The Colbert Report, a spin-off of
the Daily Show, is a satirical news show which parodies shows like the O’Reilly
Factor. The title credits go by with a giant bald eagle and the American flag
presented along with it and Stephen Colbert gives a quick rundown of the
episode’s content.
In one particular episode, the
first one, Stephen Colbert introduced the word, truthiness, which means "the
quality by which one purports to know something emotionally or instinctively,
without regard to evidence or intellectual examination", and as Stephen
Colbert said, “Truth that comes from the guts, not books.” (Colbert)
Truthiness conveys the idea of
relativity. In reality, a truth may function a certain way, but the “gut” may
feel differently. In some cases, this may be reality. An NPR article, The Death
of Facts in an Age of Truthiness, gives an example of a politician Allen West,
Republican Rep. of Florida, stated that 80 Democratic Party members in Congress
are part of the Communist Party. (NPR Staff)
While it was confirmed that none of
these Democratic Party members were actually members of the Communist party as
well, West stood by his comments days after he was proved to be wrong. The article
later states a point which shows the actual practice of truthiness is occurring
even in high orders of power: “that led Huppke to the idea that if someone of
any political party can say something so patently untrue and stand by it —
which seems to happen more and more often, he says — then facts must be
meaningless and dead.” (NPR Staff)
This show is an excellent example
of a person or entity taking a source of source of information, and
interpreting it in a completely unpredictable way. Like the Campbell’s soup can
and War Stories, the news is up to interpretation. It is relative.
Stephen Colbert interprets the
meaning of the news like how people choose to place meaning on the Campbell’s
Soup cans, or how people interpret Tim O’Brien’s war stories as they choose.
Video after the break
| The Colbert Report | Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c | |||
| The Word - Truthiness | ||||
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