Stephen Colbert used the plight of Palestinians as the butt of a joke. Why doesn’t anyone know about this?
Last week, Wendy Williams faced criticism for the way she began a segment on her show about Swavy Miller, who was murdered in a senseless act of gun violence. Williams spoke dismissively of the TikTok star, comparing his follower count to her own. She spoke of him in such a way as to imply he had done something negative or questionable. However, she then shocked her live audience in revealing to them that Miller was killed just four days prior.
Since then, Williams has been blasted on social media and in the news, with outlets across the political spectrum covering this — including Fox News, The Metro and The Sun. On Twitter, three days ago when I wrote this, there were 920 tweets about Williams in a single hour.
She was being (rightfully) called out for having a truly callous attitude towards someone’s needless and tragic death. And I’m glad. Making light of murder, especially as a result of gun violence, makes no sense, much less using backhanded insults about Miller’s popularity or lack thereof (despite the fact that he had 2.5 million followers on TikTok).
But what frustrates me is that she’s not the only one to be insensitive about issues that are not and have never been a laughing matter. Yet no one is talking about something similar that happened one week prior.
Stephen Colbert did the reverse of what Wendy Williams did. Instead of using so-called humour as a poorly thought out segue into something serious, Colbert used his own silence on the Israel-Palestine conflict as a lead-in to a bawdy joke.
I’m not going to put words in his mouth. This is what he said, verbatim, and you can find the video of him saying it here:
“I want to change gears here, uh, for a moment — um, you know, as I said at the top of this show, I take this job very seriously, and it’s a responsibility and a privilege, and for too long, I have been silent about the generational conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. Well, that ends tonight, as I, Stephen Colbert, can now say with complete conviction — oh my God, it’s the Emergency Meanwhile system!”
Colbert then launches into a news story about a man who broke his penis. It is, of course, littered with dick jokes, and it’s made clear that his mention of this conflict is simply a lead-in to the final joke of his monologue. The plight of Palestinians was used needlessly without any justifiable reason as the butt of a bad joke — and somehow, no one talked about it.
To recap, a little under two months ago, Israel maintained a brutal onslaught against Palestinians during the month of Ramadan. They stormed the al-Aqsa mosque (the third holiest site in Islam) and bombed entire buildings, including the headquarters for Al Jazeera and the Associated Press and residential buildings. The casualties reported were devastating, and Israel has continued to do air raids on Gaza, with one last weekend.
The conflict is and continues to be so obviously asymmetric in terms of Israel and Palestine’s respective military and financial capabilities. You’d think therefore that Colbert would have spoken out about it. After all, he may be a comedian, but he’s commented at length on political issues. Instead, until now, Colbert has remained largely silent (except for one cartoon video that — to my knowledge — didn’t involve Colbert himself).
And honestly? I wish he’d stayed silent.
I don’t say this lightly. I believe strongly that silence is complicity, that to watch the flames of hatred and not try to put it out is bad enough — but worse than that is pouring petrol on those flames and making things worse. That is exactly what Colbert has done. And even worse, no one even seems to know about it.
I tweeted about this at the time, and a friend on Twitter reached out to ask what Stephen had done, because she couldn’t find anything when Googling.
It’s been a week since then, and I’ve been searching in vain for an op-ed, or even just a recap or a mention of Colbert saying this. I’d settle for acknowledgement that this was said at this point, not even outright criticism, but no outlets have reported on it. This has even slipped under the radar of the left-wing outlets like The Young Turks, which I like very much. They often report on the likes of grifters like Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens, but when it’s essentially someone closer to home— nothing. Crickets.
Same with Twitter. The number of tweets about this after a whole week is a grand total of six, not including my own. Doesn’t that say something about how certain people can slip under the radar somehow? Compared to Wendy Williams, who has been dragged extensively by social media just in the past day, Colbert barely has a dent on his reputation despite this happening a week ago.
I’m not under any illusions about Stephen Colbert. I know he’s not exactly the bastion for progressive politics. But he’s also not apolitical. He’s spent the past four years mocking Donald Trump in increasingly political and often well-aimed criticisms. And if we want to take a leaf out of Wendy’s book and compare followings, she has 1.4 million followers on Twitter. Colbert, meanwhile, has over 14 million, which means his platform is bigger and more far-reaching than Williams. Yet the attention she got is disproportional in comparison.
And I’m not shallow enough to think that numbers are the only thing that matter. Clearly other factors play into it. But this is about a man who has an enormous amount of privilege that means his shitty behaviour goes virtually unnoticed, while the behaviour of another talk show host is the talk of the internet long after she screwed up.
This is also about a network that somehow green-lighted a segment that literally prioritises laughing at a man breaking his penis over the settler colonialism and loss of life, livelihood and hope for well over double my lifetime. This is about a man who either decided on this joke himself, or who looked at it on his teleprompter and thought, “Yes, this is a great idea”.
Williams and Colbert are just as much in the wrong. The question is — why isn’t there even a tenth of the backlash against Williams against Colbert, too?
The answer is in Colbert’s very segue that has fallen under social media’s radar. Colbert talks about how his job is a “privilege” — encapsulating why he hasn’t faced the same level of negativity. Colbert is one of many white men who host late night shows. His privilege no doubt factored into him climbing the ranks as a talk show host, and he’s made a name for himself mocking another privileged white man. He’s admired by many simply for doing the absolute bare minimum, in terms of recognising his privilege and speaking about issues in politics that are relevant to Americans, like gun control and Black Lives Matter. He’s put on a pedestal for doing these things, and so he’s not seen as being capable of malice or purposeful attacks in bad faith . From what I can tell, he’s not seen as the default bad guy — more like the one who can do a good impression of the default bad guy.
But I’m seriously questioning that. There’s no way of spinning this to be a gaffe or a joke made in good faith or with gallows humour. And right now, like Colbert has done, I just want people to do the bare minimum of talking about it.
Accountability isn’t reserved for a selected few people — talk show hosts should have standards too, and so should we.
