-
Website
http://shakespearessister.blogspot.com -
Original page
http://shakespearessister.blogspot.com/2009/07/et-tu-colbert.html -
Subscribe
All Comments -
Community
-
-
Top Commenters
-
Popular Threads
All Comments
And dammit, dammit, dammit. Just when one might think there could be a BREAK, yet again, we're soaking in it.
Thanks for posting about it Liss; I don't usually watch tv so I would never have known. UGH.
Definitely pisses me off and I've already emailed my complaints. On my way home from work I'm going to hand deliver my hard copy complaint to The Colbert Report.
Very disappointing, Mr. Colbert, Sir.
Sorry, but that kind of shocked me. I didn't expect that of you and I'm disappointed.
At any rate, I take Elke's point to be that they are old enough to have seen a vagina before.
I'm grrrrring at Colbert. I wasn't watching him for a while because he was making fat jokes, I guess I'm glad I missed this, too. But I'll do my teaspooning today!
(And smoking is only a truly personal choice if you go to a sealed, isolated room to do it. Otherwise, it's polluting the air of others nearby, and compromising the health of others without their consent.)
This derail is done now. Thanks.
Bingo!
email sent
(Where's that sad trumpet noise when you need it?)
Here it is!
See, here's the thing: We do want to accept honest criticism, but your criticism wasn't honest. In fact, it's deeply intellectually dishonest to accuse someone of using "smoking" and "middle-aged" as "derogatory adjectives" when they are patently using them as value-neutral descriptors. Even assuming the intent was to convey that they are orally-fixated and old enough to have seen a vulva before, that's not remotely "derogatory," and, again, I'd note that was a choice the director made about those characters long before Elke merely reported it.
I'm a fat woman. If someone describes me as a fat woman, that's just a factually-accurate description. It's value-neutral. There are people who might well use "fat" (or even "woman") as if there's a moral component to it, but unless someone gives me reason to presume they're operating in bad faith by describing me thus, i.e. trying to insult me, I've no reason to presume otherwise. And I don't.
Similarly, you've got no reason to presume that Elke was trying to use those words to convey a negative message. And neither "smoking" nor "middle-aged" inherently carry the same potential insult that "fat" does. Most people won't axiomatically assume them to be an insult.
You're reaching. And I suspect it's because you've read something that isn't there, took it personally, reacted defensively, and now you're in a hole you don't know how to get out of. Clearly, you flew off the handle given that you didn't even take the time to figure out who said it and direct your complaint at the right person at first.
That's understandable. It's forgivable. It happens.
But the way to deal with it is not by accusing us of groupthink because no one feels obliged to acquiesce to your charge that the words were used maliciously.
BTW, that is what Colbert is saying "Thank you" about--the audience's groans in reaction to the bad pun. It was a bad place to go for a cheap laugh, and now that I recognize why I winced, I'm writing in to complain.
I'm really disappointed that during Monday's show, Stephen Colbert, for the sake of poking fun at a Rush Limbaugh quotation, superimposed the head of Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor on a crotch-flashing shot from Basic Instinct.
There are a number of pre-existing cultural narratives that this programming decision feeds into-- e.g., that women use their sexuality to gain power, that female bodies are available for public consumption, and that female public figures are all as predatory as the character Sharon Stone plays in that movie. None of those narratives is edgy or interesting. In fact, they're pretty offensive to me and my female Colbert-loving friends. And they all actually *divert* attention from the Limbaugh quote that's ostensibly being satirized.
I understand (and usually enjoy) Mr. Colbert's work lampooning public figures, but this sketch crossed a line into targeting Judge Sotomayor for being a woman, not for espousing any particular belief or theory of jurisprudence. If you don't believe me, try imagining what the sketch would look like with Justice Alito's or Roberts' head superimposed on Sharon Stone's body.
I think what Rush said about Sotomayor was dumb, too. But this sketch is not helping, and it's not funny.
I know that Colbert isn't perfect, but I thought he was closer to getting feminism than that.
As a fan of Mr. Colbert's for as long as he's been on Comedy Central, I have to say that his "Basic Instinct" joke at Judge Sotomayor's expense is a crushing disappointment. I understand that he was responding to a comment by Rush Limbaugh, but his response was unconsidered, insulting, and unfunny.
Maybe it's time for Mr. Colbert's writers to take women's Studies 101 in which they would learn that women's bodies have been commodified for heterosexual men's consumption since the eviction from the Garden of Eden. Women have also historically been tarred with the brush of maliciously using their sexuality to succeed in professions in which they have been historically barred.
These narratives are equally insulting to both men (who obviously can't think about anything else if there is even the remotest possiblity of sex) and women (whose abilities are confined to calculatedly providing sex for men).
It's also the mind-set that blames women for being raped, rather than the men who actually rape them.
I've been ignoring the fat jokes although I also find them willfully ignorant and insulting, but this is the last straw. I expected better of Mr. Colbert. I won't be tuning in again.
But as a woman who has been objectified sexually in only the standard ways, I thought this was funny. Precisely BECAUSE the _Basic Instincts_ scene captured all too well how Sotomayor was being treated by many men on the judiciary committee (and not only Republicans, I might add). The fact that it followed on the heels of the terribly earnest BDSM ballet clip here at Shakesville made it even funnier to me.
I've been tracking BDSMLibrary.com recently (grad school, long story) and Lindsay Graham sounded so much like a badly written auto-mechanic-turned-Dom when addressing Judge Sotomayor that at times I wondered if he was actually masturbating, or at least fondling his belt.
"Do you understand me?"
"This might be a time for self-reflection."
"If this law thing doesn't work out..."
"How do you think you'd fare as a woman if the 9/11 terrorists were in charge?"
"I might get to like you, and that should be important to you."
and, over and over,
"Well, we can come back to that in the next session." (right down to a threatening tone)
Sotomayor, a genius of the first order and professionally unassailable, was being sexually objectified by the judiciary committee and the MSM alike during the entire proceeding. As if nobody'd ever seen a professional woman before. As if she had indeed flashed them, or based her career on her sexuality as Stone has done, or done anything at all relating in any way to her private life.
I felt like Colbert was the only male commentator in America who actually GOT that, and also thought the clip captured the irony. No matter your intellect or accomplishment, to men like Graham it all boils down to your cunt and his God-given right to subjugate you on that basis. (Then gloat that he's behaving generously compared to al Qaeda. wtf?!)
So I laughed, because my view of reality was confirmed in an ironic and extreme way that also managed a pot shot at Rush, which I'm always up for.
Maybe my sense of humor is out of line, but it's the way I am, and to a certain extent I'm laughing so I don't cry. Despite an ardent commitment to fat acceptance, I think there are funny fat jokes. Not the stupid every day ones, but the ones where agency is implied in situations where it usually isn't. Fat guy breaking overhead air duct, not funny. Fat guy deliberately using his weight to break an air duct and crush an adversary, funny. A completely professional Sotomayor forced to sit through being sexually objectified, not funny. A make believe scenario where she flashes the judiciary committee that's been objectifying her, funny (to me).
Have you all lost your minds? Please do yourselves a favor and realize that what you're expressing outrage against is exactly what Colbert was mocking. I find it particularly weird that some of you claim to have watched him since his first show, yet you still fail to grasp the irony here. (No -- stating the word 'irony' doesn't get you of the hook of getting a joke.)
Seriously -- this comedic genius has a golden record of perception and understanding, and you're going to dump him for a little skit that went over your heads? Get over yourselves!