Stephen Colbert: Beyond Truthiness by Bruce Watson

Author:Bruce Watson [Watson, Bruce]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781612307572
Publisher: New Word City, Inc.
Published: 2014-05-29T00:00:00+00:00

“I used to make up stuff in my bio all the time – that I used to be a professional ice-skater and stuff like that. I found it so inspirational. Why not make myself cooler than I am?”

Mention George Orwell and the title of his dystopian novel on totalitarianism will soon follow. Fears of “Big Brother” are still invoked whenever government surveillance is mentioned, yet 1984 remains a work of fiction. It is another Orwell work, “Politics and the English Language,” that describes our current state of affairs.

In that essay, Orwell argued that “the English language is in a bad way.” Language matters, he said, because it links rhetoric to reality. When rhetoric is detached from reality, the consequences extend far beyond the classroom and the reading room. “Now, it is clear that the decline of a language must ultimately have political and economic causes,” Orwell wrote. “. . . [B]ut an effect can become a cause, reinforcing the original cause and producing the same effect in an intensified form, and so on indefinitely. A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure, and then fail all the more completely because he drinks. It is rather the same thing that is happening to the English language. It becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts.”

By 2005, America’s media landscape resembled Orwell’s drunk. Ugly language was daily fare. Foolish thoughts were passed off as gospel, and each person had his own set of facts. Best-selling memoirs were found to contain invented scenes, and major publications, including The Atlantic and The New York Times, admitted to publishing fabricated stories. A new online encyclopedia, Wikipedia, allowed anyone to amend any article with little fact-checking. A billion blogs filled the Internet, each blogger holding fast to some hometown version of truth.

Nearly half of all Americans did not believe in evolution, and an equally shocking number thought global warming was a hoax. No one seemed to trust anyone, except the one source each trusted, whom no one else trusted. Was all truth relative? Were scientific theories, even those endorsed by the scientific community, just maybes? Were facts, as Ronald Reagan once misstated, just “stupid things?”

When The Colbert Report was first conceived, Daily Show producers considered it a passing skit. But shortly after the 2004 election, Colbert began to worry. “I thought, ‘Well, I’ve been through two election cycles here; I’ve been here a long time. I still love it but I’m not sure how much longer I’ll love it.’” He still wanted to work with Stewart, but how?

Stewart, capitalizing on his skyrocketing celebrity, had contracted with Comedy Central to create a new show. So together with his head writer, Ben Karlin, Stewart began to see The Colbert Report as something more than a skit.

Cable TV’s prevailing pundit, Bill O’Reilly, had just been accused of sexual harassment. Having settled out of court for an undisclosed sum, O’Reilly was unrepentant and the case was hopelessly muddled.

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