Media|The Gospel According to Mr. Colbert
Media | The Media Equation
The Gospel According to Mr. Colbert
By DAVID CARR OCT. 22, 2007
Have you heard the one about the actor working as a comedian who plays a talk show host who is pretending to run for president?
Tim Russert, the host of "Meet the Press" has, and he thinks it's pretty funny, enough for 15 minutes on Sunday morning.
Last week, Stephen Colbert, in his eponymous avatar as a nincompoop right-wing talk show host, went on "The Daily Show With Jon Stewart." Amid a hail of blow kisses, he said he was mulling a run for leader of the free world and 15 minutes later on "The Colbert Report," he declared, "I am doing it!" A trip to the altar of the Sunday morning talk show seemed like the next beat in the joke, which arrived on schedule yesterday when Mr. Colbert appeared on "Meet the Press."
"I'm doing it, Tim, because I think that our country is facing unprecedented challenges in the future," Mr. Colbert said. "I think the junctures that we face are both critical and unforeseen, and the real challenge is how we will respond to these junctures, be they critical, or God help us, unforeseen."
Mr. Russert showed he could play ball — he gamely challenged Mr. Colbert to name the official amphibian of Mr. Colbert's home state, South Carolina. The result was eerie, although not particularly funny, because it didn't seem any more like parody than the discussions on the other three Sunday morning shows. Sunday morning talk shows are a kind of civic liturgy, a comfy place where the singers may change from week to week, but the hymnal never does. In this sacrament, petitioners strive to appear both learned and humane, while the hosts serve as self-appointed prelates for the public.
Mr. Russert's Sunday morning eminence is unchallenged, in part because of his ability to convey regular-guy gravitas and eyebrow-borne skepticism while demonstrating a mastery of political matters. In a hot, crowded presidential season, candidates show up on Sunday to trade the risk of embarrassment for the chance to break through the clutter. (Sort of like an appearance on "The Colbert Report," come to think of it, only without the possibility of belly laughs.)
There might be those who will suggest that the presence of Mr. Colbert on the hallowed ground of "Meet the Press" is a sign that paradigms are in the midst of shifting, but it is just a simple commercial exchange of brands: The funny guy who makes a living acting serious talking with the serious guy who was temporarily making a living acting funny.
Mr. Russert said at the top of the show that "Meet the Press" has a long history of political humor, but Mr. Colbert and the standard issue Washington comic — say, Mark Russell — are not the same species. As Mr. Colbert demonstrated on Sunday morning, it isn't that he finds the Beltway's folkways amusing, he finds them appalling.
It is Mr. Colbert's ability to both mimic and amplify the tics of political convention and play them back with just a little more topspin that makes his satire so discomfiting. His last notable engagement with the Beltway — his appearance at the White House Correspondents' Association dinner in 2006 — drew withering reviews from the elites in attendance and an overwhelming, ecstatic response from YouTube nation. The reason that the journalists found Mr. Colbert so offensive was not because he disrespected the president; it was his decision to show them up, calling them "fools" and suggesting that they are part of a self-sustaining apparatus.
On "Meet the Press," Mr. Colbert's agenda was prosaic: He was trying to leverage his show and a faux candidacy in support of a new book. For Mr. Russert and other mainstream media types (Maureen Dowd of The New York Times got in on the fun even before he announced by turning over a column to Mr. Colbert), the transaction is more nuanced. Mr. Russert demonstrated that he could not only take a joke, but also that he was in on it, and could create a spicy point of entry for a demographic that network news almost never touches — anyone under 50.
But the message I draw from Mr. Colbert is not that members of the media-political complex need to laugh at themselves, but that they need to take a hard look. The incipient generation of news consumers has made it clear that it does not want to see a bunch of guys with really nice neckware standing on the White House lawn talking about what they did not learn in the press room behind them and then flick at "sources" who suggest that "one thing is clear."
One thing is, in fact, clear, from the plummeting numbers for network news: the jig is up. Consumers have decided that network news and talk shows are every bit as fake and not nearly as funny as "The Daily Show" and "The Colbert Report."
"Why shouldn't a comedic fake newscaster feel right at home in a news format that itself verges on fakery?" said Mark Feldstein, a journalism professor at George Washington University. "After all, these shows aren't all that different from televised wrestling, with the shouts and grunts that simulate combat during what is really a fixed fight, followed by everyone involved in the charade going out for drinks afterward."
On television, and on the campaign, everybody is playing someone else; Mr. Colbert is just a bit more upfront about it.
"Everybody is asking, 'Is this real?,'" he said during his appearance. "And to which I would say to everybody, 'This is not a dream, you are not going to wake up from this.' I am far realer than Sam Brownback, let me put it that way."
For decades, my 84-year-old father in Minnesota has taken a church-and-state approach to Sunday mornings: First church, then Sunday morning talk, sometimes phoning me afterward with updates about who said what. Mr. Colbert's appearance left him scratching his head.
"I don't even know what Comedy Central is," he said. "What cable station is it on? My wife wondered what it was all about, and we decided that it was a nut that is supposed to be serious. Who the hell really cares about that?" I could say the same thing when he calls me about the more routine fare, but that would be an attack on his civic-mindedness.
My dad excused himself because he had taped ABC's "This Week," where Senator Joe Biden, another candidate with no real shot at winning, was taking a turn. CBS's "Face the Nation" had former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, while "Fox News Sunday" had Senator John McCain and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee.
No ratings are available yet, but I'm betting this first straw poll since Mr. Colbert entered the race went to the distinguished gentleman from Comedy Central.
E-mail: carr@nytimes.com
A version of this article appears in print on , on Page C1 of the New York edition with the headline: The Gospel According To Mr. Colbert. Order Reprints| Today's Paper|Subscribe