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Stephen Colbert - Racist

Loss Leader said:
B) Neither Steven Colbert or anybody from his show wrote it. The tweet was written by someone at Comedy Central.
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Well, no. My understanding is, somebody from his show wrote it, and Colbert actually said those words on his show as part of a longer joke about the Washington Redskins' "Native American" charity. However, when the Comedy Central account tweeted the joke, they neglected to include any context about it having been on a particular segment of the show or that it was satire directed at anything in particular; so the "Twitter-verse" received just this "Ching Chong" line which at face value is certainly objectionable.

Loss Leader said:
C) It's a stupid, ginned-up controversy.
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It is not. Obviously Colbert felt the name of the charity set up by the Redskins was objectionable enough to include a reference to it as part of his act; if the actual intention of the act is to sound like a conservative bigot, surely one can't call people unreasonable or overreacting for calling him a bigot after seeing one of his jokes out of context.
 
Cl1mh4224rd said:
Well, the good news is that it's just more comedic fodder for Colbert.
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I really doubt it. Since among other things Colbert satirizes casual racism, it seems highly unlikely to me that he would turn about and satirize folks who find casual racism objectionable. Especially after his personal tweet that he understood the outrage.
 
Stephen Colbert (col-bear), is a racist, yes, among other things.

Stephen Colbert (col-bert), is not.

It always amazes me that after all these years some people don't understand that the person on that show is a fictional character.
 
I thought the racists right wingers believed Colbert was on their side. Are they now figuring out the joke is on them?
 
Skeptic Ginger said:
I thought the racists right wingers believed Colbert was on their side. Are they now figuring out the joke is on them?
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If the right wing ever believed Colbert was on their side, they've been disabused of that notion for at least the last several years now.

It's my impression that the people who objected to the tweet are the kinds of people who normally object to displays of racism; i.e. left wingers.
 
nvidiot said:
It's a racist joke. Which is kinda the point.
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You can say anything racist, as long as you're being ironic. It's called hipster irony.

Living in Asia (sort of), I get the sense that Asian-Asians are much more relaxed about this sort of thing than Asian-Americans are.
 
applecorped said:
The response is the media is the question, not the skit.

"The tag #CancelColbert has been trending on Twitter since @ColbertReport’s tweet of a derogatory line from his show late Thursday night, with some users calling for an apology.
The now-deleted tweet from The Colbert Report’s verified Twitter account read, “I am willing to show #Asian community I care by introducing the Ching-Chong Ding-Dong Foundation for Sensitivity to Orientals or Whatever.”
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Can you see the incongruity between the idea of a foundation for sensitivity and the use of offensive terms referring to Asian people? That's a common comedic structure.
 
Found a whole article from one of the twitterers. Should have been limited to 140 characters for all it says. It doesn't even address that the tweet is a quote from a joke on the show.
 
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When Homer Simpson says outrageous, risible things, people usually get it because he's obviously a fictional character. We're supposed to laugh at him, not applaud and agree with him.

I think the reason Colbert got this reaction is because the line is more blurry between the character he plays and the real person.
 
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