Colbert on the Flotilla, Michael Oren as guest
Michael Oren on Israel’s loosening of restrictions on food: “We were not feeling obliged to provide Gaza with snack food.” He also asserts that the Turks were “hired thugs.” I think this is what the Twitterverse is calling “Hasbaracalypse.”
| The Colbert Report | Mon – Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c | |||
| Formidable Opponent – Michael Oren | ||||
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Watch it through. The best part happens at the very end of the interview, where in a brilliant rhetorical twist, Colbert invokes the Palestinian right of return. The look on Oren’s face is priceless.
Eli, that’s not really how I saw it at all. I can see how you might interpret it that way, but it’s not at all obvious that your take is how either Colbert or Oren interpreted it.
I agree with ML that it didn’t seem to be a reference to the right of return, but I agree with Eli that it’s brilliant and priceless anyway.
I can see how one may see it as not intentional, but I gotta agree with Eli on this one…
I also thought Oren came off like a used car salesman more than ever
While I agree that Colbert might be unaware of the fact that many Palestinians were ethnically cleansed from what is now Israel; I’m quite sure Oren is familiar with that history, and both the mannerisms and verbiage of his response demonstrated as much.
I think Colbert knew exactly what he was doing. He is one smart cookie.
I thought Oren was grimacing at the idea of “transfer” (טרנספר), i.e. kicking the Palestinians out of Israel/Palestine.
(Grimacing, in particular, at the possibility of appearing to support it on TV.)
BZ, I thought Oren was uncomfortable at the implied idea of kicking the Palestinians out as well.
What percentage of Colbert’s viewers would have linked the end of the interview to the right of return issue? Remember, most people don’t follow the ins and outs of the conflict as much as people commenting here.
ML,
Suggesting Palestinians should “go back to where they came from” doesn’t rightly imply kicking them out, but rather letting them back in. Perhaps you’ve been mislead by the “land without a people” propaganda, but Palestinians are largely descended from people who lived in the region since pre-Biblical times, many of their ancestors having been Jews themselves.
kyleb, maybe he meant, go back to being jewish??
kyleb writes:
Suggesting Palestinians should “go back to where they came from” doesn’t rightly imply kicking them out, but rather letting them back in. Perhaps you’ve been mislead by the “land without a people” propaganda, but Palestinians are largely descended from people who lived in the region since pre-Biblical times
That’s true if you know the first thing about the Palestinians, but I thought the joke was supposed to that Colbert’s character was ignorant of this history; this would be consistent with Colbert’s character in general.
ML writes:
What percentage of Colbert’s viewers would have linked the end of the interview to the right of return issue? Remember, most people don’t follow the ins and outs of the conflict as much as people commenting here.
Right. The “transfer” interpretation is more in keeping with Occam’s Razor than the “right of return” interpretation.
BZ-You’re one step behind Colbert. Yes, the joke is that the character is ignorant of the history, but Colbert himself is not. Much like Sasha Baron Cohen, much of the humor comes from his intentionally pretending to be ignorant in a particular way, so that his guest lets his guard down and commits a faux pas. Oren didn’t fall for it. He got it-hence the expression. But it was a brilliant move on Colbert’s part, whether the majority of his audience got it or not.
yo! dis is my main man professor norman chomsky.