Stephen Colbert, Nick Gillespie Talk "America's Pot-astrophe" on Colbert Report

I was on Comedy Central's Colbert Report last night, talking about pot legalization, sentencing reform, and the host's fears that medical marijuana will give rise to "medical prostitution."

About 5 minutes and very good fun.

Comments

[Hugh Akston]

Nice work getting at least some of the message out there Nick, in spite of Colbert's incredibly lame attempts at humor.

[Palin's Buttplug]

Spoofing a gasbag Bill O'Reilly is never lame.

[Fist of Etiquette]

It is if you are hoping to hear a good, honest discussion.

[Palin's Buttplug]

The Factor opposes legalizing marijuana because putting another intoxicant on the market sends the wrong message to children. However, a new Pew Research poll shows that 52% of Americans now favor pot legalization, up from 24% in 1980.

The O'Reilly Factor - April 11, 2013

http://www.billoreilly.com/video

Like his segment on pot legalization?

[$park?]

Dude, do you really have room for Bill O'Reilly's dick in your mouth when you already have Glenn Beck's in there?

[Jordan]

Wow, reading comprehension fail.

[Fist of Etiquette]

You got out of my comment that I'm a fan of O'Reilly?

As someone just said to me, Colbert is funny and quick on his feet (albeit a liberal), but he's boxed in by his character more often than liberated by it. Topics tends to suffer.

[$park?]

You see FoE, this is what happens when someone like you tries to make a serious comment. You've been first with the snark for too long, pal.

[Fist of Etiquette]

You've been first with the snark for too long, pal.

How do you know that wasn't also snark? I'VE JUST OUT-SARCASMED YOU ALL, SUCKERS!

[Palin's Buttplug]

No, I didn't.

It is a comparison to O'Reilly. If you watch his video he says things even more ridiculous than Colbert - like the big decrease in violent crime is due to the incarceration of drug users.

Watch it and you will see that a "serious" conversation is nearly impossible when a wingnut is involved.

[Jordan]

Which is why he was talking about Colbert having a serious conversation, NOT O'REILLY YOU FUCKING ILLITERATE CRO MAGNON IDIOT.

[MP]

Topics tends to suffer

How is that? Because there's no serious dialog on a parody show? TDS interviews are setup to be a bit more on the serious side with some humor tossed in. TCR interviews are all about exaggeration and parody.

[Jordan]

How is that? Because there's no serious dialog on a parody show?

Yes. Colbert's interviews are insufferable. The fact that it's intentional doesn't make it less so. Don't have serious guests if the conversation is just going to be "HURR DURR LOOK HOW DUMB MY IDEOLOGICAL OPPONENTS ARE"

[MP]

Colbert's interviews are insufferable.

They're supposed to be. That's the whole schtick. That doesn't make it inherently funny. But it does mean that one can't criticize him for being non-serious. Non-funny maybe, but non-serious is completely missing the point.

[Emmerson Biggins]

If you think about it, it's kind of like talking to Tony or Shreek. They are so committed to, and limited by, their character, that it's mostly a waste of time after you've seen it happen one or two times.

[Lord Peter Wimsey]

Let's see...O'Reilly is occasionally right about some things, but wrong about pot (and much else).

Colbert is right about pot, but wrong (terribly fucking wrong) about virtually everything having to do with property rights, freedom of association, and capitalism.

So, according to Obama's Buttplug, I should think less of O'Reilly than Colbert? Nice try.

[Palin's Buttplug]

How is Colbert wrong on capitalism?

Link only please.

[StinkEye]

One out of three isn't bad..amirite? Lets focus on that.....

[Palin's Buttplug]

or the other two?

[Rasilio]

Wait, O'Reilly is not a capitalist or a conservative, what he is is a populist with a slight conservative streak that trends more towards the corporatist than the free market side of things.

I'm hardly an expert on his opinions because I can't stand to watch him long enough to figure out what they are but I have yet to see anything that I would have considered him to be correct on.

