Of course some people are encouraged to be politically active from these shows, but I would still argue that for the most part the function they serve is to give people the illusion of being politically active and informed by allowing them to laugh. In other words, while they might encourage some, they are more focused on making politics entertaining.

So yes, sometimes good things are done on these shows, and sometimes people are inspired to be responsible voters.

We can, on the one hand, be thankful that Colbert shows a clip of Paul clearly articulating the foolishness of the party-line Republican stance on Iraq, while on the other hand we can be troubled by the fact that Colbert makes his point exclusively through satire, which I would argue encourages people to laugh, but not really to political action.

This isn’t just satirical commentary. This is a plug. I don’t think what Colbert’s doing, at least here, is mindless ranting. I think he’s saying, “Pay attention to this man.”

And for that, I’m quite thankful.

Thanks for commenting. Let me see if I can clarify what I meant on a few issues:

The fact that the Daily Show does a better job reporting the “news” than CNN et al is exactly the problem I’m trying to point out. If the only “honest” reporting is done on a satirical TV show on a comedy channel, what effect will it have on the way we react to news? The effect, I believe, is that often we only laugh. The Daily Show might expose a lot of hypocrisy and lies, but the implicit action it urges its views to take is to laugh, not to change things.

I’m certainly not blaming the Daily Show for anything, like I said, satire itself is a wonderful thing. The show is witty, funny, and relevant. My concern is that our culture has replaced meaningful and change producing political discourse (which is usually offensive and boring) with political satire (which is less serious by nature and extremely entertaining).