Truthinessology: The Stephen Colbert effect becomes an obsession in academia
By Paul Farhi,
Nation, our so-called universities are in big trouble, and not just because attending one of them leaves you with more debt than the Greek government. No, we’re talking about something even more unsettling: the academic world’s obsession with Stephen Colbert.
Enquiring minds wish to know, just how deep does the academic world's alleged "obsession" with Stephen Colbert run? Will we have any Univeristy professors, regents, or Presidents interviewed to comment? Will we have any statistics on how many universities offer courses in truthiness?
Last we checked, Colbert was a mere TV comedian, or a satirist if you want to get fancy about it. (And, of course, being college professors, they do.) He’s a TV star, like Donald Trump, only less of a caricature.
More people can identify Colbert than can identify their State House of Representatives or State Congressional candidate. What's "mere" about being a comedian?
Just WHICH college professors want to get fancy about "it?" And, I would consider Colbert to be the ultimate caricature. That's just me.
Yet ever since Colbert’s show, “The Colbert Report,” began airing on Comedy Central in 2005, these ivory-tower eggheads have been devoting themselves to studying all things Colbertian. They’ve sliced and diced his comic stylings more ways than a Ginsu knife. Every academic discipline — well, among the liberal arts, at least — seems to want a piece of him. Political science. Journalism. Philosophy. Race relations. Communications studies. Theology. Linguistics. Rhetoric.
PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE, do tell me WHICH ivory-tower eggheads have been devoting themselves to studying all things Colbertian? How many papers submitted to scholarly journals are based on Colbert? Oh, you mean the business community does NOT want to get a piece of him? Which Theology departments? Which Linguistics departments? Are there any specifics that can be cited in support of the proposition?
There are dozens of scholarly articles, monographs, treatises and essays about Colbert, as well as books of scholarly articles, monographs and essays. A University of Oklahoma student even earned her doctorate last year by examining him and his “Daily Show” running mate Jon Stewart. It was called “Political Humor and Third-Person Perception.”
Okay. That's a one-for the money! And it sounds as if her paper encompassed more than just Colbertianisms - as Stewartianisms also seem to have been suggested by the author - and is her paper solely focused on Stewart and Colbert as the only examples ever of Political Humor?
The academic cult of Colbert (or is it “the cul of Colbert”?) is everywhere. Here’s a small sample. Jim . . .
●“Is Stephen Colbert America’s Socrates?,” chapter heading in “Stephen Colbert and Philosophy: I Am Philosophy (And So Can You!),” published by Open Court, 2009.
And just exactly how many universities are using this as a course text book?
●“The Wørd Made Fresh: A Theological Exploration of Stephen Colbert,” published in Concepts (“an interdisciplinary journal of graduate studies”), Villanova University, 2010.
This is an interdisciplinary journal. How many university courses are being taught using this journal as a text - either primary, or secondary?
●“It’s All About Meme: The Art of the Interview and the Insatiable Ego of the Colbert Bump,” chapter heading in “The Stewart/Colbert Effect: Essays on the Real Impacts of Fake News,” published by McFarland Press, 2011.
This book sounds interesting. Real Impacts of Fake News - is exactly what got George W Bush elected by a 5-4 margin to the Presidency of the United States of America - the War on Gore being one of the most unreported stories in the history or history.
●“The Irony of Satire: Political Ideology and the Motivation to See What You Want to See in The Colbert Report,” a 2009 study in the International Journal of Press/Politics that its authors described as an investigation of “biased message processing” and “the influence of political ideology on perceptions of Stephen Colbert.” After much study, the authors found “no significant difference between [conservatives and liberals] in thinking Colbert was funny.”
I still would like to know at how many universities / colleges / joco's that this 2009 study is being taught.
Colbert-ism has insinuated itself into the undergraduate curriculum, too.
Fancy that! Colbert was the commencement speaker at Knox College, in Galesburg, IL, a few years ago. So was Patrick Fitzgerald, at a different commencement.