[Suthenboy]

Lord Whimsey....Obama's Buttplug intentionally distorts everything that he does not outright lie about. Pay no attention to the shit he says.

He regularly claims that we are all solid So-cons, republicans, or bush fans. He also claims that obama is a staunch defender of the second amendment.

In the universe he imagines himself to live in, up is down and black is white.

[ThatSkepticGuy]

It is when you're just as big, if not bigger, a gasbag than he is.

[Auric Demonocles]

Okay Nick, I know I spurned you yesterday, but I think I can give you 5 minutes for this...

[Auric Demonocles]

For a bit in the middle Colbert seemed legitimately aggressive.

But the things I really noticed were:

Nick was very agreeable to Colbert.

The hand under the table. What the fuck is that guy doing down there?

[generic Brand]

For a bit in the middle Colbert seemed legitimately aggressive.

This is what I noticed, and why I said last night on a different thread that I thought Nick seemed flustered. I don't know what he expected out of the exchange, but he only made a passing effort at driving home the message that legalized drugs, and pot specifically, are no danger.

In contrast, I listed to Colbert's interview with Cass Sustein later in the show (his scheduled guest) and the exchange was much more friendly. Colbert goes over the top on everything, but the strawmen arguments he puts up when he actually agrees on a topic are much easier to knock down then when he doesn't.

[wargames83]

What are you talking about? I am sure Colbert actually agrees with legalizing pot.

[darius404]

It's too late Auric, Nick's moved on. He has no more time for your "Will I, won't I?" BULLSHIT.

[Fist of Etiquette]

That needed to be a longer segment. It looked like it was edited a bit. Who was the big guest for the night? Was it Cass Sunstein?

Gillespie would be a good regular guest, if Colbert wants his character to spare with a libertarian.

[Mint Berry Crunch]

That was not as painful to sit through as the Bill Maher "Libertarians ruined libertarianism" clip, but I still really dislike the live audience format. I guess The Jacket did OK given what he had to work with.

[SaltySeaCaptain(LAOL)]

I'm waiting for a Gillespie article about how we need to "respect" and "understand" pot legalization opponents...just like how we are supposed to "respect and understand" the left and gun control asshats.

Like here: http://reason.com/blog/2013/04.....tarians-ha

and here: http://reason.com/archives/201.....sandy-hook

[Auric Demonocles]

Are you saying Sugarfree is an asshat?

[SugarFree]

Is it Shit on SugarFree Day? I'm getting it from all sides.

[$park?]

It's your own fault for missing the vote. I seem to recall it ended up being 5-3 in favor with 12,000 abstentions.

[SugarFree]

Dammit.

[Fist of Etiquette]

Speaking of votes, wasn't I your running mate briefly for moderator? Whatever happened to that? If you were a mod you wouldn't have to put up with this insolence, you know.

[SugarFree]

There was a coup behind the scenes, I think.

[Fist of Etiquette]

I can't stay mad at a coup.

[jesse.in.mb]

How is Shit on SugarFree Day different from any other day?

[Nikki makes the sign of a tsp]

Does that include from behind?

[Auric Demonocles]

And we've come full circle.

[Nikki makes the sign of a tsp]

Well NutraSweet thinks he can shit on me and then walk away, and he's wrong, is all I'm saying.

[SugarFree]

I'm the only one on your side, Nikki. And this is how you treat me.

[jesse.in.mb]

Are you also part of the Axis of Ho, SF?

[SugarFree]

My high school girlfriend was a squirter. I think I'm in the club.

[Auric Demonocles]

Hey, I'm not the one messing up the links.

[SaltySeaCaptain(LAOL)]

Ah, I just clicked on my links. I now get the SugarFree humor in this thread.

[Rasilio]

I hope it's not from a couple of black dudes cause regular Oreo's are bad enough but SugarFree ones would be a crime against nature

[Suthenboy]

Understanding for gun control asshats? Pot legalization opponents?

