Stephen Colbert is one of my favorite comedians of the last 25 years. "Exit 57", "Strangers With Candy", "The Daily Show", and "Colbert Report" come together to form a massive and brilliant comic resume by Colbert. He can act, he can dance, he can sing, he can deadpan, he can satirize, he can be serious, he can be silly, he can parody, he can improvise, he can make sketches work. He can deliver monologues, he can work in tandem, and he can do it all with a smart, humane personality. Stephen Colbert is, quite simply, a comedic genius - a once-in-a-generation comic talent that only comes along once in... a great while.
But this isn't about what he can do. It's about what he can't do: Step outside his own perspective. Unless Stephen Colbert has good representation of Asian-Americans on his writing staff, he is missing out on the nuances (and possibly even the broad strokes) of the Asian-American perspective. There's no way around that. The perspective of the joke he made (that caused Suey Park's #CancelColbert hashtag to strike Twitter) was emphatically that of the white-liberal comedian and his audience. It's hard to argue that Colbert had a nuanced Asian-American perspective that he was folding into his joke's perspective. He didn't, and maybe the joke suffered for it, and maybe Suey Park has a point.
But can I now dissect this joke by its substance, and not just whether it's funny, proper, satirical, or offensive? While all that stuff matters, their importance is secondary - a joke can be nonsensical and carry no message, but this joke did pretty clearly carry a message. So let's talk about this message, if only to try and lay the cards on the table properly.
So the whole premise was that Dan Snyder's newly-formed "Washington Redskins Original Americans Foundation" is an absurd cop-out from the problem of making gigantic amounts of money off an apparent ethnic slur (Redskins). Snyder's solution uses the slur perversely in the name of the foundation created ostensibly to "help" the afflicted group. The joke's premise is that -instead of actually solving the problem and changing his football team's name - Snyder has chosen to placate critics with a cheap, obviously PR-oriented half-measure. Snyder has chosen the path of most chicanery, like some such shitheelectricity through a current. Colbert is satirically responding to this premise and using his in-character anti-Asian comments from several years ago as a framework to launch into his own half-measure.
This might sound like I'm stating the obvious, but here's the wrinkle: Colbert's joke is not at all about the Asians (or Native Americans). Superficially, both of these groups are being attacked, whether by Snyder's foundation or by Colbert's mock foundation. But the true subject of the joke is Dan Snyder. This might sound like an exaggeration, but the joke is genuinely all and only in the greedy Dan Snyder solving his Problem of the Other by pouring money into a token measure that serves to divide under the guise of unity. The joke is about a white man solving his problems with divisive token politics that might win him a referendum or two; meanwhile his Other is thrown under the bus. The goal of his "Washington Redskins Original Americans Foundation" is clear: Snyder's opposition are left to fight among themselves over a divisive measure (over 1. whether it's adequate and 2. the public perception of fighting against a "Native American Foundation"), and his supporters are allowed to rally behind the "see, he cares" measure. All at (to him) trivial cost. At an added satirical bonus, it's a measure that's only as successful as it's perceived to be genuine. If people see Snyder's actions as fundamentally insincere, it won't gain him any favor.
Whatever the case, if politics is the art of polarization, then Snyder was executing a clearly political PR job by creating the Foundation. The fog of bad faith in Snyder is almost impossible to see through. And Colbert - in his dismissive "Orientals or Whatever" rant - was mocking not only the absurdity of the slur but the callousness and cynicism by which his character deploys it, all to betray the utter political calculation of Snyder's actions. Snyder is - from a perspective of naked greed - allowing prejudices inherent in his organization's name and logo to persist. In other words, it's not the tone or the slurs that create the impetus for a joke. It's the actionable racism that lives in Snyder's actions and the absurd abomination of humanity that must ensue. That's the humor. The underlying racism is the set-up; Snyder is the punchline.
I think that's an important distinction, because - though I don't share too much politically with her - I do actually agree with Suey Park when she constantly deploys the notion of privilege. I think that - as a white guy - I genuinely can't escape my perspective to understand how certain things feel to historically discriminated groups. And I shouldn't try to (or, in a cultural sense, be allowed to) "explain away" the feelings of others. Privilege - as far as I can tell - is real and endlessly frustrating. When I do have occasion to genuinely personally empathize with a political struggle, I realize that genuine empathy is usually limited to directly-afflicted groups. If I happen to be in the 1% that is thrown under the bus by divisive politics (granted: rarely), I suddenly understand all this talk of privilege, and understand that I don't, in a larger sense. I mean, even where you might naively expect there to be empathy (ex: blacks for the gay rights movement, Jews for the rights of blacks in the Civil Rights movement, etc.), the reality tends to be far more complex, because people are complex and guided by many motives, economic incentives, and cultural ideas. And yes, sometimes by these sorts of divisive political maneuvers, while we're talking about them.
