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.'"

Comments

Count me in

[jeffmeden]

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.

Re:Count me in

[houstonbofh]

Knock what you want, but Beck must be doing something right. Now everyone wants to hold a rally...

Re:Count me in

[jeffmeden]

Also, in case you needed more of a reason, the proposed date is 10/10/10... Are you thinking what I'm thinking? 101010 in binary=42 in decimal. The answer is right in front of us!

Re:Count me in

[humphrm]

Yeah, Beck was the first one to think to hold a rally, and now everyone else is just mimicking Beck.

Re:Count me in

[Anonymous Coward]

It was sad enough to see Beck's shameless self promotion, let alone to now see Colbert's cynical copycatting of shameless self-promotion

Haver you never seen Colbert's show?

Re:Count me in

[spun]

Colbert's entire shtick is parodying shamelessly self promoting pundits like "Papa Bear" O'Reilly and Beck.

Re:Count me in

[DriedClexler]

But that's for the British convention of dd/mm/yy. What happens if you read October 10th with mm/dd/yy?

Re:Count me in

[Wyatt Earp]

Jesus and Moses were at the National Mall?

I've never read the Book of Mormon, but I don't think the National Mall makes an appearance in it, but Jesus is here in the New World.

Re:Count me in

[Pojut]

That's the part about Colbert I always found so awesome...through parody, he speaks more truth than those with a "serious" agenda.

Of course, nothing is funnier than someone who thinks Colbert is serious. My friend's mom is a die hard conservative, and she thought Colbert was serious about everything he did (taking it as Comedy Central's counterpoint to The Daily Show, in the interest of being balanced.) I showed her clips of Colbert getting his start on The Daily Show, and of him talking politics outside of his "Colbert" character.

Her head exploded.

Re:Count me in

[Rakarra]

My God, it's windy in here.

Re:Count me in

[pixelpusher220]

"Colbert" is in fact a persona not a real person,

and the single best part of this is the Bush Administrations complete idoicy when they booked him for the White House Correspondents Dinner.

That was pure gold.

Re:Count me in

[PinkyGigglebrain]

I seem to remember some other guy holding a rally at the Lincoln Memorial before Beck, went over really big too IIRC.

Something about him having a dream or something like that.

Re:Count me in

[Romancer]

Cannot contain the laughter...

That was the perfect Colbert immitation of cyclical fallacy based arguments!

Build a strawman, name it hatred, claim "literal" hatred, denounce the made up statement, over-generalize and claim as proof.
The last line though, was absolute perfection. Projecting your own hatred in a statement about projection.

Classic Colbert.

Re:Count me in

[Pojut]

but Colbert and others continue to tell us all that nothing's wrong

Jon Stewart and Colbert are constantly talking about the budget problems lately...they both do many things, but acting like nothing is wrong certainly isn't one of them.

Re:Count me in

[Nimey]

The Best Thing Ever was when some Bush-administration lackey took Colbert seriously enough to invite him to speak at the 2006 White House Correspondents' dinner.

That speech made Colbert forever one of my personal heroes.

Re:Count me in

[Anonymous Coward]

> I don't find him funny. It's not that I don't have a sense of humor, it's that I no longer find a joke funny after hearing it over and over and > over and over again. We get it. Colbert thinks Bill O'Reilly and what he believes are conservative talk show hosts are ignorant, racist,
> bigoted, self serving, pompous asses. I got it in the first ten minutes the very first time I saw his show. After that, it's been the
> predictable telling of the same joke over and over and over again.

yeah, I expected this sentiment, and it's pretty obvious that you were offended with the stripe of this show, the political bent, and tuned out.

Which is too bad, because when Colbert gets going, he gets going, and his range is far more versatile than you let up above..

For example, here was his take on the supreme court case to strike down restrictions on corporate spending - 'let freedom ka-ching':

http://vodpod.com/watch/2198494-colbert-the-word-let-freedom-ka-ching

Extremely incisive, informative, and yes, funny. Or his take on the BP oil spill..

http://www.in.com/videos/watchvideo-the-colbert-report-put-the-cursed-monkey-paw-down-8414401.html

I'd say that in both cases he's dead on accurate, and dead on clever. It stays fresh precisely because of the creativity and range; if it were what you say, it would have died off long ago.

Ed

Re:Count me in

[Romancer]

I suggest you read over your comment again and see if you can spot the hate in your own posts before commenting again. You are making it too easy to show what the problem is.

Here's the wiki:
A straw man argument is an informal fallacy based on misrepresentation of an opponent's position.[1] To "attack a straw man" is to create the illusion of having refuted a proposition by substituting a superficially similar yet unequivalent proposition (the "straw man"), and refuting it, without ever having actually refuted the original position.

