Late night comedy's latest outrage is Stephen Colbert's crude suggestion about Donald Trump performing oral sex on Vlad Putin. Most of us can't really picture that, but Colbert's audience loved it. It's his audience, he knows them, and he gives them what they want. It's that simple.
Aside from Greg Gutfeld, there aren't any prominent conservative comedians. And late night shows are are another genre the right never had but if definitely lost to them now.
David French makes that clear in Don’t Fire Colbert — Fire His Crowd:
If you want an explanation for why the Colberts of the world say the things they do, there it is in the adulation of the audience. He is their voice. He’s speaking out their rage. He’s not leading them; he’s riding their wave of progressive scorn, anger, and hate. If he fell, another would rise to take his place. Angry progressives demand cathartic mockery, and they shall have it one way or another.
He makes an analogy to AM talk radio's conservative voices and notes that they and the comedians are following their audience, not leading them, by simply telling them what they want to hear. Good point.
Then this:
The problem is that this silent majority is largely irrelevant to the prevailing discourse. Our political and cultural agenda is typically dictated by those who care the most, and right now those who care the most also tend to hate their opponents on the other side with a fiery, reflexive passion. ...
In short, the people who truly care move this country, and the people who truly care are truly angry. Their anger is so all-consuming that it often forecloses the possibility of a debate about ideas. One of the more remarkable things about the 2016 election was that it was simultaneously the most vitriolic of my adult lifetime and the least ideological.
Hmm -- "Silent majority." Shades of the 60s. In any event, the tone is set. And odds are it will get worse before it gets better. But it will get better.
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10:04 AM 5/4/2017
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