Dustin Gandof
In recent years, Stephen Colbert has become one of the most vocal critics of Fox News. This week, he gleefully added to his long list of jabs at the right-wing channel with the snarky “Fox News is freaking out!” segment on his show, The Colbert Report.
The cause of Colbert’s ire appears to be Fox News’ latest “freak out” over President Obama’s recently proposed budget cuts. Although the proposed cuts are not particularly extreme, Fox News and its commentators virtually exploded with outrage. This, of course, was not lost on Colbert, who gleefully ridiculed the incensed overreaction of the network’s hosts and pundits.
In typical Colbert fashion, the segment was full of biting satirical barbs and sardonic quips. For example, he said, “I’m here to report that President Obama is taking our country in a dangerous new direction, the kind of bold direction that all the way back in late January, the American people voted for out of the sheer insanity of repeating the same mistakes we made for the last eight years.”
Colbert went on to take particular aim at Fox News for its habit of stoking fear and paranoia about the Obama administration’s policies. He said, “Fox News has reported, with breathtaking amounts of totally unprepared-for truthiness and size, that our government is ‘stealing from the future’ and ‘raping the Constitution.’ What they are forgetting to mention is that it’s not the President taking all these budget-cutting measures; these cuts were already proposed by Congress, who, I should note, is dominated by the same Republicans who are now freaking out!”
The segment was certainly a refreshing tongue-in-cheek take on the absurdities unleashed by Fox News and its hyper-partisan outrage machine. The audience seemed to be quite taken by Colbert’s lighthearted skewering of Fox News, and the applause at the end of the segment was especially indicative of the crowd’s appreciation.
All in all, Stephen Colbert’s latest segment on Fox News was vintage Colbert, and certainly one of the funniest criticisms of Fox News’s latest outburst of status hysteria. Whether or not Fox News’ fluster is warranted may be up for debate, but one thing is certain: Colbert is not particularly sympathetic towards their plight.
