audience on the factual content of the show? The supposition that that constitutes a logical argument would seem unfounded, and indeed incorrect, based on the evidence presented. I could go on with your supposition that the Daily Show doesn't present facts; I've seen facts on there. Sometimes they even preface a statement with "...and this is true..." to differentiate it from the totally unbelievable stuff that really is made up (apparently on the assumption that their audience might not believe everything they say...) ]]>

Comment by Al Barger on "Truthiness"? Stephen Colbert and Comedy as Political Argument

Mon, 8 May 2006 17:47:15 EDT

What suppositions of mine here are incorrect? O'Reilly is part of a NEWS network, with reporters and facts and stuff. The Daily Show is not. I mean this not as a defense of O'Reilly, but as an attack on the credibility of Stewart and Colbert. They SAY that they're just making stuff up and lack credibility, while going nudge-nudge, wink-wink, we're really telling the truth. They're not. ]]>

Comment by Michael J. West on "Truthiness"? Stephen Colbert and Comedy as Political Argument

Mon, 8 May 2006 17:37:09 EDT

But Al, you're making suppositions here that are demonstrably incorrect....oh, forget it. Neither of us is going to convince the other and it's frankly a rather silly argument anyway. ]]>

Comment by Al Barger on "Truthiness"? Stephen Colbert and Comedy as Political Argument

Mon, 8 May 2006 17:32:40 EDT

No, I don't know how well informed about what viewers of the two shows are overall- nor do I make such a claim. My point there was that people get much more actual facts about what's going on by watching even Bill O'Reilly than they will watching The Daily Show. Supposedly, there are a lot of viewers who watch Stewart as their main news source. However many of them there are, they are idiots with no real knowledge of current events. I've never heard of anyone claiming O'Reilly as their principle news source, but such people would be far better informed that Stewart/Colbert fans. ]]>

Comment by Michael J. West on "Truthiness"? Stephen Colbert and Comedy as Political Argument

Mon, 8 May 2006 17:22:42 EDT

The empirical basis of me judging O'Reilly viewers to be better informed than Daily Show viewers is strictly based on the content of the shows, not surveys of the viewership. So your method of determining how well-informed fans of each show are, is to ignore actual data on how well-informed fans of each show are? ]]>

Comment by Al Barger on "Truthiness"? Stephen Colbert and Comedy as Political Argument

Mon, 8 May 2006 17:13:09 EDT

The empirical basis of me judging O'Reilly viewers to be better informed than Daily Show viewers is strictly based on the content of the shows, not surveys of the viewership. O'Reilly has a show with facts, selective though they may be. I don't put much stock in O'Reilly, but that's still more than can be said for the Daily Show. Blazing Saddles and Dr Strangelove are works of fiction, clearly presented as such. The Daily Show might mouth the words of saying that they're fiction, but their hardcore fans (as represented in this comment thread) actually take the show as representing "truth" being spoken to power. No one ever looked to Mel Brooks as a news source, famously a lot of non-news viewers DO take Colbert and Stewart as their principle news source. Also, it's begging the question to make O'Reilly the point of comparison, as if he were representative of the entire Fox network or actual news sources in general. If you want to smack at Fox, then go to the main news shows on the network rather than the opinion talkshow end. Go after Brit Hume or Shepherd Smith, not O'Reilly. Even Bill O'Reilly has far more credibility as a news source than Jon Stewart- and he's the weak link. ]]>

Comment by ss on "Truthiness"? Stephen Colbert and Comedy as Political Argument

Mon, 8 May 2006 15:19:46 EDT

By the way, whatever happened to the ManCow. ManCow was the actual epitome of Fox News, far more than O'Reilly. I can't believe they ditched the ManCow. I wonder what it's like when the people at Fox News do some soul searching and realize 'ya know, the whole ManCow thing... It just isn't cute anymore.' Oh, and last but not least... South Park is basicly FM morning radio, poorly drawn. If you'd like to explain how the show with the Barbara Streisand Godzilla is on a whole other level, and a 100x 'artier', than the show with the guy who's afraid of bears, please, I'd love to hear you try. ]]>

