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Erik Kain's avatar

It's all so exhausting. Everyone is more political than ever, but the political ideas people hold are shallower than ever. Celebrities and influencers have tapped into a toxic feedback loop with their followers. Round and round we go.

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Steve's avatar

What’s great about Substack is reading Ethan and then finding Erik Kain in the comments. Erik is a great critic covering movies/TV/games with a Forbes blog and YouTube channel. Ethan, you may have found your next podcast guest.

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Erik Kain's avatar

Thanks man!

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Pseudonym Joe's avatar

This name looked familiar…you wrote the one sane True Detective Season 4 review the algo sent my way! Based on that, I second Steve.

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Erik Kain's avatar

I definitely wrote some very harsh reviews for True Detective Night Country haha. It was ...just so awful.

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Pseudonym Joe's avatar

It was like peering into the mind of the world’s least self aware moron every week. The low point of our culture was, arguably, so many critics co-signing that garbage publicly, under their own name, without even having the decency to wear paper bags over their heads.

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fillups44's avatar

That sounds like an awesome conversation. I'd definitely love to hear it!

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Nate Jones's avatar

I truly believe this secular era (+ the algos doing work and incentivizing combativeness) has led to people being more outwardly political than ever before. I’m not deeply religious, but spent my entire childhood in Methodist church. I prefer the community that came from that over whatever this angry era of wearing your politics on your sleeve is.

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Garret's avatar

Colbert seems pretty modest and humble off camera. He comes across as likable when he’s interviewed. He knows that political blowhards are insufferable. His whole career was built on mocking them.

That anecdote about your wife’s friend is shocking. Five years later, I still can’t believe the magnitude of that mass psychosis.

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Glenn Baldwin's avatar

Really? Find that surprising, because what I have absolutely always found utterly repellent about the man is how transparently pleased with himself he always seems. Not sure I could tell you precisely where the line between Colbert and someone like, say, Bill Maher is, but the former definitely way over on the narcissistic end of that scale

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Martin Blank's avatar

I guess I was most familiar with him ~20 years ago, but he seemed very different to me then in interviews... (not OP)

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Randall's avatar

The problem is believing the ends justify the means and thereby losing your honesty, your personal integrity. You’re coming from “this is how I see it”; all of these people with the black squares, all saying the same things at the same time, I have no idea how they actually see things. They’d feel compelled to say what they’re saying even if they didn’t fully believe some of it. Or they fully believe all of it and have farmed out their faculties to the group.

I love this clip, it reveals so much while an effort to bury something is being made:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xk3XhfCqpOI&pp=ygUgc3RlcGhlbiBjb2xiZXJ0IGNsYWlyZSBkYW5lcyBjaWE%3D

So, if you’re a comedian you don’t change the subject. Whatever she’s about to say is a richer vein for comedy than “when did you start filming the 2nd season”. If you’re just a curious individual, of a journalist with integrity, how do you not let her continue? The CIA collaborating with journalists in opposition to a president! That’s fascinating and important.

Even if she’s about to say things that aren’t true, it’s great television.

Colbert had one target, and has a team, and he instantly decides that he has to cover for journalists and the CIA. If this is going on, it must never be mentioned. I don’t know another way to view this (I’m surprised they put it on the air).

So just a few years after getting addicted to “speaking truth to power”, you find yourself covering the CIA’s ass. I just find this, again, fascinating.

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Brett's avatar

I think about the subject of celebrities speaking on politics a lot.

If you're an athlete, actor, comedian, etc, I think it's a pretty bad decision to take aggressive stances on just about anything. You're a human being an entitled to your opinion like anyone else, but you didn't earn your audience because of your stances on these matters.

If you're burning desire is so strong to get your opinions out, create an alternate X account and call it your "Lebron's Political Commentary" account. Tweet one time from your main account: "I'm keeping everything here about basketball and family, but if people are interested in hearing my thoughts about politics/social issues, that's where you can find it."

Not to pick on LeBron, as this article wasn't about him, but he is a great example of someone that's turned a lot of people off because of his commentary. And has he actually created whatever change he claims to seek? What's the upside here?

