I like many others have gotten caught up in the ongoing and perpetually developing story behind the virally trending #CancelColbert. It seems that this story has officially hit some form an apex over the weekend. Stephen Colbert issued a statement essentially washing his hands of the out of context satire and Suey Park, #CancelColbert's creator, has finally been been quoted as saying that she does in fact enjoy The Colbert Report and does not really want it cancelled. While this seems to be a relatively painless resolution to an incendiary situation on both sides, this hasn't resolved a much larger issue: we now not only accept but encourage our public discourse to restrain itself to 140 characters or less.
With the ever shrinking attention span of the generations consuming new media, we've found ways to encapsulate communication into bite sized snippets that usually include some tooling around with common and informal abbreviations just to satisfy the necessity of brevity. This style of communication was reserved for personal messages often being utilized by a younger audience that can't be bothered to type out the entirety of "be right back". I've used them, both of my parents who are pushing 70 this year use them, and if you haven't then you will find yourself reduced to a form of illiteracy when trying to decipher any sort of New Media hub. Unfortunately, it is becoming increasingly apparent that those who have become accustomed to using these New Media vehicles have found themselves unable to communicate and rouse debate in a more thought out, structured, and intelligent format. This is what eventually leads to a well-known and respected figure in the liberal media being burned at the stake by his own demographic.
Looking back over the entirety this whole firestorm, some aspects of this incident become unsettling apparent. Most notably so is the fact that Ms. Park's tweet has garnered far more attention than her article for Time magazine. Similarly, that acting in an outrageous and disproportionate way is seen as an effective and accepted method to convey a message. Ms. Park who has often times assumed a tone I would hear in a Politics of Gender and Race course, has cited to Kanye West as the model on which she bases the tone of her message. This is the same "artist" that wrote such insightful and poetic lyrics as "Eatin' Asian p****, all I need was sweet and sour sauce", is being modeled as an effective means to spark conversation about racism in our culture.
The chaos that insued was disgusting, Colbert supporters showed up in various shades of outraged. Some Twitter users just took this as an opportunity to take tasteless shots at Park and her followers. Park's own camp fed off of this conflict and it transitioned from Colbert and an accusation of racism to Park and company versus the Twitter masses. Ultimately, between the retweets and the guest appearances (such as The Walking Dead actor Steve Yeun who respectfully disagreed with Park and suggested they talk about the situation), the name Suey Park was repeated, often, and #CancelColbert has lived out its short stint in the Twitter spotlight.
Far be it from me to critique Park's methods, within the span of a few days she had thousands of followers clamoring for…well, something. Park claims she was "perform[ing] crazy to point out exactly what's expected from me." Apparently this means that instead of chastizing and reprimanding Colbert for the use of "racist comedy in a satire of racism", as she has mentioned was her point in her Time article, she took to Twitter with a call to arms and ultimately brought herself more criticism and vitriol than if she had acted in a rational and professional manner. Her own message was buried under racist antagonists and those misunderstanding the larger issue, due in equal part to the fact she tailored her message to Twitter and subsequently chose to hold the resulting debate amidst a community that is both young and shamelessly cruel. Had she chosen an old media outlet to start this conversation, the reaction wouldn't be so fierce and she wouldn't be able to use the ignorant Twitter bullies to further her own point. But then again, Park has said that this movement is largely based on the amount of free time she has and maybe Twitter provided an opportunity to fill a large timeslot in her agenda. This of course all comes at the expense of Stephen Colbert who has been an consistent advocate for equality throughout the years, but that's a moot point because it does not directly benefit Park's nearsighted clamoring to have her cause and her name retweeted.
In his New Yorker article, Jay Caspian King provides both critique and support to Park's message and the way she conveys that message. He notes the informality and subsequent irresponsibility of holding substantive debate in an arena of abbreviations and irreverence but ultimately cedes that this could represent a new "form of protest". As someone who is closer to Park's age than Kings, I truly hope this is not the case. These "protests" quickly shirk their original intentions and take on a life of their own as we saw was the case here. This weekend-long crisis spun first into martyrdom and then a tweet sized slice of celebrity for Park and deservedly, a blind-eye from Colbert who most likely realized that there is simply nothing to gain by holding this debate in the realm of social media. To think that this is now what satisfies a protest is ridiculous. This has been case in point for the shallow nature of "Hashtag activism", often times the only thing still resonating with the audience is the "activist's" name. While it would seem contradictory and even self-defeating to target someone who has been an ally to your cause, I must not have asked myself the question that Park and every other Twitter based protester surely asked themselves. WWYD, what would Yeezus do?
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