Little more than a week ago, Eric Boehlert, writing for Media Matters, wrote a farewell to Stephen Colbert in tremendous fashion and noted the rarity that someone from the conservative side was being funny.
Never has anyone contributed such humor to the national conversation from the conservative point of view with such razor sharp wit as Colbert. Boehlert wrote “for nearly ten years and more than 1,400 episodes, Colbert remained a constantly amusing and insightful part of our national dialogue.”
Colbert has been praised by numerous publications like The New Yorker and Salon for his accomplishments in TV and comedy, and “Colbert’s satirical work has been instrumental in spearheading progressive arguments and critiques for years.”
Boehlert notes Colbert’s successful stint on Comedy Central came by satirizing the absurd buffoonery of conservatives, and he also mentioned that “Colbert’s departure also reminds us how hollow conservative comedic efforts have been, as they fail to play catch-up in the cultural war of political satire. Humor remains a rhetorical weapon that American conservatives simply cannot harness.”
In other words, conservatives are simply not funny. There are the straight-laced, stuffy old white Harvard business types whose dinner parties are only surpassed in liveliness by a third cousin’s funeral. Boehlert makes note that hatred and close-minded anger is the voice of conservatives, and that voice isn’t funny.
“Political satire works best when it’s fueled by curiosity, bewilderment, annoyance, and with a dash of self-righteousness mixed in,” writes Boehlert. “And for nine years, Colbert has been deftly mixing that cocktail on The Colbert Report.”
As Colbert leaves his Comedy Central slot, he leaves a big hole, and even bigger shoes to fill. Here’s farewell to Colbert and good luck to his replacement, Larry Wilmore.
