I had no idea.
Warning: It’s a long audit file. Maybe 40 minutes.
Gladwell’s point in this essay is, basically, that satire doesn’t work to hurt its target - that the other side will see it as confirmation of their beliefs.
I find this hard to believe, and yet, it appears it may be true, so I have to adjust my thinking. Quite fascinating.
Is a satirical approach to political commentary helping the Trumps, the Faranges, and their fellow travellers?
We know that most of the country wouldn’t know irony if the bitch wrecked its car and stole all its money. Satire is probably the next endangered species to face extinction.
What exactly are we looking for when we go to that link?
I had heard that the cons thought Colbert really was a conservative himself, not quite the same thing as taking his show seriously.
A lot of people thought Archie Bunker was courageously defending America against that Meathead Mike Stivic on* All in the Family*.
I haven’t watched the video, but if this is true, presumably there exists direct evidence somewhere from the writings of various conservatives at the time. Does Gladwell link to such evidence?
This is purely an anecdote and it’s from a very biased source but a guy who writes entirely fake bad news stories about Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama says that right-wing readers shared them widely during the election and seemed to believe them. He believes these stories influenced the election.
I can’t speak for conservatives as a group, but I thought it was absurdly obvious that Steven Colbert is a pompous, dim liberal blowhard who made a living pretending to be a dim, pompous conservative blowhard.
I certainly NEVER encountered another conservative who told me, “John, you have to watch this guy Colbert, he’s awesome!!!”
Colbert is a Roman Catholic…so by quite a few liberal definitions, he’s a fascist.
Of course, only those stupid conservatives would ever believe fake stories (“I can see Russia from my house!”)
No one is that dumb.
Did not watch the linked video, but what exactly is the hypothesis? That conservatives thought Colbert was an actual conservative or that his satire did not dissuade them from being conservatives? If the former, I do not believe it. If the latter, well, duh. Mocking people doesn’t change their minds.
The subject’s been covered in various media, the gist being that when Hillary Clinton spoke of a “vast right wing conspiracy” (and was mocked for it), she was wrong about the scale but not the concept. There was (and is) a fairly small number of energetic muckrakers feeding stories to the press. Some stick, some don’t. Failure means nothing, just come up with another story or embellish an existing one, be patient and persistent, and nobody’s reputation could remain intact.
Since satire is a form of irony, I just wonder if you recognized the irony of this post. 
This. His whole schtick is akin to a 5 year old who makes a funny face, points and says “This is you!”, but with less sophistication.
Part of the problem is that conservatives today resist satirization. You can’t make a satirical post without some of them saying “Oh, yeah”.
On a related note, RIP old Colbert. He was so, so much funnier and more scathing back then playing his “character” than he is now playing “himself” on LSSC. I would have loved to see the old Colbert now, subtly mocking Trump by taking his side, rather than the way Stephen tends to just unfunnily whine about him all the time now.
Poe’s law. I like reformulating it into something like Clarke’s Law: Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from stupid extremism.
I may be remembering wrong but Stewart and Colbert et al, seemed to go after the leaders…not the followers. Also, Stewarts funniest bits were when he went after Dems who dropped the ball. (Got to use his slow burn more).
I don’t recall anything along the lines of:
“Shut up Bernie Bros! You’re being ridiculous”
“If you don’t like Hillary start your own fucking party!..Wait come back! You’re throwing your vote away if you go third party”
“If you don’t vote for Hillary, you’re dead to me.”
If you’re a fan of Colbert, check out this recent NPR podcast interview. He discusses why he gave up the old character:
The truly bizarre part is that a huge amount of the pro-Trump crap was being produced by Macedonian teens to generate clicks, basically Trolling for Dollars. It’s telling that they first tried trolling the Left, and they didn’t fall for it (probably due to reality’s well-known left-wing bias) so they switched and started trolling the Right, and they fell for it hook, line and sinker.
Would that make Trump Alexander the Yuge?