He takes a lie detector test to find out who he really is.
It is clear from this field piece that he has adopted a lot of the features of the field pieces from his old show. One thing I noted is that his hair now is a lot less slicked down than it used to be. On his old show, it used to be so creamed up as to be shiny. The fact that it is no longer so suggests that he felt that look was necessary for the conservative doofus that he portrayed.
We are all the masks we wear -- except we are also not. (As an ancient Greek saying /proverb / truism notes. **)
We put on masks and become the mask.
We are also all individuals. (“I’m not”*)
Colbert is no exception. He’s like Dame Edna/ Sir Les Patterson / Barry Humphries. But paradoxically himself all the same.
(Which shits me coz he ain’t Letterman quite and I loved watching Letterman’s show as that partic other “Letterman” character. But Colbert’s good too so ..Anyhow yep.)
Because he’s a performance character. And simultaneously himself.
As we all to greater to lesser or degrees are. Probably. Dunno.
But he’s bloody good in any case.
* See Monty Python :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVygqjyS4CA
** Oikos? Nah, that’s “world” or “home” or both. Something else that is at the back of my messed up brain. But powerful and a good reference if I could only recall what precisely it refers to ..
It an we and he is always more complicated than seems.
Me : I’m Dan Kelly :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=37VH-rmS1hg
Except I’m not,..
I’m just me but I;m also not. Really.
But wish I were this :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KF8bGYks-bk
Ty to be that even.
Thinking true selves & admittedly off topic :
On the current horrors going on in Israel and Palestine .. Jerusalem and Gaza and Bethlehem and Nablus and Hebron and … Well, actually those horrors are not that “current” at all really but just yet another continuation, yet another round in a terribly rusty blood red cycle of people killing people because they’ve stopped seeing those people as people.
Terrorism is wrong, the Occupation and Settlements are wrong, pretty much everything both sides are doing to each other and saying about each other is wrong and neither side is willing to admit the clear fact that so much of what they say and do and seek to do is wrong. Both sides refuse to treat the other as something other than just the “Other”.
There’s two groups with long histories in the area and long histories of inflicting torment and misery and hell upon each other over and over and over since I was a kid and the first Intifada raged and I heard on the news that 800 people had been killed and no one seemed to care.
The violence and killing needs to stop. The Occupation and settlements and brutality needs to stop and most of all the hatred and refusal to see the humanity of the other side needs to stop.
The Palestinians have a right to defend themselves. The Jewish people have the right to live in a place of their own where they have a long historical indigenous presence. The Israelis need to be free of the Occupation and the harm it has wrought on their society. The Palestinians need to have security and peace and an end to the constant war against their state. The Israelis need to stop brain washing their children into (not really) thinking (more just feeling the seething acid of endless propagandist hate) the Palestinians are monsters – oh and, vice versa, for all of these.
Neither are monsters or demons or angels or anything but what precisely each very specifically and collectively is (and each is a mass of often counterposed individuals who are frequently exceptions to their general cultural rule) and has forced itself and the other to be through history, ideology, claim and counter claim and most of all the religious fervent dehumanisation in a land where God or Asimov’s unguided Psychohistory or sheer bloody chance grew and developed them both in mutual slow despairing self destruction.
I and others cannot end their conflict or hatred for them, each side , all sides here, has to do it themselves and realise this and change. Has to sit down and learn to share and see that they are sisters before they commit (mutual or singular) fratricide on a genocidal scale.
I ask, no beg, them all to think and question and empathise with each other and stop what they are doing so far because it has not and cannot work for them and sit down and talk and be kind to one another. After all they share a land, share so much really including the torment of having to suffer all that each has inflicted at the hands of the other. They share pain and fear and sorrow and threats of genocide and wars and sweat and tears and even a common supposedly merciful forgiving god. Most of all they share humanity. They just don’t seem to be able to accept that yet. Their mutual tragedy.
***
Believe it or not that is what I really think. I can and over the years I have argued both sides here. First too much one way then too much t’other. In part, because I felt obliged to make amends for the one on learning the other side. In part because you once you’re bloody arguing, well, you’re in a bloody argument aren’t you? In part because it didn’t think that other side was getting a fair go on the blogs where I argued them going back to the good old Bad Astronomy (Phil Plaits original and best -- well, second time round) blog days where I went by a number of nymns before settling on one and even before that to the years when I argued on the old Darwin Awards forums as “Mungascr” (after the cat that owned me then)for the side opposite my current one. Or most recent one. I am on Team Human(e). Or I try to be anyhow. Believe it or not.