Here's the specific types:
1.Presenting a misrepresentation of the opponent's position and then refuting it, thus giving the appearance that the opponent's actual position has been refuted.[1]
2.Quoting an opponent's words out of context - i.e. choosing quotations that misrepresent the opponent's actual intentions (see contextomy and quote mining).[2]
3.Presenting someone who defends a position poorly as the defender, then refuting that person's arguments - thus giving the appearance that every upholder of that position (and thus the position itself) has been defeated.[1]
4.Inventing a fictitious persona with actions or beliefs which are then criticized, implying that the person represents a group of whom the speaker is critical.
5.Oversimplifying an opponent's argument, then attacking this oversimplified version.

Without asking for details on why the poster used an adjective that's not a completely factual representation of "some kind of dental infection" you go off about how he/she has committed "what I'd call a hateful attack" and use that logic to condemn a group of people by generalizing a post or posts into a representation of the group which you disparage in a conclusion of "proof that it's not the right that are the "hate mongers", but the left." Finally using the name calling that you are supposedly denouncing.

Try reading this:

Strange that every time I see an argument against (group A), it is almost always based on how hateful (Group A) is.

See any similarities between your own (generalized) statement and what you are trying to prove in your posts?

By your own words you were participating and instigating that process. You based your post on how hateful a group is and used an example of someone using an adjective to give visual power to their opinion without asking or participating in a discussion based on facts, You purposly misconstrue it to suit your own hatefull indignation.

Now you're in a bad spot because you have to avoid the recursion of having the original poster and yourself on the same path of having called the other side names. To leave your straw man misrepresentation a straight example: Do you think that by describing shows or people on one side as having "festering mouth(s)" is more accurately about claiming that they had a "dental infection" or that they were "spouting disease", as in hate or fear mongering? Now compare that to your own finger pointing and name calling and see how much better you and your side are for not spreading hatred without waiting for or wanting the facts or a discussion thereof.

Go Stephen!

[bhsx]

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.

Re:Go Stephen!

[Rei]

I think the funniest thing would be the signs the Colbert supporters would be carrying. I'm picturing things like:

"You'll Pry My Teller-Ulam Configuration Thermonuclear Device From My Cold Dead Hands! / 'The right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed!"

"Abortion Kills! / Also, Has Anybody Seen My Keys? I Think I Dropped Them Somewhere Around Here."

"I Have A Third-Grade Education And I VOTE!"

"Barack Obama Is An Incompetent Kenyan Socialist Buffoon Who's Carefully Engineering The Wholesale Restructuring Of Our Society For Militant Islam!"

"Don't Tread On Me / (pic) / Because I'm A Snake And Stuff!"

"I Don't Support Socialist Road Spending / I Took The Subway To The Protest!"

"Bring Back The 1950s!"

"There's A Gathering Storm Of Gays Coming For Your Kids. RUN! Run Like The Wind!"

Oh, and probably a lot of chalkboards. ;)

Re:Go Stephen!

[speederaser]

It will show that Americans care more about comedy than about politics. Why would it be surprising in a country where only a small percentage of the people vote?

..which makes sense since most Americans think that politics is a joke.

Re:Go Stephen!

[spun]

Wait, you think we were on track to win in Vietnam? And it was the protests that screwed things up? And you think the citizens of Vietnam are 'relegated to live under communism?' Vietnam had one of the highest growth rates in the world since the government instituted free market reforms in 1986. Vietnam is a member of the WTO, and well respected in the international community. The human rights situation is still abysmal, but improving. Give it time and Vietnam will be indistinguishable from the free and prosperous hybrid socialist/free market economies of Europe. As of right now, their economy is doing quite a bit better than ours. Funny how it was capitalism that imploded recently, not socialism.

Re:Go Stephen!

[blackraven14250]

Wait, you think we were on track to win in Vietnam? And it was the protests that screwed things up?

Uh, yeah. We lost zero major battles in Vietnam. Exactly zero. Had the bombing campaign been allowed to continue and not been limited (again, due to liberal protests), we bet your ass we could have won that war.

Except the political battle.

And you think the citizens of Vietnam are 'relegated to live under communism?' Vietnam had one of the highest growth rates in the world since the government instituted free market reforms in 1986.

So, what you are saying is that Vietnam had one of the highest growth rates in the world since the government realized that communism doesn't really work and tossed aside all that "to each according to their need" bullshit.

That would be a sterling example of winning a war by losing a battle and letting Vietnam realize that communism isn't a plausible way to run a country in the long term.

Vietnam is a member of the WTO, and well respected in the international community. The human rights situation is still abysmal, but improving.

