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Measuring the "Colbert Bump"
An anonymous reader writes "Democratic politicians receive a 40% increase in contributions in the 30 days after appearing on the comedy cable show The Colbert Report. In contrast, their Republican counterparts essentially gain nothing. Moreover, even a cursory analysis demonstrates that despite being a comedy program The Colbert Report appears to exercise 'disproportionate real world influence' — likely due to the 'elite demographic' of its audience." In my home we refer to Stephen as "Loud Daddy" because my child would scream bloody murder when we paused him (and only him) on screen. Even at 8 months old the kid has strange taste.
That speech was the reason I started to watch the show and then the Daily Show. :)
Since I don't have cable I don't get Comedy Central.
Even if I did have cable, I wouldn't get the US Comedy Central since I live in in the NL
So now I have a daily ritual of watching TDS and TCR online the day after it aired
One of the best things of the Daily Show imho is that they call the politicians on their stupidity and hypocrisy (sp?) every time they do something they said they wouldn't. :)
Colbert is just fantastically funny, his book is funny, the Tek Jansen DVD is funny. I just love the guy
This is the sig that says NI (again)
The fact that they invited Colbert to host the Correspondents Dinner shows they don't have a fricking clue. (If you live under a rock and haven't seen the video of it linky linky here...The man has balls of solid steel).
As per the "bump" I imagine it's more because Colbert is specifically looking for it, and trumpeting it. Free publicity is almost always going to create funding opportunities for politicians.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
" And Fox News did a Daily Show-esque show called the "1/2 Hour News Hour" [wikipedia.org] that was just abysmal to watch and not even close to funny (it ran for 13 episodes before the Fox conservatives abandoned their opposition to euthenasia long enough to grant it a mercy killing)."
Hell, I'm a conservative, and I'll be the first to tell you that show wasn't just bad, it was plain embarrassing. Bad skits. Canned laugh tracks. Every bad trick in show business you can think of, that abomination had it. It couldn't die fast enough for me.
That show was a prime example of somethings conservatives sometimes do that they never should... try to make a right wing version of a successful liberal phenomena. "Hey, we'll make a conservative Daily Show!". No, you wont. You'll make a cheap knockoff that nobody likes and is done badly. And to be fair, liberals also do this stuff as well... how many attempts have we seen to try and do a liberal version of Limbaugh's program? There's a long and distinguished list of utter failure on that front (Hello, Air America!).
For whatever reason... one sides' success.... The Daily Show, Limbaugh, pick your example... just doesn't seem to translate well to the other side. Any attempts to "reverse engineer" it and make your own seems destined to fall on it's face.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
"That's the problem with conservatives, they can't approach things without an intensely partisan mindset"
Uh, some can, some can't. Are you actually going to claim liberals are any different? Because I'd love to point you to several major liberal websites where the denizens will readily prove to you that if it ain't liberal, it's downright evil. No room for gray areas. Democratic Underground, Daily Kos, Truthout, Alternet... there's a pretty long list here. So if I were you, I'd reconsider this notion that liberals are all capable of tolerant, non-partisan thinking. They're just as human as the conservatives they oppose.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
Haven't you heard? Everyone who doesn't walk in lockstep with the Repub party line is an extreme leftist. I'm a conservative, and have repeatedly been called an extreme leftist (and worse!) for having such leftist views as "multi-trillion dollar debt is bad" and "warrantless wiretapping is wrong" and "Duke Cunningham is a crook".