Newsweek on notice

I don’t disagree with Newsweek’s contention that Stephen Colbert of The Colbert Report is “the age's semiofficial pundit,” and I’ll even grant that it’s probably intentional that they did up the fake pundit like David Strathairn-as-Edward-R.-Murrow -- you know, a sort of endlessly regressive commentary on the state of journalism today, where filmmaker George Clooney, who was in Attack of the Killer Tomatoes, is now a reasonable voice to scold modern journalists for being such wooses, which is what allows Colbert to thrive as semiofficial pundit in the first place.

But clearly Newsweek misses the irony that it’s because of its own cowardice and that of its fellow mainstream outlets that Colbert’s satire thrives. There’s no hint whatsoever in the piece about Colbert that anything that Newsweek has done or hasn’t done might have some connection to Colbert’s success. In fact, there’s a huge bubble of cluelessness at work here about the state of culture -- pop and otherwise -- as people under 50 or so see it today. Check this:

Colbert can access the most offbeat information in a nanosecond. When he interviewed Colorado Rep. Mark Udall, Colbert asked him about his three failed attempts to climb Mount Everest. Colbert: "Don't take this the wrong way, but doesn't that make you a quitter?" Udall: "I don't think the Q word applies to me. Maybe the L word." Colbert, seriously and instantly: "You do know the L word is 'lesbian'."

Is Newsweek serious? That “the L word” means “lesbian” is a tidbit of trivia so obscure and distantly removed from the awareness of decent folk that it’s worth noting? Who is Newsweek’s audience, unfrozen cavemen living in secret government laboratories cut off from all outside information? Anybody watching Colbert is plugged into pop culture enough to be aware of the Showtime series, even if they’ve never seen it.

They really don’t get it, do they?