It is not complicated.

Anyone who wants to disarm you and keep guns for themselves, creating a monopoly on violence for themselves, does not have good intentions. That is a polite way of saying that they are thoroughly evil.

Some understanding can be had for those that are just plain ignorant. Some. With all of the examples in the world around us of the results of gun control, 'some' amounts to very little for me. There really is no excuse for the ignorance.

The same is true for pot. I am very suspicious of Nick's 7-8% number. Move the decimal one place to the right and most of my skepticism will disappear. ( I dont smoke the shit, but with few exceptions everyone I know does)

[MP]

Very enjoyable. But I still think at least once Nick should have responded to the "gateway" trope.

[StinkEye]

Orange flavored chewable aspirin was my "gateway drug", after those...it was all down hill for me.

[Jordan]

The bubble gum flavored antibiotics did it for me.

[StinkEye]

The years of concord grape Dimetapp cough syrup as a child, lead me straight to the Night train & MD 20/20

[Wind Rider]

Colbert does a wonderful job skewering the pro-prohibitionist position by taking it to the point of irrational absurdity - might have been nice if he hadn't steam rolled the Jacket's responses by moving quickly to the next point of ridicule. And it seemed to fluster Gillespie a bit.

[wareagle]

this is part of understanding the your own. The entirety of Colbert is parody; guests expecting to be taken seriously are fooling themselves.

[deified]

Well, that was a clusterfuck.

To be fair, Colbert's interviewing "technique" is just to throw dust in your face and piss on your shoes.

Dr. Gillespie would've been more at home in a seminar room talking about Samson Agonistes

Here's the 5-second pro-pot argument

Alcohol --} Wife-beating & homicide. Pot ---} Pizza & Aqua Teen Hunger Force marathon. Why are you in favor of Domestic Violence, Mr. Cole-burtt?

[mari d]

Nice job. I've been waiting for the Reason people to crack thru the Comedy Central glass ceiling for years; cool how Colbert helped out with the prison remark.

[Palin's Buttplug]

Yes, more 'Reason' appearances on CC please.

[Alack]

I'd love to see someone like de Rugy on The Daily Show to talk about entitlement reform. As great as The Alyona Show and Red Eye are, it just doesn't have the same audience.

[Hugh Akston]

It just seems odd to me that a network called "Comedy Central" would air two talk shows that are aggressively not funny.

Maybe that's the joke? Some kind of discursive metajoke that I'm not getting?

[Palin's Buttplug]

Or you have a tin ear for parody.

[Jordan]

Or the fact that something is a parody does not guarantee that it's funny.

[StinkEye]

"Or you have a tin ear for parody."

Or maybe just a tone deaf ear tired, alleged pseudo-intellectual bullshit PB. The leftist "parody bandwagon" shtick has been worn out and over booked to the point of being tedious. In a saturated niche, it's neither original nor funny. The same partisan hackery, all day every day on the stupid shit that only one side of the political coin does, might play well to the hivemind in the audience, but is distracting to the point of being ridiculous to anybody outside that group. A parody of a parody (way meta)of political hack, posing as some comedic blowhard might be slightly more amusing, and original for about one season...

[Cavpitalist]

It was parody right up until February 09. Ever since, it's been exactly what it was parodying.

When you're using your show to suck up to power to parody the guys who sucked up to power half a decade ago, it isn't really parody anymore.

[Rights-Minimalist Autocrat]

Colbert is like when they take an SNL skit and turn it into a movie. What was funny for five minutes isn't funny for 90 minutes. Only with Colbert, it's rapidly approaching 8 years.

[Legate Damar]

I still find Colbert's non-interview segments to be funny, but I will agree that if you've seen ~10 of his interviews, you've seen absolutely everything the last 10 minutes of his show has to offer.

Stewart was funny when "the wrong people" were in charge. If he's still around in 2016, I suspect he'll be funny again, but the doublethink is too strong in him to be of any value until then.

[$park?]

