About half a year
after the New York Times did, the Colbert
Report on Comedy Central attack the folk of “Free Keene” (a
one-town offshot of sorts of New Hampshire’s wider Free
State Project, though I’m sure FSP folk are quite glad that
this segment doesn’t mention the larger project specifically).
It’s a typical Colbert punchdown against anyone of a
perceived lower social status than their audience who dares have
opinions outside their pat-themselves-on-the-back herd.
It includes editing the footage in ways deliberately intended to
make it seem as if their subjects are at best amiable goofballs
without professional soundbite media training and with mockable
appearance (one Free Keener is called by them “the Afrochist” for
calling himself an anarchist while sporting an impressively huge
‘fro) and at worst are literally shooting themselves in the foot,
as an added sound effect to a shot of Free Keener Chris Cantwell
putting his gun on his belt wackily implies he did that in front of
a camera.
To boot, hardly anyone watches Free Keeners YouTube videos!
Neeeeeeerrrrrrdddddsssss!!!
While mocking the notion of “iron fists of authority” in Keene
with portentous editing and sound effects, the Colbert team focus
on the most newsworthy element of the Free Keeners: their practice
of paying parking meters before they expire to deny the city ticket
revenue, and filming and harassing parking enforcement officers
while doing so.
The voiceover asks “why doesn’t anyone stop them?” Colbert’s
comic-news editors don’t deign to mention that in fact the city
hired a private investigator to harass the Free Keeners, and
twice tried to sue them, over their acts of bothering meter
maids. (They get an Iraq vet who quit his job as a parking enforcer
over being bugged by Free Keeners to say that it was a really tough
question as to which gig was worse.)
Colbert’s people conclude that the Free Keeners are “huge
douchebags.” As I wrote about the New York Times but it
applies to Colbert as well:
To the Times’ mentality, filming or speaking
to people with the legal power to fine and arrest is far more
declasse and objectionable than fining and arresting over what you
drink, smoke, or how long a car is parked.
The Free Keene website took it well—better than I’m
taking it!—commenting that “It took months for the Colbert
Report to air the footage they shot back in June, but it
was worth the wait. As expected, they skewered us pretty well!
Here’s the hilarious
report on Robin Hood of
Keene & Free
Keene that aired last night on Colbert.”
And heeeeeere’s Colbert:
from Hit & Run http://ift.tt/1uZarEm
via IFTTT