Colbert: The Genuine Phony
Fiction is stranger than truth. Although, to be fair, it is sometimes fairly difficult to discern the difference. Imitation right-wing blowhard Stephen Colbert is running for president and wants to be a legal candidate on the South Carolina ballot. He wants to run both as a Republican and a Democrat.
I guess his comedic persona will be Republican and his actual self will be the Democrat. Should he be elected, he could form a coalition government all by himself. He could truly be a uniter and not a divider. Although most politicians exhibit the characteristics of a multiple personality disorder, Colbert will be the first to run on it as a virtue and not a guilty secret.
Now assuming that, unlike “real politicians,” he really has an actual self, we must ask if this is some kind of joke. If this is a joke, we may ask the burning, if rhetorical, question “So what?” Look at the other jokes who have been elected to office—or at least those who were at first taken to be jokes. Yes, Jesse “The Body” Ventura is easy pickings (Slim Pickin’s however never did run for office.) Arnold, Der Governator, is a little bit harder to figure. He may have seemed a joke at first. I would say that his election in the recall of Gov Davis was a joke—a desperate protest vote not so much for him as against a “real politician.” His re-election clearly was not a joke, and his second term has not been terrible—so far.
Of course many people thought that Ronald Reagan was a joke, that we would never elect a mere actor to the governorship, no less to the presidency. Critics stopped laughing as Reagan won twice for governor and twice for president and left office with the high regard of many, if not most, Americans. California also gave us song and dance man George Murphy as Senator, and that probably started this whole trend. A song and dance background may offer some useful skills in entertaining the people while dancing around the issues.
Al Franken, another actor/comedian is running for the Senate in Minnesota, the state that gave us Jesse. Meanwhile, former Senator, and present day actor, Fred Thompson is running for the presidency.
So, why not Stephen Colbert? He has the great advantage of talking out of both sides of his mouth and not meaning what he says—and admitting it—unlike the mainstream politicians who lie and then lie about lying. Colbert tells us he is a phony and to take his pomposity as an act. The genuineness of his irony means that he is a real phony, while at the same time being a, well, phony phony. This is the kind of meta-irony that characterizes—and caricatures—our times.
Already Colbert is ahead of Kucinich, Richardson and Biden in the Democratic polls in South Carolina. This has got to make these real pols cry themselves to sleep in frustration. In the Republican polls, Colbert is not yet scoring. Maybe the Republicans just don’t get the joke and are irony free. Young and fed up Democrats do get the joke and see that politics as usual is a kind of cruel joke. Young Democrats may be heartsick that voting for peace got them a do nothing congress. They may remember stories of when their parents voted for LBJ against Goldwater in order to stop the then nascent Vietnam War and the feeling of utter betrayal when LBJ escalated the war and it lasted another decade.
Still, sincere and smart candidates such as Biden, Richardson and Kucinich have to wonder at how Colbert’s joke can trump their sincerity.
“Well,” as Ronald Regan was fond of saying, just look at where we get our news. What are the most successful and popular sources of news for Americans under the age of 42? The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Colbert Report with Stephen Colbert. The satirical newspaper, The Onion, prints over 710, 000 papers, in its weekly edition. When compared to dailies, it would rank 6th in the nation after USA Today, NY Times, Chicago Tribune, Washington Post and LA Times. Its daily edition on the web is viewed by more than 2 million people per week.
If we get our news through satiric channels, why not get our politicians the same way?
In these rightfully cynical times, when mainline candidates lie, spin and parse, we crave something genuine. What irony could be more fitting that when we crave authenticity we turn to actors?
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