Don’t get me wrong; I like Colbert a lot. The Daily Show without a Colbert Report follow-up just wouldn’t be right. But….Colbert is just not as good as Stewart. Too often he’s just exhaustingly random. His show is kind of like Family Guy. The Family Guy creators think that inserting a bunch of random bits into their show is comic genius. Ummm….no. Random bits are just random, plain and simple. There’s nothing witty or funny about them. It’s self-indulgent garbage really; it’s as if the writers are saying “Well this must be funny because we thought of it.” No. Seinfeld was funny. Chappelle’s show was funny. You’re trash, with a sprinkling of occasional genius thrown in to keep things going. The Colbert Report is like a lighter version of that. Or I should say that he has a higher percentage of genius worked into his random garbage. Eg. of his random garbage: he did an entire bit where he went luging with friggin olympic lugers. And I mean….it just wasn’t funny. There was no social commentary couched in the bit; it was purely Colbert being self-indulgent because he knows his audience will eat up whatever he gives them. Or one time he did a two-part segment on him trying out as a singer for Jack White. That admittedly actually did have some funny moments, but again it’s self-indulgent because that’s not what you’re looking for from Stewart/Colbert. What you want from them is the political satire, the cutting insights. Stewart is almost pure satirical insights. Colbert is sort of half and half, half satire and half self-indulgent garbage.
Of course that being said….when he’s doing satire he is pure genius. He can maintain his conservative persona in any environment for any length of time. And he’s at his most brilliant when he sits down with humorless people that don’t know how to deal with aberrant behavior. One of his all-time classics to me is this interview with Bill O’Reilly. Or more recently, I had tears streaming down my face when I watched him interview Melissa Harris-Perry. Colbert gets so weird and random sometimes that I can’t tell if he actually is a hardcore liberal at heart or what. I can’t tell how politically incorrect he really is. After I saw that interview though….I was like ok, this guy will say absolutely ANYTHING. He has no problem at all, I love it. Another genius segment was when he tried to co-opt the occupy wall street movement (part 1 & part 2).
But bottom line, Colbert just can’t match Stewart. Stewart is pure political satire. Colbert is not. And it’s actually kind of irritating how devoted his audience is; they’ll cheer ANYTHING he does. Have some standards folks.
1/18/2012 – Christ
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