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The Push For Colbert's "Restoring Truthiness" Rally
jamie writes "A grassroots campaign has begun to get Stephen Colbert to hold a rally on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial to counter Glenn Beck's recent 'Restoring Honor' event. The would-be rally has been dubbed 'Restoring Truthiness' and was inspired by a recent post on Reddit, where a young woman wondered if the only way to point out the absurdity of the Tea Party's rally would be if Colbert mirrored it with his own Colbert Nation.'"
If he will resort to weeping publicly over his concern for our great Republic, I will show up and offer him a kleenex. It's only decent.
Yes, it was funny when it made the top page of Reddit. It was funnier when they acknowledged it on the Comedy Central blog. It will be the ultimate insult to GB and Fox WHEN Stephen gets about 1M more people there than Glen did.
put the what in the where?
Why is this on Slashdot?
I couldn't care less about the Tea Party or Colbert. It isn't real news. It certainly isn't for nerds.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
Shouldn't this be in idle?
Controversy leads to page hits. Page hits lead to advertisers. Advertisers lead to income. Income leads to getting laid.
Mystery solved.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Every so often I think it's a sad state of affairs for journalism when satirists like John Stewart and Stephen Colbert on a comedy channel are considered more reliable, trustworthy, and objective in their reporting than "serious" (for lack of a better term) journalists like Glenn Beck and Bill O'Reilly on what's supposed to be a news channel.
Are usually nerdy college students or people who live in their parent's basement rent free. In other words dependents who are dependant upon staying out from the daylight. You really think they are going to get a bunch of them pryed away from their gamestations and computers long enough to go outside to a rally in the hot burning sun?
You would have better luck convincing Vampires to eat a cloves of garlic while standing in an open air church at high noon.
You shouldn't assume that everyone who watches the same shows you do is like you.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
where a young woman wondered if the only way to point out the absurdity of the Tea Party's rally would be if Colbert mirrored it with his own Colbert Nation.'"
It's certainly easier than, you know, actually acknowledging and dealing with their ideas...
The date they want to hold the rally is 10 October of '10. I.E., 10/10/10, however they have the poster written with the date as 101010, which is binary for 42, which, as we all know, is the answer to life, the universe and everything. Its the ultimate truthy thing. It's the ultimate nerd thing. Only thing its missing is a sign saying "Repent! The Singularity is Nye!" with the Science guy himself staring everyone down like Uncle Sam.
You stopped watching during the Bush years, didn't you? Comedians tend to make fun of those in power. Comedy Central ridicules Obama and the Democrats plenty, now that they are the ones in power.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Both sides still get it pretty regularly.
But let's be honest, there isn't a liberal Glenn Beck. There just isn't anyone even in that league in terms of humor value. You have to go where the jokes are, and a guy who writes crazy conspiracy crap on a chalkboard while crying is a gold mine.
Even if you somehow secretly cloned, say, President Obama and raised him in a secret lab to be the worst parts of everything his detractors claim him to be, then somehow swapped him for the real president, the result would still not be the comedy fodder of a Glenn Beck.
I wasn't interested in this at all, until I read that it was a young woman who made the post to Reddit. Now I'm definitely interested. Does anyone know what she looks like? I mean, being a woman implies she's old enough, and young is certainly promising, but you never know. Before I get involved in something like this, I definitely want to know what she looks like. I've been burned on more than one blind date and Internet romance. Also, of course, is she married? Is she dating anyone? How seriously? Is he socially conscious? Because I am, and that's usually my hook, because I'm not really like a jock or anything, but some girls are into that. Also, we both like Colbert, so that's something in common too. Anyway, if anyone gets her email address or some pics, please send them to me, because this seems like a really cool idea from a young woman.
Wow, you mean some smug Internet denizen came up with a way to launch a "hilarious" yet substance-free attack on a group she and all her cool friends just "know" is silly? What stunning news! Strawman used by baselessly smug group of left wingers against group of right wingers!
What next, are we going to have a story about a group of right wingers painting left wingers as Anti-American and playing the Outrage Card to rouse the rabble?
A pox on both their houses.
Doesn't it get boring after a while, reveling in how clever you and your Internet buddies who have developed some lame shared-language of goofball Internet memes are?
Oh, wait...
Oh, no, there are all kinds of Glenn Beck fans. For instance, there is the crazy wing: libertarian crazies, religious crazies, racist crazies. Then there is the retard wing, home-schooled retards, closeted retards, old senile retards. We also have the diabolically evil faction, Wall Street evil, coal mining evil, big oil evil, the military industrial evil complex.
Glen Beck's popularity spans all sorts of crazy, retarded and evil.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
GET RID OF GLENN BECK
We choose to do it not because it is easy, but because it is hard.
To think that ANY political ideology, no matter where it sits on the spectrum of political thought, provides an optimum framework for solving the world's or nation's problems is the sign of a very small mind.
