Franken on Colbert
Catching up on some accumulated Tivoness, I happened upon last week's Colbert Report featuring Al Franken. This sounded potentially brilliant in concept, but came off as a surreal fusion of crisscrossing reality and fiction.
In Colbert, we have a smart writer/comedian with progressive politics, playing the character of a buffoonish O'Reilly-style TV pundit with "independent", largely GOP-pandering politics. He delivers deliberately asinine assessments of the world situation with a very straight face, only occasionally unable to hold back the winks and nods that are weaved throughout the writing in its very absurdity.
In Franken, we have another smart writer/comedian with progressive politics, who as a result of his last decade's worth of pointed and aptly timed public criticism of Limbaugh, O'Reilly, Fox News, et al, brought Air America into existence and perniciously turned Franken himself into the very thing he'd criticized.
I have not listened to Franken much since AirAm started, but I've long been a fan of his work, the tone he adopts in his writing seems clearly to have been an inspiration for the Colbert Report: haughty and pretentious sounding, with an undercurrent of wry self deprecation. But since AirAm, Franken's sense of irony has been largely replaced with anger. He can still be funny, but he's no longer able to laugh at his own expense, choosing instead never to pass up an opportunity to unleash vitriol upon some highly deserving recipients in Washington.
Colbert (the character) did his best to bombard Franken with the sort of pseudo-hardball questioning that he reserves for high-profile librul crusaders, but unlike the Al Franken of 20, 10, even 3 years ago, today's Franken didn't seem even remotely in on the joke.
How sad to see a comic genius lose his best weapon: his sense of humor. Especially right when his publicity starts ramping up. I think Al Franken is our generation's Lenny Bruce.
In Colbert, we have a smart writer/comedian with progressive politics, playing the character of a buffoonish O'Reilly-style TV pundit with "independent", largely GOP-pandering politics. He delivers deliberately asinine assessments of the world situation with a very straight face, only occasionally unable to hold back the winks and nods that are weaved throughout the writing in its very absurdity.
In Franken, we have another smart writer/comedian with progressive politics, who as a result of his last decade's worth of pointed and aptly timed public criticism of Limbaugh, O'Reilly, Fox News, et al, brought Air America into existence and perniciously turned Franken himself into the very thing he'd criticized.
I have not listened to Franken much since AirAm started, but I've long been a fan of his work, the tone he adopts in his writing seems clearly to have been an inspiration for the Colbert Report: haughty and pretentious sounding, with an undercurrent of wry self deprecation. But since AirAm, Franken's sense of irony has been largely replaced with anger. He can still be funny, but he's no longer able to laugh at his own expense, choosing instead never to pass up an opportunity to unleash vitriol upon some highly deserving recipients in Washington.
Colbert (the character) did his best to bombard Franken with the sort of pseudo-hardball questioning that he reserves for high-profile librul crusaders, but unlike the Al Franken of 20, 10, even 3 years ago, today's Franken didn't seem even remotely in on the joke.
How sad to see a comic genius lose his best weapon: his sense of humor. Especially right when his publicity starts ramping up. I think Al Franken is our generation's Lenny Bruce.