I have to admit to taking a certain delight in watching Stephen Colbert in The Colbert Report in Comedy Central Monday through Thursday nights. In case you haven’t seen it, The Colbert Report (pronounced as if French as in Colbear Reporr) is a parody of every right wing talk show host you’ve ever watched or listened to. He is arrogant, ignorant, biased, smug and overbearing as he joyfully mouths the latest Right wing talking points of the day in such a way that he lays their “truthiness” (a term which he claims to have coined which means: “sort of like the truth”) bare for everyone to see. This spinoff from Comedy Central’s The Daily Show with Jon Stewert, has become an instant hit and a new media phenomenom.
But therein lies the danger.
You’d think an old warhorse like me would be jumping up and down watching Colbert’s nightly lampooning of the right wing but it’s because of the “old” part of that phrase (old liberal warhorse) that I’m a little bit leary of Colbert’s popularity.
You see, I’m old enough to remember another TV phenomenon called “All In The Family” that started in 1971 and ran until 1983
.http://www.museum.tv/archives/etv/A/htmlA/allinthefa/allinthefa.htm
The show is considered by Television historians to be one of the most socially significant shows to ever air on network TV. And I agree. It was a ground-breaking series.
The museum of Television sums up the plotline like this:
All in the Family's storylines centered on the domestic concerns of the Bunker household in Queens, New York. Family patriarch and breadwinner Archie Bunker (Carroll O'Connor) was a bigoted loading dock worker disturbed by the changes occurring in the American society he once knew. To Archie, gains by the "Spades," "Spics," or "Hebes" of America (as he referred to Blacks, Hispanics, and Jews, respectively), came at his expense and that of other lower middle class whites. Countering Archie's harsh demeanor was his sweet but flighty "dingbat" wife, Edith. Played by Jean Stapleton, Edith usually endured Archie's tirades in a manner meant to avoid confrontation. But that was hardly the case with Archie's live-in son-in-law Mike Stivic (Rob Reiner), a liberal college student who was married to the Bunkers' daughter, Gloria (Sally Struthers). The confrontations between Archie and Mike ("Meathead") served as the basis for much of All in the Family's comedy. As surely as Archie could be counted upon to be politically conservative and socially misguided, Mike was equally liberal and sensitive to the concerns of minorities and the oppressed, and, because both characters were extremely vocal in their viewpoints, heated conflict between the two was assured.
Archie Bunker could be counted upon to be outrageous in almost every regard. Remember in 1971 American Society was still being turned upside down by the War in Viet Nam, the Civil Rights movement and it was just a scant three years since the assassinations of Bobby Kennedy, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr so it was the time when we were supposed to see Archie as the past that we needed to leave behind. But it didn’t work out that way.
Over at http://www.apocalypsefiction.com/isstwo/ed2.html they do a good job of describing what actually happened. Like this:
... I watched as Archie espoused a seemingly endless monologue of racial slurs, bigotry, prejudiced, historical revisionalism, and all-around polital incorrectness with such heartfelt openness and honesty that you could not help but love him for it. Could not help but love him for all of his flaws and shortcomings--love him as a person.
They got it right. Only a few years after the show first aired, I remember seeing a magazine (I think it was Time but I can’t find the reference) that asked the question:
Have We Missed the Point of Archie Bunker?
Indeed we had. Couched in Archie’s context, ignorance, prejudice, jealousy, bigotry were “okay”. It was acceptable to be all those things as long as you were “loveable”. I secretly suspect that the ascension of Ronald Reagan to the Presidency just a scant 9 years later and while All In The Family was still on the air, had something to do with the nation learning to accept a “loveable bigot”.
So how does this relate to Stephen Colbert?
Colbert has recently been asked to address a Republican Conference on Blogging.
Got that? It’s a Republican Conference on Blogging.
Stephen Colbert has nothing to do with Blogging. His show is strictly a television phenomenon. The blogosphere has nothing to do with The Colbert Report.
But that’s minor compared to the incongruity that the Republicans would invite someone who openly mocks them and their philosophy four nights a week. It’s possible that the Republicans just do not “get it”. It’s possible that they actually think he’s a serious Right Wing Pundit, but it takes a long stretch of the imagination to believe that to be true. Contrary to what I’d like to believe, Republicans are not stupid so I doubt if they take him seriously as a right wing pundit.
More likely, it’s the Archie Bunker Syndrome.
Most likely, they love his celebrity. Most likely, they like him as a person and will put up with his barbs and jabs as long as he remains just a comedian and not a serious threat to their philosophy but he’s just as dangerous as Archie Bunker in that his parody may be taken seriously and internalized.
We tend to idolize celebrities. We tend to place them on pedestals. We expect them, and sometimes even the characters they portray, to carry the torch of our causes. In the end, however, they are just performers with a “shtick” we tend to like. Never confuse the character with the person.
hizzhoner