What gets me is the respect coming from you, even though you are fully aware that " The human rights situation is still abysmal...". A country with an "abysmal" human rights record is what we were there fighting to prevent. Populations don't want to be oppressed. They are forced to allow it to happen because the oppressor is stronger than they are and is either stronger or more staying power than those fighting for freedom.

We can't force democracy on people, by definition.

Give it time and Vietnam will be indistinguishable from the free and prosperous hybrid socialist/free market economies of Europe.

You mean, like they could have had since 1975? How many souls spent their entire lives under oppression because someone thought that if we showed peace and love that the world would turn into a John Lennon song.

Again, you cannot force democracy on people who don't want it. North Vietnam would not be as free as it is today had we not withdrawn from the war.

As of right now, their economy is doing quite a bit better than ours.

Really? While our economy sucks, it only sucks when compared to itself. Our economy grew more in the past year than the entire economy of Vietnam. The US GDP per capita is $46,381. Vietnam's is $2,942. Um, I think our economy is a bit better than Vietnam's. So, given your track record of "non-facts", I guess we can throw out your last point of "Funny how it was capitalism that imploded recently, not socialism."

GDP per capita is not adjusted for the market value of goods. I bet they have iPhone clones that cost 1/10th of what ours cost.

Re:Go Stephen!

[epine]

Had the bombing campaign been allowed to continue and not been limited (again, due to liberal protests), we bet your ass we could have won that war.

Oh yes. Unfortunately, the famous liberal dove Robert McNamara doesn't agree with you if you read between the lines of "Fog of War".

One of the main reasons the bombing was less effective that you make out was the C Chi tunnels which IIRC were far more extensive than bomber-command wished to believe.

From Operation Thunder

B-52 bombers, that could fly at heights that prevented them being seen or heard, dropped 8 million tons of bombs on Vietnam between 1965 and 1973. This was over three times the amount of bombs dropped throughout the whole of the Second World War and worked out at approximately 300 tons for every man, woman and child living in Vietnam.

So, how many million tons did we fall short of achieving an easy victory? Another 700 tons per man, woman and child?

Thanks for playing.

Re:What the hell?

[Anonymous Coward]

There's a reason it's tagged with "Idle"

Page hits, my man, page hits

[spun]

Controversy leads to page hits. Page hits lead to advertisers. Advertisers lead to income. Income leads to getting laid.

Mystery solved.

Journalism

[Ukab the Great]

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.

Re:Journalism

[Lunix Nutcase]

"serious" (for lack of a better term) journalists

The better term is "opinion show hosts".

Re:Journalism

[longacre]

Just because they're on a channel with "news" in the name does not make them journalists. Beck and O'Reilly are entertainers, just like Nancy Grace, Larry King, Keith Olbermann, Rick Sanchez, etc.

Re:Journalism

[NiteShaed]

than "serious" (for lack of a better term) journalists like Glenn Beck and Bill O'Reilly

There's your mistake. Beck and O'Reilly aren't journalists at all, serious or otherwise. Their shows are opinion pieces, start to finish. They're "serious journalists" in the same way that professional wrestlers are "serious athletes".

on what's supposed to be a news channel

FOX should just give up the word news and start calling themselves a "political commentary" channel. That's what they really seem to want to focus on, and what they want to be. Why not just go with that? Note to FOX fans who take this as insulting, this isn't necessarily intended to be a negative thing. If anything, it would probably eliminate a lot of the criticism aimed at FOX News. There's nothing wrong with being a political commentary channel, and you don't need to pretend to hold to some kind of "Fair and Balanced" standard.

Re:Journalism

[Mongoose Disciple]

I don't know that that's entirely fair. These things are on a continuum.

You look at an O'Reilly or an Olbermann (to pick two guys with very different politics), and if you're not in line with them politically, you'll probably disagree a lot with their interpretation of an event or its implications, but in some sense their starting point feels based in reality even if where they end up isn't.

I don't get that same sense out of, say, Beck.

Re:Most of the pople who Watch Colbert.....

[spun]

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.

Re:What the hell?

[eln]

It's in the Politics section. As incredibly depressing as it may be, Glenn Beck crying on camera and Colbert making fun of him represents the height of political discourse these days, so it fits.

We don't debate things anymore, we have competing demagogues shouting past each other, lying, and using naked appeals to emotion to push their agendas. Beck is the most visible at the moment, but he's certainly not the first nor the last. Hell, they don't even really debate things in the halls of Congress anymore, they just shout their talking points at each other to rile up the extremists on either end of the political spectrum because they're apparently the only ones who still vote.