I happen to know that politicians in America since time immemorial - but especially, like, in the South - have used tactics like Snyder's to slow and stifle social progress. Gradualism always needs to be graded on a curve, and when the gradual solution is found wanting, its motives are typically wanting as well. Creating a foundation like that is probably 10% of what Snyder could have done and probably cost him 10% of what it would cost to change the name. When rational debate takes place between 20 and 180% of changing the name, what he has done is almost less than nothing. Snyder has done less than the absolute minimum that a reasonable person could expect of him, and has put a happy face on all of this, well, evil.
And Colbert likely understands all of this more deeply than I. Colbert has grown up and grown old in a American society filled with divisive rhetoric and maneuvering. He has watched Fox News turn news into entertainment and shrill propaganda, watched anti-war protestors systemically denounced as traitors, and seen any number of dog-whistle talking points and token political efforts. Colbert is eminently qualified to have an opinion on the empty rhetoric of a billionaire manipulating the public in the services of societal prejudices.
And therefore, I submit that Colbert's joke is something Colbert ought to be able to make in a civilized society, without fear of condescending to or offending his neighbors. Colbert's perspective may not be perfect for this problem, but he has plenty of relevant experiences informing him that can't be dismissed as casual white-liberal racism, just as much as anyone else in a position to influence the national debate. If the satire was lame or rang hollow (as Colbert's satire sometimes does), then we can dutifully chalk that up to the imperfection of his experience. But if Colbert can't make a joke like that, then no one can, and the whole tradition of satire is dead. And if you can't point out the absurd, then you've guaranteed that absurdity will triumph. If I sound melodramatic about this, it's because I look at the NSA and see a society that has gradually ceded an effectively unlimited amount of power to a shady agency, and so much of the debate gets reduced to "let's talk about Snowden". I think casual nods to ideological censorship by #CancelColbert must be taken overly seriously. If it's a joke, then it's not funny. If it's a hook to click, then it's not worth it. #CancelColbert may have been - in intent - little more than an inflammatory headline to start real debate, but the ugly implication of that "cancel" is a censorship that has long been used in our country to stifle subtlety, reasoning, and irony in favor of doughy-eyed, fearful, unsophisticated deference to the dominant ideology and useless arguments about tone and decorum. I think that "cancel" shouldn't just be ignored as an overreach by a group seeking a discussion - because it's in the language of anti-discussion. It's seeking our democratic sympathies by acting in an anti-democratic way. It's challenging the ethnocentric, ironic perspective of white liberals that believe they've transcended ideology... by bringing an unironic, dangerous perspective from a small group of radicals that refuse to acknowledge the existence of fair debate. Colbert has brought forth a long chain of reasoning to tear down a billionaire's actionable racism; the reformers responded with a personal attack on Colbert as party to racism. And I don't think any of that is right, and, if it is, it certainly isn't made right by the existence of privilege.
So let's talk about privilege, lest I reduce Suey Park and her supporters to caricatures. Our subjective experiences may indeed be filled with totally different triggers and thoughts and meanings depending on our perspectives. I totally buy that. But, in our shared objective reality - an objective reality we must share if we're to make any progress in that reality - we don't have to understand the personal effects of racism to fight against racism. We don't have to understand what words trigger what reactions to know that it's wrong to use a genocidal slur. We don't have to know how it feels to be hit to protest against violence. We don't have to know how much it sucks to have divisive rhetoric deployed against our political movement to know that it's wrong. We just have to have a baseline of understanding, a smidgen of empathy, and a conscience. Direct, firsthand experience of racism would certainly help, but in its absence? Secondhand principles and an open mind are perfectly valid substitutes as far as politics is concerned.
And sure, please! point out the shallowness and utter inauthenticity of white liberal comedians making casual jokes and conflations between your experience and other experiences as generic Others. Please! Point out how you feel put-on and condescended to by Colbert's maybe-not-so-innocuous choice of target. Seriously, there is a huge place in the world for pointing that stuff out, and at least bringing it to the surface for discussion can only help. And maybe Colbert himself would do well to acknowledge the validity of Suey Park's accusations of privilege instead of ignoring the offense taken as a misunderstanding of satire. After all, there are plenty of perspectives Colbert - like all of us - can't empathize with. But if we're to have an American democracy at all where problems can be talked through and worked out as a society, at least to an extent? Then I fail to see how it's helpful or productive to use the notion of privilege to crowd out and trivialize the issues of substance about which Colbert - and Park, and all citizens whose goal is a better, more tolerant society - can occasionally speak with authority.
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