Waxing Poetically: Addressing Culture with a Twist of Poetry

Yes, an article in today’s Huffington Post by Jason Linkins is actually reporting that conservative viewers of comedian Stephen Colbert’s satirical Colbert Report actually believe he is serious on some issues. A study of both conservative and liberal opinions by Ohio State University for the International Journal of Press/Politics entitled “The Irony of Satire: Political Ideology and the Motivation to See What You Want to See in The Colbert Report” concludes that conservatives feel Colbert earnestly dislikes liberalism and only pretends to be joking while liberal-leaning viewers take the show as a total satire of the ridiculous. Ultimately, the final results showed that “perceptions of Colbert’s political opinions fully mediated the relationship between political ideology and individual-level opinion.” In other words, one’s party line directly affects how Colbert’s humor is read.

Here is one such example:

Posey actually responded to the “alligator alegations in The Orlando Sentinel remarking wholeheartedly, “I expected there would be some civil debate about it, but it wasn’t civil…There is no reason to say that I’m the illegitimate grandson of an alligator.”

Could it be that politicos of all types take themselves too seriously - that they are so blinded by ideology that an unambiguously satirical fake news show on a network actually named Comedy Central has people taking umbrage with it for its “serious” suggestion that Representative Posey actually has a grandpa who is an alligator? Yes… apparently that is the case. To paraphrase Father James Martin, humor keeps one humble about oneself and speaks to a certain truth. What does this speak of any more than partisans blinded by their own self-importance?

Wax well in good humor!

Photo of the Day an Video of the Day return tomorrow.

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