Meanwhile, comedians like Colbert try to point out the absurdity of it all, and everyone has a good laugh, and no one changes their behavior. A rally at the Lincoln memorial would accomplish nothing. Beck's followers would either ignore it or use it as fuel to steer even further toward the extreme and follow Beck even closer. Beck's detractors would have a good laugh about it, but they're already convinced Beck is a nutbar so it's preaching to the choir for them.

On the other hand, if it was well-executed it would probably give Colbert a ratings boost, so at least he and the guys over at Comedy Central would get something out of it.

Re:What the hell?

[atchijov]

Do you really want your kids to learn creationism in school, have 99% of the budget spend on military and hunting homeless and immigrants become a recreational activity? This is what will happen if everyone (including nerds) will keep saying - "That none of my business".

Re:Ignore the Troll

[spun]

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.

Re:It's certainly easier...

[Lunix Nutcase]

You mean like how pretty much all of what they complained about was happening also under Dubya's reign in office and yet they only started complaining about these things once Obama got into office and continued the stupid policies of the previous administration?

Re:What the hell?

[mea37]

The Tea Party isn't news?

The group whose dominating and inept control of the conservative voice in 2009 was a key factor in passing the sweeping healthcare reform bill isn't news?

No, they're news. It's just that no matter which side of the aisle you're on, they're bad news.

Re:What the hell?

[feepness]

Do you really want your kids to learn creationism in school, have 99% of the budget spend on military and hunting homeless and immigrants become a recreational activity? This is what will happen if everyone (including nerds) will keep saying - "That none of my business".

Don't forget the oceans will rise to swallow the coasts and corporations will take all our rights.

All because of that party of FEAR!

Well, because it's a "young woman" ...

[guanxi]

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.

Smug Internet people.

[RightSaidFred99]

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...

Re:It's certainly easier...

[JoshuaZ]

It's certainly easier than, you know, actually acknowledging and dealing with their ideas...

What ideas? You mean ideas like somehow thinking that Patrick Henry was a supporter of the US Constitution http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2010/09/patrick_henry_and_the_tea_part_1.php. Or maybe you mean Glenn Beck's pseudoscientific ideas about how the Smithsonian is involved in a massive conspiracy to cover up 19th century archaelogical facts?http://anthroslug.blogspot.com/2010/08/glenn-becks-pseudo-archaeology-part-1.html. Or maybe you mean the idea that Obama is going to put Republicans into concentration camps http://boingboing.net/2009/03/17/foxs-glenn-beck-says.html? You know, what? I'm sick of the notion that there is anything resembling worthwhile ideas coming from this man. At a certain point, it is a waste of time to actually respond to this paranoid nonsense in any other way than ridicule. And to the people who believe him or listen to him? Fuck 'em. Fuck every one of them for being too lazy or too stupid or too tribalistic to exercise their brains at all.

Now, if you just we're talking about the saner end of the Tea Partiers then there might be some argument that they have actual ideas, mainly resembling the form "I like government policies that make life better for me but not for other people." Do I need to address what's wrong with that also or are we done?

Re:Most of the pople who Watch Colbert.....

[spun]

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.

Re:Truthiness

[natehoy]

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.

Re:What the hell?

[feepness]

I am concerned about pollution. I'm not concerned about the oceans rising up and swallowing the coast.

It is precisely because I care about the environment that I am concerned about people who conflate caring for the environment with fearmongering.

Re:What the hell?

[shaitand]

"hunting homeless and immigrants become a recreational activity?"

HELL YES. Bring this on, immediately.

Seriously, why do people insist on trying to equate illegals with immigrants? The first act of an illegal is disrespect our national and its law, their very method of entry into the nation demonstrates they are unfit to enter our society. The first act of an immigrant is to show respect for our nation and culture and to undergo significant (but not unreasonable) efforts to become a part of it.

There is a reason why legal immigrants integrate into america and make it stronger with parts of their former culture while illegal immigrants form pockets of what they consider to still be their culture.

Re:It's certainly easier...

[Abcd1234]

Exactly. Both sides are assholes which is why neither extreme should be the one holding power.

Sure... and then you get Obama, who's about as middle of the road as they come, hence why no one is happy. The Democrats wish he was more liberal, the Republicans wish he was more conservative, and everyone else wishes he was at least interesting enough to pay attention to.

Re:It's certainly easier...

[phantomfive]

The first time I heard anything about the tea-party was right after TARP. Doubled budget deficits under Obama didn't help (although really it isn't entirely Obama's fault; just as the Bush deficits weren't entirely Bush's fault, or the Clinton surplus entirely Clinton's fault. It is mainly a matter of demographics if you actually did into the numbers. The Reagan deficits on the other hand actually were Reagan's fault, although they were much smaller).

Re:A more accurate count

[amicusNYCL]

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.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:What if Beck is a Colbert?

[MightyMartian]

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.