My goal is that none of my co-workers have a clue what my views about anything are. I had someone say to me once, "I don't think I know anything about your politics", and it made me irrationally happy.

There is no point in weighing in on a topic where everyone is 100% dug in on their opinion and emotionally charged at any suggestion to the contrary.

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Randall's avatar

Not for nothing: the South Park guys have flogged Trump repeatedly over the years and Paramount just gave them a raise.

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Patrick M's avatar

The juxtaposition between Colbert tearing W apart and Seth Meyers giving Obama a sponge bath with his tongue is something to behold.

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Sherman Alexie's avatar

Messiah Complex is contagious.

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tpyoung's avatar

I think the losing sight on the fundamentals of the job is the original sin in becoming irrelevant. You can even continue to do politics if you really want to, but you have to be funny and you have to draw a crowd. Also, you have to be able to do it for less than 100 million a year.

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Pseudonym Joe's avatar

Man, your social milieu sounds *exhausting.* I’m sorry.

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Steve's avatar
2dEdited

What Ethan is describing is a variant of people failing to stay in their lane. A signal event was the June 2020 letter signed by a thousand public health officials about the righteousness of mass protests.

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CKWatt's avatar

Took me way to look to try to figure out what happened in the summer of 2000 that would cause a public letter before I realized you meant 2020.

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Steve's avatar

Lol, I fixed my error. In June 2000, we had no idea of 9/11, iPhones, or Covid. Just imagine being told then that Donald Trump would be president.

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Richard Kimbel's avatar

Two mornings in a row I wake up to find a new House of Strauss column. You should vacation more often, Ethan. We get more substacks out of you this way!

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Nikki Swango's avatar

When I need to learn about politics, you know who I go to? Jimmy Kimmel. The guy who used to judge women bouncing on trampolines in bikinis.

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NY Expat's avatar

So, I think from Carson’s perspective, his response to Wallace was about treating a movie like A Face In The Crowd as a warning. Here was someone with an *intimate* knowledge of what mass media could do to make a solitary individual the basis of a nation’s attention, and he understood that such concentrated power as a tool for politics or ideology was bad for our country.

By the time Colbert’s speech in 2006 rolls around, that concentration is already on the wane: Colbert was on basic cable, not a major network. Yet, the “mainstream media” still had primacy, and a tenuous hold on hegemony. Although by late April 2006 perceptions of Bush had taken a hit, primarily from the bungling of the response to Hurricane Katrina, the zeitgeist was still under the sway of Ari Fleischer’s admonition to his fellow Americans to “watch what they say, watch what they do,” in the wake of 9/11, five years prior. Colbert’s speech broke that dam, but it took a day or so: The immediate NY Times coverage featured a Bush lookalike who also performed at the dinner in the photo accompanying reporting, not Colbert’s speech.

I think you do Colbert a great disservice trying to paint him as spending the next twenty-odd years seeking his next media high, like a bizarro Trump. What The Colbert Report had and his Late Show lacked was the ability to interview anyone, of any persuasion, and *both* listen to them rapturously and simultaneously mock them (or himself, or the audience, or whomever). That was made that character so unique, and truly American in the best way. He also attempted to teach without scolding: Compare his starting a super PAC with the help of Porter Goss with the dance routine with the hypodermic needles. Sadly, The Colbert Report left when we needed it the most. I do have a hope that, unshackled from his golden handcuffs on the Late Show, Colbert might revive his character on a podcast; it is a *very* target rich environment ;-)

But I have to say, that Jon Stewart clip was good! He’s…kinda back! Slipping in the Joe Biden joke about getting Trump reelected; using a gospel choir with nary a privilege check; maybe there’s something left here!

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Max's avatar

Agree with this – but would add that Colbert's tenure at the Late Show did not begin as overtly political. When he started embracing left-leaning politics more openly, his ratings skyrocketed.

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Steve's avatar

I agree Colbert made a strategic decision to change tone in response to low ratings. It created a floor at a time when he was more concerned about surviving than the inherent ceiling of swinging left. When Kimmel followed, they created an opening for Gutfeld.

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BWH's avatar

See also: SNL after stumbling into political relevance with Tina Fey as Sarah Palin in 2008.

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