Johanna's
Went to Johanna and Tim's with Christian last night to watch Colbert on O'Reilly. We would have stayed to watch O'Reilly on Colbert if it were on earlier, but with an 8AM section that just wasn't going to happen (plus, the busses would have stopped running by then). I imagine that the latter appearance was more funny than the first, because Colbert on O'Reilly wasn't that funny. Colbert was doing his shtick and O'Reilly wasn't playing along, so it just ended up being a non-conversation. O'Reilly was being really arrogant (how many times did he really have to repeat "Colbert makes his living by imitating me"?). He also started the interview with a lame attempt at getting his audience against Colbert by asking whether Colbert was a French name. Seriously, are there people in the country who are still holding this childish playground grudge that the French didn't want to come out and play with us in Iraq? When was that? 2003???
Colbert did manage to sneak in one or two good zingers. When O'Reilly called Jon Stewart's demographic "a bunch of teenaged and twenty-year old stoners" and then implicatingly asked Colbert whether he appealed to that same demographic, Colbert responded with something like: "I actually try for your demographic, but a little younger... people in their 50's and 60's".
Of course, there's plenty of things wrong with the O'Reilly factor, but one of the things that got to me last night was all the meaningless statistics that would come across the ticker at the bottom of the page. "62% of Americans surveyed want Bush's plan in Iraq to succeed". Jee, how many people would seriously want our warplan to fail? This completely skirts the issue at debate (whether we have the correct warplan or should even still be at war) and just presents a statistic for the pro-war Bushies to feel like they are still in the majority. It's just really painful to see statistics being so obviously misused and manipulated.
Colbert did manage to sneak in one or two good zingers. When O'Reilly called Jon Stewart's demographic "a bunch of teenaged and twenty-year old stoners" and then implicatingly asked Colbert whether he appealed to that same demographic, Colbert responded with something like: "I actually try for your demographic, but a little younger... people in their 50's and 60's".
Of course, there's plenty of things wrong with the O'Reilly factor, but one of the things that got to me last night was all the meaningless statistics that would come across the ticker at the bottom of the page. "62% of Americans surveyed want Bush's plan in Iraq to succeed". Jee, how many people would seriously want our warplan to fail? This completely skirts the issue at debate (whether we have the correct warplan or should even still be at war) and just presents a statistic for the pro-war Bushies to feel like they are still in the majority. It's just really painful to see statistics being so obviously misused and manipulated.