Stephen Colbert’s cartoon news show can be as scary as the real thing, but the real news hasn’t been that scary for Americans. The only thing worse than hearing that America’s economic recovery is a mirage would be hearing that the U.S. economy truly was a mirage. Then you’d have to worry about the country going back into recession. And if you were the kind of person who would prefer America’s economic recession to be a mirage, you might want to go back to watching a television show featuring the voice of your beloved dead uncle rather than this one featuring the voice of the host of the country you love most.
Colbert is a real news show. He’s not a parody. Colbert is not the voice of a deceased uncle. He has the guts to call a man who has lied to the public about everything from his involvement in killing Osama bin Laden to the causes of climate change “a hack.”
He makes fun of a lot of things. But then he lets Obama get away with the stuff that normal people call an insult the same way it’s somehow okay to call a woman a whore.
But it’s not okay. That’s the whole point. When we talk about Obama lying, or “trying to hide something, or something,” or “a lie, a lie, a big, huge, HUGE lie, a big, huge lie,” or “big trouble in a small pond,” or “lying through his teeth,” or “his pants are riding up,” or “if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it’s a duck,” or “this is ridiculous,” or “a bald-faced lie,” or “I love it,” or “there’s this guy in the White House who gets up in the middle of the night and lies,” or “that is just the way he talks,” or “I’m sure there’s a good reason for every single one of these things that he’s been saying,” or “why would I listen to him when he sounds the same as the other guy?” Or any number of sentences that could be made about any politician in any country, or any other animal in any zoo, or any number of other things, Colbert says some version of “I love it.”