Comment by Michael J. West on "Truthiness"? Stephen Colbert and Comedy as Political Argument

Mon, 8 May 2006 15:12:21 EDT

Permit me, if I may, to paste in part of one of the articles JR links to above:

According to independent Neilson Media Research, Stewart's audience is better educated than O'Reilly's and Stewart's audience earns more than O'Reilly's. The ignorant O'Reilly started the Stewart slinging match in his opening comments stating "You know what's really frightening? You actually have an influence on this presidential election. That is scary, but it's true. You've got stoned slackers watching your dopey show every night and they can vote." What should be really scary for O'Reilly is that Stewart's audience is more interested in the Presidential campaign than his own. "People who watch The Daily Show are more interested in the presidential campaign, more educated, younger, and more liberal than the average American or than Leno or Letterman viewers," said Dannagal Goldthwaite Young, a senior analyst at the Annenberg Public Policy Center, who conducted the research for the report. "In recent years traditional journalists have been voicing increasing concern that if young people are receiving political information from late-night comedy shows like 'The Daily Show,' they may not be adequately informed on the issues of the day. This data suggests that these fears may be unsubstantiated" she says.

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Comment by ss on "Truthiness"? Stephen Colbert and Comedy as Political Argument

Mon, 8 May 2006 15:08:10 EDT

O'Reilly selects the facts most likely to rile up his predominantly conservative audience and greatly exaggerates them with phrases like 'The War on Christmas'. After all, a riled viewer is a rapt viewer. Comedy Central's pretty much the same thing as Fox News, except played for laughs instead of anger. ]]>

Comment by JR on "Truthiness"? Stephen Colbert and Comedy as Political Argument

Mon, 8 May 2006 15:05:59 EDT

Al Barger: Dear Duh- This right here is a ridiculous and absolutely untrue statement: "They are actualy more intelligent and more knowledgable about current events than people that watch news comentaries such as the O'Reilly Factor." There's no evidence for that, and the opposite is true based on the content of the two shows. In fact, O'Reilly has a news show which does present facts. I think the guy's a weasel, and I certainly don't trust him for anything like a fair and balanced perspective. No evidence? What's this? And what are your empirical methods for judging the intelligence of the audience by the content of the show? Would you also assert that people who enjoyed "Fahrenheit 9/11" (which does present facts) are more intelligent than people who enjoyed "Dr. Strangelove" or "Blazing Saddles"? ]]>

Comment by Al Barger on "Truthiness"? Stephen Colbert and Comedy as Political Argument

Mon, 8 May 2006 14:08:28 EDT

Dear Duh- This right here is a ridiculous and absolutely untrue statement: "They are actualy more intelligent and more knowledgable about current events than people that watch news comentaries such as the O'Reilly Factor." There's no evidence for that, and the opposite is true based on the content of the two shows. In fact, O'Reilly has a news show which does present facts. I think the guy's a weasel, and I certainly don't trust him for anything like a fair and balanced perspective. However, he's a lot more credible than The Daily Show or Colbert. Their defenders here SAY that they know this is a fake news show, and that they just make stuff up. But in the same sentence, you say that watching this fake news makes you better informed than an actual news show. Do you want to HAVE your cake, or EAT- you can't have both. Sure, they're just making stuff up, but in doing so they are really speaking truth to power. Even blowhard O'Reilly is a more reliable news source than Colbert. Moreover, Colbert and certainly Stewart are more determinedly ideological and even less fair and balanced than O'Reilly- much less the rest of Fox or other news organizations. Colbert and Stewart may be mediocrities on any artistic level and six kinds of stilted and not even pretending to deal in facts, but they spew the pinko crap that you want to hear, so you smugly declare them to be the true purveyors of truth even as you release them from the responsibilities of actually telling the truth. CI and TA can come with this talking down at me, but notice how this plays on a purely smug presumption of superiority with no need of actual argument to justify such presumptions. And if you don't appreciate the word pinko, then don't be talking like crazed left wingnuts to provoke the usage. By the way, I have an essay on the word "pinkos" for your edification. ]]>