Boston University has offered a seminar called “The Colbert Report: American Satire” for the past two years, which explores Colbert’s use of “syllogism, logical fallacy, burlesque, and travesty,” as lecturer Michael Rodriguez described it on the school’s Web site.
FINALLY! We get an example of a University offering a seminar featuring the Colbert Report. I will call it: ONE!
This fall, Towson University will roll out a freshman seminar on politics and popular culture, with Colbert as its focus.
Okay. Now, let's call it TWO (but, we must wait until this fall!
All this for a guy who would undoubtedly mock-celebrate the serious study of himself.
Satirical tradition
The college crowd says Colbert is worthy of study because his single-character political satire is unique in the annals of television. His character, an egomaniacal right-wing gasbag, connects him to a long Western satirical tradition going all the way back to the Roman poet Horace and the ancient Greek playwright Sophocles, although neither of those guys had basic-cable gigs.
“Colbert deserves to be held against the greatest satirists in American history,” says Sophia McClennen, a professor of international affairs and comparative literature at Penn State and the author of “Colbert’s America: Satire and Democracy.”
McClennen says Ben Franklin and Mark Twain — to name-drop two of Colbert’s forebears — used satire to mock the powerful, critique prevailing social attitudes and shape American democracy “at a moment when the U.S. was in the midst of transformation, change and crisis. . . . My argument is that our democracy is in a tough spot now, when corporations are exercising increasing power over government, and that Colbert captures this moment as they did.”
To "name drop" two of Colbert's forebears? Good Lord, if he is worthy of being name-dropped with those worthies, then he is assuredly worthy of study in academia!
Cross-cultural appeal
Geoffrey Baym, a media studies professor at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, says “The Colbert Report” and its host have compelled the people who study political communications to take entertainment TV seriously and the people who study entertainment and popular culture to think more about politics.
These would seem like important impacts for one person to have. Such a person would be entirely worthy of being studied!
“I’m sure there are still a lot more books out there on CBS News and Edward R. Murrow, but you could argue that the emergence of satire news at this level is an important phenomenon that I don’t think we still completely understand,” says Baym, the author of “From Cronkite to Colbert: The Evolution of Broadcast News.”
The emergence of satire news - like, The Onion? Anyone?
Colbert, Baym says, “is doing something important in a political sense” by educating his TV audience about the nuances and defects of the electoral system. He cites Colbert’s ongoing segments about his self-created super PAC — “Making a Better Tomorrow, Tomorrow” — as an unprecedented example of information, entertainment and activism.
Educating audiences about the nuances and defects of the electoral system sounds like pretty important work to me. This is something one would be hard pressed to uncover in the so-called Main Stream Media. Somebody really ought to be doing it!
The program also works as a kind of “gateway” for greater civic engagement for young people, says Amy Bree Becker, a communications studies professor at Towson who will teach the school’s Colbert course next semester.
My assertion has always been that the purpose of an education is to create critical thinkiners, critical readers, critical listeners, who can flesh out subtext, and become contributing members of their communities. A "gateway" for greater civic engagement seems like a wonderful thing to have available to assist in helping to achieve these lofty aims.
“It’s a very good way to get young people who would normally not pay much attention to politics to learn a little more,” she said. “You have to know something to get the joke. [The show] encourages people to find information from other sources.”
It is VERY important to get young people (and the not so young) to pay attention to politics, AND to learn a little more. anything that encourages people to find information (research) from other sources ought to be a very important thing. Because, they would have to dig pretty deep to find such stuff in the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, etc, etc, etc.
Becker suggested there’s another obvious reason why students and professors enjoy studying Colbert: He’s a lot funnier than Emerson or Keats or Kierkegaard.
“People in universities like to laugh, too,” she said.
And that’s the Wørd.
I'm thinking this writer phoned in this piece, knowing all the long that he had an interesting punch line (hook) at the end.
I'm further thinking there is something like "celebrity envy" going on - that the author is jealous of Colbert's success, and has written what was intended to be a hit piece that in actuality pretty much disproves the points he was trying to make early. As in, he just doesn't get it!
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