Well, not really. I’m just aping Jon Stewart’s charge at Tucker Carlson.
But since I’ve been writing about whether it is prudent to engage in strawman arguments, I couldn’t help thinking about Colbert’s usual schtick.
Now, first of all, let me say that it is very funny, and I’m inclined to agree that dumb racial profiling is a bad idea.
But I think it also exhibits something wrong with the discourse.
In the typical strawman argument, I pick the weakest argument being offered for my opposing point of view, defeat it, and then act as if I have therefore won my point of view.
Colbert takes it a step further, or allows us to take it a step further. He takes the worst arguments for the other side, then takes them a half-step further toward craziness so that they are now obviously ridiculous.
Actually refuting the argument is left as a (very easy) exercise for the viewer. Colbert presents a self-evidently wrong caricature, and we just laugh at it.
Again, let me repeat: what Colbert does is very funny, and I’m not trying to drive him off the air. But I wonder what kind of impact it has on people if this is the main form of debate they’re exposed to (or work that is one degree less than that from the talking heads on Fox News or MSNBC).