Yeah, Colbert's "interviews" are just exercises in stupidity. Stewart is a lefty but at least he still gets on other lefties hard when they do non-left things.

[Auric Demonocles]

I really like the first 20 minutes of his show. I used to watch it regularly, but would turn it off before the interview segment every time.

[Cavpitalist]

Stewart is a lefty but at least he still gets on other lefties hard when they do non-left things.

Very, very, VERY rarely. I wish bozell would waste some of his imminently wasteable time on a study of what percentage of Stewart's "satire" is aimed at one party vs. the other, to put an end to this insane "Stewart goes after both sides" nonsense. During the Demo convention last year, I think I saw one segment making fun of Democrats on the show all week, with about 8 or 9 making fun of Republicans. DURING their coverage of the demo convention.

I stopped watching the show sometime after that, but the most recent episode I saw, within the last month or two, had a segment mostly consisting of joking about Mitt's 47% comments, to finish a segment that BEGAN on something horrible Obama had done. No shit.

If GW Bush ran over a cat on the way to put out a burning orphanage, Stewart would skew it for 6 months. When Barack Obama kills teenage Americans and says they should have had a better father, he gets two incredulous statements without jokes in them, and then it's on to 10 minutes of Trump and Palin.

He's as intellectually lazy as anyone on television, which is really sad, because he actually used to be the best non-Russert interview on TV.

You can't claim that every criticism of a President is racism for 4 years, and then have the balls to criticize that President. John Stewart has proven that, beyond the shadow of a doubt.

[generic Brand]

He's as intellectually lazy as anyone on television, which is really sad, because he actually used to be the best non-Russert interview on TV.

^^This.

I stopped watching The Daily Show regularly after he had Jim Cramer on. Say what you will about Mad Money and the like-minded stock shows, but how does Jon Stewart have the audacity to suddenly become a serious interviewer when Jim Cramer of all people is on the show, and to go back to comedyesque interviews for every other guest INCLUDING the president of the United States after he'd been in charge for two or three years and the economy is still in the tank???

Fuck Jon Stewart with Bill Maher's diseased dick.

[Scarcity]

To add to that, his criticisms of Republicans are criticisms of content and ideas. He mocks their message and actions as either idiotic or evil.

His criticisms of Dems are almost always criticism of their inability to convey to the public what is a good and true message or their inability to outmaneuver those rascally Republicans.

That is, at worst the Dems are portrayed as bumbling good guys, while Repubs are all evil and/or stupid.

I tuned out several years ago, but my wife wanted to see his show leading up to the election. Since I'm usually on my own following politics in our house, I was happy to engage. Then I was no longer happy.

[Cavpitalist]

His criticisms of Dems are almost always criticism of their inability to convey to the public what is a good and true message or their inability to outmaneuver those rascally Republicans

I read my response after I posted it, and realized I forgot the most important part...but you just nailed it. Every fucking word of this. "Republicans are funny because they're stupid and evil. Democrats are funny because they don't achieve everything they want to."

I genuinely don't give a fuck about either party, I think I enjoy Republican tears more, honestly, but his show isn't any more credible or intelligently crafted than O'Reilly or the Fox morning show where the two retards and the blonde drink coffee and discuss what rumors they read on myspace.

[ThatSkepticGuy]

"When Barack Obama kills teenage Americans and says they should have had a better father, he gets two incredulous statements without jokes in them, and then it's on to 10 minutes of Trump and Palin."

Oh, but you forget his HARD-HITTING INTERVIEW with Obama.

"Now, Mr. President, we here at the Daily Show have a high standard of objectivity and journalistic integrity, so I'm gonna stard off with a hardball:
Would you prefer for me to blow or swallow?"

[ThatSkepticGuy]

"Stewart is a lefty but at least he still gets on other lefties hard when they do non-left things."

And that's exactly the problem. He refuses to ever acknowledge any wrongs enacted by Left Wing policies, but if someone steps a little too Right out of line, he'll jump all over them and then thumpg his chest abou how bi-partisan he is.

