A piece from the Columbia Journalism Review says the successes of Breitbart Senior editor MILO and President-elect Donald Trump are a response to late-night comedians like Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, who are notorious for attacking opponents of progressive America.
Lee Siegel of the Columbia Journalism Review suggests that Breitbart Senior editor MILO is a response to the late-night comedians who have made careers out of attacking conservatives and libertarians. Siegel adds that MILO represents the “dark, twisted underside” of the persona that Colbert adopted for his late-night program. The Columbia Journalism Review is the first mainstream outlet to declare MILO as the right’s response to satirists like Stewart and Colbert.
Yes, in the darkest days of the Bush years, they were sources of therapy, catharsis, and occasional illumination. But they were mining the same vein of contempt for reality as their counterparts on the other side. Just as the far right learned some tactical lessons from the 1960s’ countercultural left, the crew at Breitbart et al. learned some lessons from the two erstwhile prophets of Comedy Central. Breitbart creation Milos Yiannopoulos’s “Dangerous Faggot” is the dark, twisted underside of Colbert’s creation of the type of bullying, autocratic persona that would be perfectly at home at Breitbart.
The column mentions an op-ed written by Trevor Noah, the current host of The Daily Show, which details Noah’s concerns that the show’s audience expected him to “attack, crush, demolish, and destroy” opponents of American progressivism.
Siegel argues that because Stewart and Colbert weren’t producing their shows for the “good of the republic,” but rather the to bring in revenue for Comedy Central, the product that they offered was tainted by a sense of commercialism and celebrity. He suggests that Donald Trump, as a former reality television star, benefitted politically from the same sense of celebrity enjoyed by the likes of Stewart and Colbert.
Siegel concludes, in a sentiment that mirrors Andrew Breitbart’s theme that “politics is downstream from culture,” by suggesting that culture is the door by which bad politics can enter the American landscape. Siegel argues that the media must sacrifice “readership and profit” for the sake of protecting the American political landscape.
Tom Ciccotta is a libertarian who writes about Free Speech and Intellectual Diversity for Breitbart. You can follow him on Twitter @tciccotta or email him at tciccotta@breitbart.com
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