#CancelColbert
is a hash tag that has been making the rounds, stirring strong reactions. There
have been some good articles that still miss certain aspects, so I want to go
over how it looked from my end.
It started
with a tweet from a PR account for The Colbert Report.
"I am
willing to show #Asian community I care by introducing the Ching-Chong
Ding-Dong Foundation for Sensitivity to Orientals or Whatever."
I saw it
from @suey_park, who started the #CancelColbert hash tag.
I had mixed
feelings. I was appalled by the tweet, but I was pretty sure it was not meant
to be harmful, and canceling seemed extreme. I also understood that with the
alliteration factor and with the severity, that worked better as a hash tag
than anything more nuanced. And, Park and the others were not actually
organizing to cancel, either, but I take things literally, so that was an issue
for me. I didn't re-tweet, but I did immediately write one reply to the
original account, and one question to Stephen Colbert's personal account,
questioning if he knew about the tweet.
The show's
account put up the sketch that the quote came from, but that actually made it
worse.
The tragedy
is that it starts out really well. The lines about the name not being offensive
if you only use it once in the organization's name, and the picture with the
coats, and the part about the backhoe, all work. "Smoke'm the peace
pipe" is questionable, but still, there were good points made.
It went
wrong when Colbert brought up the old character. And I do mean old, because the
clip was from 2005. I suspect it got some pushback as offensive, and it feels
like there was still some resentment over that that increased their motivation
to trot it back out -- "See, we really are funny, and way less offensive
than Dan Snyder." I could be wrong, but that doesn't change that it didn't
work.
That all
happened Thursday. Friday Park did a segment on HuffPost Live with
Josh Zepps, and it was clear early on that Zepps had no intention of actually
listening to Park. Based on his initial line of questioning, he had done no
research. He was patronizing, spoke over her, and called her opinion stupid.
Eventually she refused to engage on that level and the conversation ended.
Park has
gotten a lot of hate directly, but also I have seen many criticisms focusing on
the hash tag, and they miss key points.
One
complaint is that it wasn't from Colbert's own account. Many pointed out his
eventual reaction as surprise because he did not seem to be familiar with the
PR account, so don't blame him. Okay, Colbert did not tweet that tweet, but he
said the lines on the show. He's involved.
There have
also been defenses that the problem is that the tweet was just the punch line,
without the setup, and that's why it fell flat. No. Watching the setup, it
still falls flat, even with the context. Granted, if the tweet had not
happened, the bit might not have attracted any attention on its own, but the
offensive material was part of the show.
A less
common issue, but one that Zepps tried, is implying that going against Colbert
when he is making fun of Snyder is like supporting Snyder in adhering to the
Redskins name, with the wider corollary being that you can't have dissent
within the ranks. (This is one reason I say Zepps did not do any research. He
should have known about #NotYourMascot.)
It is not
beneficial to divide the world into good guys and bad guys and then set up
strict lines of team loyalty. People are flawed. Well-meaning people goof.
People who make a lot of bad decisions still come through sometimes.
Granted, if
you take a look at Fox News and the GOP, many of them appear cartoonishly
ignorant and heartless, but it seems possible that part of how they got that
way is following the party line too closely, and not being able to call someone
on "their side" out when it was needed. No, that is not a reason to
be silent.
And now for
the biggest complaint of all, that people just don't get humor, they don't get
the joke, and most of all that they don't understand satire; now that's
patronizing!
Sadly, I
think most of us have experience with someone who is being a jerk, but adds
"LOL", or "Just kidding", thus putting the burden on the
offended party because they don't get the joke. The joker may have latent or
barely disguised hostility, or they may want so much to be funny that it
impairs their judgment, but humor as a defense is not automatically valid.
"Ching-chong"
is something that still gets used. Children are teased with this. I have heard
people laugh at it. So, it is a charged phrase, and the viewers are being
invited to laugh at it. I don't think anyone involved with The Colbert Report
intended ill, but they messed up. They messed up by forgetting that humor needs
to be directed against power to work. Making fun of Dan Snyder, who has
millions of dollars and is an ass, works. Making fun of the way racists think
that Asians talk sounds like it should work, but it came out sounding too much
like making fun of the was Asians talk.
It reminds
me of last year when The Onion got in trouble for a "joke" that they
made about Quvenzhané Wallis. I got exactly where they were going with it. They
had a more effective piece that came from a different angle, about Anne
Hathaway reciprocating one women's baseless hatred of her. Going on that theme
of cattiness and unfair resentment, it probably seemed that making an adorable
9-year old the target would highlight what was wrong with it, except they
called a little girl the C-word, and it did not go over well.
It is
really easy to misfire on satire. Doing satire well requires a lot of
intelligence, and it requires double-checking to make sure your targets are
correct. The Colbert Show failed on both points. It's perfectly reasonable to
call them on it.
People
tweeting #CancelColbert understand satire. That is not the problem. However,
people defending the show as not racist by using hate speech or telling people
to shut up as a way to fight censorship (and that happened a lot, and is still
happening), may not really grasp irony.
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