It's like Matt Damon whining that Obama's problem is that he isn't socialist ENJOUG. And then still voting for him anyway.

[ThatSkepticGuy]

*"ENOUGH"

[Zeb]

Or maybe some people find different things funny than you do.

The relentless team politics is annoying, but I think that Colbert executes it very well.

[FreedomRocks]

Too bad the schtick got in the way of letting Nick talk sensibly. Just another Cheech & Chong type characterization. I don't normally watch the show so maybe I don't get his act, but I do know that I hear many young "got my college degree but I'm working in a cubicle in a job I hate" folks quote him and Jon Stewart like people trusted Cronkite.

[mari d]

Its true; Colbert clips go viral very quickly, and this is a good way to get Nick in front of a new audience.

Colbert is supposed to be a parody of Bill O'Reilly. You go on the show knowing you'll be continually interrupted
with inanities but the exposure/pop culture cred is worth it.

[Palin's Buttplug]

True. There are many conservatives who post here that can't "see" the parody due to their similarity to the subject being mocked.

[wareagle]

maybe we expect parody to be funny. Sometimes Colbert is, sometimes not. Like most things, a little goes a long way so what was okay in small segments when he was on TDS becomes overload when it is the entire show.

[FreedomRocks]

Exactly. However, there are people out there calling themselves "intellectuals" because they have their indoctrination certificate from "higher education" that literally believe and repeat everything the guy says. Look at Maher, he's being taken seriously these days. They don't get that it's schtick.

[Zeb]

Part of the problem is that most supposedly serious interview shows are just schtick too. Just more cleverly disguised.

[Lord Peter Wimsey]

I thought Gillespie did a fantastic job. This is the thing he's really good at, and it is very necessary. And the format of the show makes it very hard to get any real discussion in, so kudos big-time.

Alas, the Colberts of the media allow Gillespie to talk about pot the way they allowed Ron Paul to criticize the Iraq war. What would happen if Gillespie were arguing for and end to the capital gains and inheritance taxes, for gun rights, or and end to compulsory schooling.

Then you'd see the Rachel Maddow come out of Colbert. The ass is the most likely exit hole.

[StinkEye]

True

[Alack]

My biggest disappointment was that, after the 'strung out on heroin' comment, Nick didn't immediately respond with "I'm really looking forward to it".

[Stormy Dragon]

Uggh, that was terrible. Nick's problem is that he was trying to have a serious discussion. If you want to have a serious discussion, don't agree to go on the Colbert Report. If you want to be on the Colbert Report, you have to learn how to make your point while being a cartoon version of yourself. Your opening line should have been, "Marijuana legalization is a distraction. The real issue here is why in the middle of flu season we're being denied the cough suppressing power of OTC heroin"

[Stormy Dragon]

Also, you should have responded to the protestation line should have been "well, your experiment with legalized media whoring has been going so well that I think it's time to consider expanding the program".

[FreedomRocks]

Nice. Mind if I write that down to use when the situation arises? Seriously that's good!

[mari d]

I doubt Colbert would let Nick get in a sentence of that length. I thought his initial "drunk or high?" line was really good.

Its impossible to "win" on Colbert if he disagrees with you; he has too many weapons at his disposal. The best strategy for those on the right is to look (or at least fake) like they're enjoying themselves and then hope the stoners help with viral.

[Troy muy grande boner]

Fuck. I missed Shit of Sugarfree Day? I thought it was tommorrow. So all that cabbage and roast beef I ate and that anal plug...... all for nothing. Shit.

[FreedomRocks]

I used to make part of my living writing comedy. Over the years I think that the "Cheech & Chong" characterizations have become "true" for people. Now it's hard to get it looked at seriously.

Often times being good-natured and allowing yourself to be the butt of jokes prevents people from taking you seriously. Sometimes you have to stand and say "enough of this! I'm not going to let you mischaracterize me just for humor."