Stephen Colbert is involved in a so-called “racist” tweet fiasco in which a tweet was sent out from his Comedy Central account and taken completely out of context. The resulting outrage shows the intellectual disability of some Americans. Actually, the term “intellectual disability” used to be called “retardation,” but since that’s not politically correct to use anymore, “intellectual disability” will have to suffice. The average American has become so stupefied; they are unable to understand what satire is and how it works.
The alleged “racist” tweet was actually part of a bit on Colbert’s show from the night prior, which was making fun of Dan Snyder, the owner of the Washington Redskins. The whole point of the comment, which was “I am willing to show #Asian community I care by introducing the Ching-Chong Ding-Dong Foundation for Sensitivity to Orientals or Whatever” was a lampoon of Snyder’s Washington Redskins Original Americans Foundation in relation to the name of his team, the Washington Redskins.
Does putting the key words and phrases in italics do anything to clear up this issue with the intellectually disabled Americans who are so “offended” over the tweet? Probably not, because they are most likely too stupid to possess strong reading comprehension skills.
The whole point of Colbert’s show is that he is playing a character who he himself has called “an idiot.” His character often says things which are laughable because of their inappropriate nature. However, in this case, his character was poking fun at someone else entirely, someone who has actually come under fire for the insensitive name of his sports team. That was the whole point of the bit: to highlight the inappropriate and insensitive nature of Dan Snyder.
The Stephen Colbert “racist” Tweet shows the intellectual disability of Americans because the resulting “cancelcolbert” campaign on Twitter has taken off so ferociously. People are calling to have his show cancelled because they are too damn dumb to understand satire, have no sense of humor, and don’t even know what the word “context” means. Having an understanding of context and satire involves multi-layered thinking of which the average American is apparently incapable.
These are the same people who would be campaigning to take away the Oscar nominations of the actors who played the white characters in Twelve Years a Slave because the campaigners are too stupid to realize that the people in the movie are actors. Stephen Colbert is also an actor. He is playing a part. He is portraying a character. His character is not him. His character says and does things that Stephen Colbert would never say or do in real life, just like the actors in Twelve Years a Slave.
No wonder other countries make fun of Americans. As a nation, we’re really not the brightest bulbs in the bunch, now are we? Seth McFarlane faced a similar set of idiots after his Oscar performance last year. The fact that people were too stupid to understand satire resulted in some pretty nasty Facebook battles and more than one unfriending. Stephen Colbert’s “racist” Tweet shows the intellectual disability of Americans, and it’s just going downhill from here. As a nation, we’re certainly not getting any smarter as of late, and one can only hope the imbeciles don’t get their way, or else comedy will soon revert back to the Three Stooges variety, which takes no brain power to understand.
By: Rebecca Savastio
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Wow! Let’s put aside the ugly irony in the expression of your own, very tangible bigotry to explain Colbert’s contextual use of bigotry for satire (your bigotry being the declaration of stupidity as the defining characteristic of intellectually disabled people). This article, Ms. Savastio, is an appalling descent into a profoundly damaging, dehumanizing and dangerous ignorance.
Do you have any idea of what was done to developmentally and intellectually disabled people throughout the 20th century because of bigotry like yours? Do you know what happened to them because of the hateful judgments that were made about their intelligence and their consequent “value to society?” In Germany, under the Nazis, they were labeled “useless eaters” by the regime and seen as subhuman, too stupid to be allowed to live. They became the initial victims of the holocaust as the first, identifiable group to be industrially murdered, a few years before the formalization of the Final Solution.
In the U.S., they were imprisoned, often as infants, in huge state institutions. The pretty, park-like settings of these human warehouses hid the horrific, quotidian brutality that took place on the wards and behind the walls of the “cottages” in which the disabled were housed. Violence, rape, criminal negligence and abuse, disease and death were incessant. Entire lives, thousands upon thousands, were spent in these hell-holes. Is it possible to comprehend how devalued a group must be for the imprisonment of their babies to be commonplace?
Thousands were killed, into the 1960’s, as human guinea pigs for unconscionable medical experimentation. A child may have entered Sonoma State Hospital as Mary Jones in the 1950’s and died, known only as “Specimen No. 437,” ten years later from government experiments on the effects of radiation poisoning.
Years spent naked on the floors resulted in decomposing skin diseases that went uninvestigated until someone cared enough to discover the cause came from the bleaches and disinfectants used to clean the floors. These chemicals were being applied undiluted when they were meant to be watered down at a 40:1 ratio. Tens of thousands of people became known as biters and had all of their teeth pulled … robbing them of their only defense against the sexual predators who came at night.
These crimes, of course, describe just a small part of what they endured … or died from.
To this day, intellectually and developmentally disabled people remain the most marginalized, dehumanized and rejected group of people in our society. They are the insult used demean others, as you have shown, Ms. Savastio, with such cruel and callous disregard. The world is full of very stupid smart people … let she who is without stupidity cast the first stone.
Rebecca, thanks for having the balls to spell it out for the uninformed and ignorant hordes out there… He is an so damn funny that I can’t wait to see what he comes up with next.
Rebecca must be making excuses and defending the white actors in 12 years a slave.
Rebecca, please calm down. People have missed the point of jokes as long as jokes have been told. It makes you sound like a nut cake getting so upset about it.
Ignorance might actually be battling it out with stupidity here. Believe it or not, some people have probably never watched the Colbert Report and are (or were) unaware of the satirical context. The fact that they missed punctuation signs is hardly surprising. My work as an editor is part of a growth industry on the internet.
Of course, this does not explain the ferocious enthusiasm too many Americans display to denounce others as instant demons. Cruelty has, sadly, just become part of our national charm.
While I don’t doubt that “intellectual disability” does indeed exist among the folks who didn’t get his joke(s), I think you need to take a step back and not condemn the entire USA as going downhill. Not everyone in America uses Twitter (I don’t), or watches or pays attention to Colbert (I do sometimes), so your ire is really only applicable to the *vocal* subset who have actually taken the time to Tweet/etc about this…that’s hardly the entirety of the population of the USA. If everyone who decries Americans as getting dumber was correct — and I’ve heard the lie for a few decades now — we would no longer be a world power, our R&D would be in severe decline (no sign of that), and our economic power would be in the toilet (still the #1 economy). Just because the intellectually disabled have routine access to Twitter now doesn’t mean the country’s getting dumber, sorry.
The reason for the “intellectual disability” is poor education. Education teaches people to think critically and understand satire.