During my vacation I watched a lot of Comedy Central so I was completely aware of Stephen Colbert's speech at the White House Correspondents' Dinner. I don't have cable at home and my mom has satellite at the lake, I usually catch clips of the Daily Show online when I can, it was mentioned on there and I did catch the Colbert Report after it. Yesterday I watched the speech in its entirety. I have to admit that I liked it but I didn't find it completely funny. I mostly don't always find Stephen Colbert funny but I also understand that he has a particular style of humor that only partially appeals to me. I can respect that though. What I can also respect is that Stephen Colbert recoined the word "truthiness" in a way that I find absolutely amazing. The audience at the press dinner was not roaring with laughter either, but on the other hand, was Colbert really speaking to the audience in the room? The way that his speech has filtered through the blogosphere has deemed it monumental, which makes you wonder if his intent was for the larger public audience. Even if that wasn't the intent, the way that it has been perceived online is another testament to the power of people on the internet.
If you doubt how monumental the speech actually was, check out the wikipedia entry on Truthiness. Since I'm not a regular viewer of the Colbert Report I did not realize that he recoined the word on the first episode on his show. I was also not aware that the American Dialect Society announced that "truthiness" was the Word of the Year earlier this year. Truthiness is also described and defined in the regards to the James Frey issue. It is an interesting concept and discussion, also very relevant to the political waters these days.
technorati tags: truthiness, the_colbert_report, stephen_colbert, the_daily_show, comedy_central, wikipedia, james_frey, american_dialect_society
