What conservatives need: Stephen Colbert
When I first started observing conservative culture closely, I was working a deadly dull clerical job in Columbia, Missouri.
Bored out of my ever-loving mind, I would tune in Rush Limbaugh on the AM dial. He was unpredictable, outrageous, entertaining, irreverent — and often hilarious.
In those days, Limbaugh was famous for making a pin-cushion of the Clintons.
But he also played rough with Republican leaders and even went in for a huge amount of self-mockery.
That’s all changed. Limbaugh now describes himself as a kind of one-man think-tank, advising and shaping the conservative movement.
The self-seriousness of latter-day Limbaugh speaks to some of the gray malaise within the Republican Party.
It’s a movement limited by its dogmas, inflexible and almost universally humorless.
The entertainers who might offer a kind of humility-slap — Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham — have instead positioned themselves as ideological traffic cops.
They scold and they hector. Their laughter (when it comes) is almost always at somebody else’s expense.
SO far the left has dodged this temptation. Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert are devoutly liberal, sure, but many of their greatest riffs target the Democrats.
From race sensitivity to Nancy Pelosi’s frosty smiles, no one deflates liberal bloviation better than the Comedy Central duo.
The day after the inauguration, Stewart claimed to be wearing a new hope-scented cologne.
“Are people setting themselves up for inevitable disappointment?” asked one of his correspondents, comedian John Oliver.
“Of course they are. Have they realized that yet? Absolutely not. Yay!”
(Oliver then spent a few, hilarious moments trying unsuccessfully to convince African Americans at the inauguration that the moon landing was more important than Obama’s election.)
Conservatives struggle with this kind of self-mockery because they see themselves as embattled, on the receiving end of liberal pop-culture’s relentless attacks.
But sometimes laughter really is the best medicine, especially for politicians who’ve lost their way.
