{"id":8734,"date":"2006-10-12T11:10:51","date_gmt":"2006-10-12T15:10:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/8734.html"},"modified":"2006-10-12T11:10:51","modified_gmt":"2006-10-12T15:10:51","slug":"colbert-v-coulter-spot-the-loony","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/colbert-v-coulter-spot-the-loony\/","title":{"rendered":"Colbert v. Coulter — spot the loony"},"content":{"rendered":"

New York magazine has a great feature story<\/a> in its new issue on Stephen [tag]Colbert[\/tag] and his bombastic, over-the-top, O’Reilly-like on-air character. New York’s Adam Sternbergh raised an interesting point I hadn’t seen explored much elsewhere:<\/p>\n

Colbert’s on-air personality…leads to a peculiar comedic alchemy on the show. During one taping I attended, Colbert did a bit about eating disorders that ended with his addressing the camera and saying flatly, “Girls, if we can’t see your ribs, you’re ugly.” The audience laughed. I laughed. The line was obviously, purposefully outrageous. But it was weird to think that this no-doubt self-identified progressive-liberal crowd was howling at a line that, if it had been delivered verbatim by Ann [tag]Coulter[\/tag] on Today, would have them sputtering with rage.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

True. Colbert’s absurd right-wing rhetoric is funny because it’s a parody<\/em>. We laugh, of course, because he’s mocking the Coulters and Savages of the world by highlighting just how ridiculous their comments are.<\/p>\n

That said, Sternbergh thought it’d be fun to include a list of statements, all of which came from Stephen Colbert or Ann Coulter. Give it a shot:<\/p>\n

1. “Even Islamic terrorists don’t hate America like liberals do. They don’t have the energy. If they had that much energy, they’d have indoor plumbing by now.”<\/p>\n

2. “There’s nothing wrong with being gay. I have plenty of friends who are going to hell.”<\/p>\n

3. “I just think Rosa Parks was overrated. Last time I checked, she got famous for breaking the law.”<\/p>\n

4. “Being nice to people is, in fact, one of the incidental tenets of Christianity, as opposed to other religions whose tenets are more along the lines of ‘Kill everyone who doesn’t smell bad and answer to the name Muhammad.’ ”<\/p>\n

5. “I believe that everyone has the right to their own religion, be you Hindu, Muslim, or Jewish. I believe there are infinite paths to accepting Jesus Christ as your personal savior.”<\/p>\n

6. “[North Korea] is a major threat. I just think it would be fun to nuke them and have it be a warning to the rest of the world.”<\/p>\n

7. “Isn’t an agnostic just an atheist without balls?”<\/p>\n

Answers below.
\n
\n1. Coulter<\/p>\n

2. Colbert<\/p>\n

3. Colbert<\/p>\n

4. Coulter<\/p>\n

5. Colbert<\/p>\n

6. Coulter<\/p>\n

7. Colbert<\/p>\n

Just to be clear, Sternbergh wasn’t equating Coulter with Colbert.<\/p>\n

Coulter is a shrill, abusive demagogue and Colbert just plays one on TV. But with Coulter, there’s always been a sturdy suspicion that she is playing a character (like Colbert) and amping up the obnoxious rhetoric for maximum effect (like Colbert). When I mention the comparison to Colbert, though, he seems surprised, even unnerved. “I don’t really think about her much,” he says. “She’s a self-generating bogeyman. She’s like someone who wants attention for having been bad.” Given that he’s hosted right-wing true believers like Joe Scarborough before, and has often said he’d love to have Bill O’Reilly on the show, would he ever invite Coulter as a guest? “My sense is that she’s playing a character,” he says. “I don’t need another character. There’s one character on my show, and that’s me.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

For what it’s worth, I got six out of seven. How about you?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

New York magazine has a great feature story in its new issue on Stephen [tag]Colbert[\/tag] and his bombastic, over-the-top, O’Reilly-like on-air character. New York’s Adam Sternbergh raised an interesting point I hadn’t seen explored much elsewhere: Colbert’s on-air personality…leads to a peculiar comedic alchemy on the show. During one taping I attended, Colbert did a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8734","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8734","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8734"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8734\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8734"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8734"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8734"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}