Do you think Steven Colbert knows how much damage his program is causing America?

From: The Word: LetThem Buy Cake (S.9 : Ep. 34)

“Freedom isn’t free, so it’s logical that freedom of speech costs money. If you think about it, we wouldn’t have a budget problem if we’d been charging protestors all along. The government could have made a bundle off those hippies in Vietnam.”

I understand, and you, dear reader, understand, that Colbert is using the time-honored literary technique of satire.

But most people don’t. Really? Really. It’s called Confirmation Bias. Confirmation bias is a thing so real that it permeates this entire web site. It’s kind of what we do, as human beings.

History doesn’t record satire well. Sarcasm doesn’t cross language barriers cleanly. And Jonathan Swift never suggested the Irish really eat their babies. Or did he?

The point is that by producing hateful rhetoric, even though it’s well intended hateful rhetoric aimed to illustrate the logical end of the hateful rhetoric offered by the American political machine, is still hateful rhetoric.

If, like me, you believe that words have power, you will appreciate that hateful rhetoric with another aim is still hateful rhetoric. And if you don’t care about hokum like powerful words, then perhaps the sociologist in you will recognize that prolonged exposure to Colbert’s ratcheted-up level of hateful rhetoric only makes the real hateful rhetoric seem less hateful and easier to tolerate.

I recognize the potential for rampant hypocrisy in my desire for Colbert to stop doing his Colbert thing; I understand that hateful rhetoric is a freedom that my beloved freedom of speech protects.

But I do believe, dear friend, that the world would be better if Colbert retired the Colbert act, and delivered his otherwise reasonable message to the hate-spewing masses via a strait-forward method. Every day he goes on spewing hateful rhetoric, even ironically, is another day too many.

There is enough hateful rhetoric in the world. Lets deal with that at face-value. Fighting fire with fire only surrounds the rest of us in a fire fight.

I'm really looking forward to Web414 tonight-- I don't think there are any plans to webcast it, so you should definitely come by.
At first I didn't think we'd need to have a meeting so close on the heels of a virtuous and successful BarCampMilwaukee, but in retrospect, now I'm glad for the chance to get together with the gang and breakdown the BarCampMK3 experience. I just hope we're far enough removed from it so that we can realistically assess what total failures we all are. Things like Freely exchanging ideas and inspirations and building on one another's passions are great and all, right, but will they feed a hungry orphan? Will the turn a frown upside down? Will they translate sarcasm across a textual experience? No. Of course they won't. I propose that BarCamps, in and off themselves, are for wankers. And that, when it comes right down to it, at the end of the day, we're all wankers.

The thing is, we're still int he Barcamp Honeymoon phase, right? After every Barcamp that I've been involved in, there is this period for a couple of weeks afterward that everybody is really high on the BarCamp experience and wants to do stuff and get thigns done and "hold a barcamp every three months," and stuff.

Here's a far-be-it-from-inclusive list of post BarCampMilwaukee Three Projects that have been launched in the not-quite-four-days since BarcampMK3 ended:

• WriteCamp (Reboot)
• Cook/FoodCamp
• A Sex With Ashe podcast
• Justin's iCal for next year that doesn't have anything on it.

Will these things grow and evolve into THE NEXT BIG THING?
Fortunately, and so far, we've been able to stave off any kind kind of wide-spread excitement or passion for these projects. I'm proud to think that by really hanging on to our bitter disappointment and selfishness, we can probably continue to stave off doing interesting, intelligent things together in favor of a bleak post-McCain election depressive episode. We wouldn't want to make the world a better place. Shit. Can't let that happen.

I, hereby promise that I will make it my life goal to prevent meaningful communication, effectively stamping out meeting, talking, sharing ideas, and inspiring change. And it is for this reason that I am looking forward to Web414 tonight. For the good of the nation, Web414, If it is my job to be the urine stream in your open-source wikiflakes, a urine stream I shall be.