In order to understand the difference between the term "truth" and Colbert's made-up word "truthiness", you'd have to, you know, actually watch the show at least once.
Colbert is a comedian who openly uses lies and manipulative humor to get laughs among his followers. He mocks everything in sight, with a double helping reserved for himself. He's in the business of entertainment, not news. He's a complete attention whore because that's what pays the bills.
I don't know the term for the opposite of "comedian", "tragedean", maybe? Whatever the term would be, that's Beck. He openly uses lies and manipulative tragedy to get outrage among his followers. He derides everything in sight, with a double helping reserved for anyone who he thinks his followers might agree with him on. He's in the business of entertainment, not news. He's a complete attention whore because that's what pays the bills.
"This post contains words, known to the State of California to cause thought. Wash brain thoroughly after reading."
It's obvious you haven't watched either recently.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Good point. Colbert fans don't have a billionaire Obama-hating family to bus them out to the event like Glenn Beck does.
i ~ Celebrating Science, Cyberspace, Speculation
The Daily Show and the Colbert report make fun of the brainless.
Fortunately for the Democratic party, they are spineless.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
you could instead argue against the calculation to come by the range of estimates (low end was 90k)
The low end was 78k, from the guy in Arizona who is a "crowd estimation expert". His estimate was 87k +/- 9k, so from 78k-96k.
Now, I'm more willing to believe a guy who has a system and method for accurately estimating crowd sizes than I am a website who is analyzing several low-resolution oblique photos and trying to apply a single formula to the entire crowd. The photos the researcher from Arizona used were taken by a company flying balloons from high overhead to lower down, for the specific purpose of taking pictures for estimating the size of the crowds.
Their site is here: http://airphotoslive.com/.
Here is an article describing the guy's methodology with examples:
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20015214-503544.html
I'm much more willing to trust that guy to come up with a reliable estimate versus someone trying to guess at the average croud density and offering a range between 86k and 200k.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
The best counter-protest signs I'd seen were from the attendees of Comic-Con this year when the Westboro Baptist Church (The "God Hates Fags" guys) protested the event:
http://www.comicsalliance.com/2010/07/22/super-heroes-vs-the-westboro-baptist-church/
Really? Count the number of times John Stewart makes direct fun of a Republican, then rewatch an episode and count the number of times he makes fun of a Democrat. Each episode is HEAVILY weighted to make fun of conservatives.
First, sure, but making fun of one more than the other != only making fun of one, which is what the post you replied to was rebutting.
Second, to be fair, if you removed mocking Fox News from the count, I think it'd be pretty even up. As a comedian, what can you even do about that? Half the day MSNBC is airing what amount to Dateline NBC reruns or the equivalent and there just isn't shit funny to say about that. Olbermann at his most blustering and ridiculous can't hold a candle to the sheer ludicrousness of Glenn Beck drawing something completely nonsensical on a chalkboard and weeping about it.
(Colbert is a little more middle but still ridicules Republicans more.) Comedy Central is just as left-leaning as CNN and MSNBC.
If you think the modern incarnation of CNN is left-leaning, you're seeing what you want to see and not what's actually there. If anything, they attempt to be "balanced" to a fault, giving voice to both sides of an issue even when one of those sides (be it conservative or liberal) is clearly insane. If I was a politician and came out tomorrow saying I thought we shouldn't set kindergardens on fire, CNN would find some nutball who thought we should to provide a counterpoint.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Well of course. Beck, Limbaugh, and Coulter, it's pure performance art. The only difference between them and Colbert is that Colbert plays the whole thing for laughs, and makes few secrets that it's satire. The real eye opener here is just how fucking stupid the Teabaggers are that they don't realize that they're falling for a joke. Now I still Beck is an immoral pile of crap, not because of what he says, but because he doesn't wink at the audience like Colbert does.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Politifact is your pal. Glenn "Pants on Fire" Beck's, not so much.
Having been visiting /. for over 15 years I'm shocked at the amount of, what appears to be, left wingers here. It's never really come up but am I in the conservative minority on Slashdot?
It's hard to say. A lot of people used to vehemently defend the Iraq war, but as the public soured on it they became a distinct minority. We still get a fairly large number of anti-Islam anti-Muslim posters... I was shocked by the views I saw posted here (and modded up) on a story a week or two ago.
But maybe all that doesn't really reflect conservative/liberal politics.
Traditionally we've had a very large number of "Latter Day Libertarians", by which I mean self-described Libertarians who apparently don't care about anything but gun ownership, taxes, and laws that might restrict their ability to become filthy rich.
Also... The most vocal group isn't necessarily the biggest group. We should have a /. poll on political orientation.
Younger people are typically left-wing. As you get older, and if you're responsible, you'll begin swinging right... unless you're a career politician...
This is conventional wisdom, but I'm not sure it's true. I have certainly gone the opposite direction.
Also, I suspect liberals and conservatives disagree intensely what "responsible" means.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade