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- “Get back to your life,” Colbert said. Hispanics, Muslims, Jews, all tarred by the victor, and tarred again and tarred yet again, were told to get back to their lives and forget the slurs and physical assaults and threats of deportation? The African-Americans whose church was burned down in Greenville, Mississippi, just before the election, were now supposed to relax, to look for Republicans to hug, as if America had not just buried them in an Electoral College landslide? The targets of neo-Nazi tweets and white supremacist blasts were supposed to whimper for unity?
Disagree. Wholeheartedly. I've got friends demanding a boycott of Paypal because "that guy" (they don't even know who Peter Thiel is) cofounded it in 1998. I've got friends sharing links of burning New Balance shoes because their VP of marketing affirmed that Donald Trump's position against the TPP was good for their business. I've got friends railing against the Koch Brothers because... well, that's what you do despite the fact that the Kochs, for once, didn't back the Republican presidential candidate. The author observes that Colbert is no longer pandering to college-educated millennials but is instead holding up a bullhorn to all of America yet the author observes that telling everyone to calm down and come together is somehow bad? There are a million and one things that Trump can be taken to task over, and late night comedians can be counted on to do so. Ripping into them for not doing it with every single minute of airtime is irresponsible and short-sighted.
I was shocked to find that the author of this article is a self-identified journalist. These two parts of his article don't go together. and His point wasn't to be indifferent to truth. The truth doesn't lie in the perspective of one group of people. I've watched that Colbert piece over half a dozen times at least. He was fair to say that both sides were terrified of the other side and gave statistics. His point was about not demonizing the other side. It was about trying to find common ground in a widely divisive population.While Colbert would have his devoted fans abandon politics until summoned again by a quivering trumpet, those who are not his fans — Republicans, not to put too fine a point on it
This disrespect for the common life, this indifference to truth, this counsel of surrender, Stephen Colbert, is how a republic dies.