It's CB's "Ridicule" thread that brought me back here; because many Objectivists that really find Colbert's skit offensive. I can take a little bit of good-natured, humorous ribbing (ridicule). It's an effective way to get a point across. I tend not to appreciate it, though, when it's a complete misrepresentation rather than an exaggeration. Colbert is quite effective at what he does. I think part of it is that he has a schtick in which his exaggeration and misrepresentation is so close to the real thing that it's difficult to tell it from the real thing. His other skill is his quickness of presentation that allows him to machine-gun spray you with enough of these exaggerations and misrepresentations that you don't get a chance to think any of them through, but just respond emotionally to them.
In the Rand skit he did there were a number of things, in retrospect, that I recall. In reverse chronology they are:
4) There's the line, toward the end, that is cute in it's truthfulness and adult (parental) concern for the children getting enough sleep. Being that close to the end of the skit, it's the one that piques the persistence of cognition.
Go to sleep, go to sleep, it's in your rational self-interest.
It brings to mind the battles that parents have in getting young-uns to bed; and provides a perspective of how the childless Rand may have dealt with the situation. It's in stark contrast to the reality that parents resort to; illustrated by the humor of someone like Bill Cosby:
We've put 1,000 black, poisonous snakes around your crib; and if you so much as put a toe outside, they'll bite it and you'll swell up and be dead until morning
3) There's that middle part, which amounts to a misrepresentation of Rand's philosophy:
Jimmy, are you sharing a cookie?
What did I tell you about sharing; it rewards the weak.
And, I don't know about the rest of you, but I laughed at it when I viewed it in realtime. In retrospect, when you come back to look at it in depth, you find that it really is a misrepresentation. But, when you go through it in realtime, there's no time to think about it because, before you do, he's hit you with the rational self-interest of sleep.
2) There's the sequence in which Colbert is portraying himself as a Objectivist aficionado who is spreading the Word:
It’s my fifth annual Steven Colbert Objectivist children sleepover; when ten lucky inner city youths and I spend the night studying the radical individualistic philosophy of Ayn Rand
I find it amusing; because it's the manner in which other schools of indoctrinary thought typically move - get them while they're young and before they start thinking to any great degree ... while the indoctrination is easy.
But, really, isn't the charity aspect of this in direct contradiction to the point he raises in #3 above (I'm here to help the weak who won't otherwise help themselves)?
1) The opening reading of an except of Rand's work reminded me of "Three Men and a Baby"; that scence where the Tom Selleck character was reading a review of a violent boxing match to the baby:
[Peter is reading the review of a boxing match to Mary]
Michael Kellam: Peter! You can't read that to her!
Peter Mitchell: It doesn't matter what I read, it's the tone of voice I use. She doesn't understand the words anyway. Now where were we?
