TVSquad

People can be conservative and still find Rush and O'Reilly and Savage and Oprah and Stern to just be guys doing a gig. They're entertainers. I don't know Colbert's real ideology (does he really practice Catholicism privately...scary thought), but I do know his character is amusing. Just as Savage, O'Reilly and Stewart are all amusing entertainers. What they have to say isn't important as they're JUST entertainers; they've found a niche to make money. Nothing more.

"I don't know Colbert's real ideology"

He was on NPR once and he repeatedly stated he was a liberal. Why the fuck is a catholic being liberal scary?

@YouFaceTheTick

The difference is that liberals and other sane people understand that Colbert, Stewart, etc are entertainers. It's the Fox News devotees who take everything Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and Bill O'Reilly say seriously. Remember, these are the same people who thought Sarah Palin was a fantastic choice to be a heartbeat away from the presidency. They are also the same people who failed to look up the meaning of the word teabagging before having teabag parties.

Colbert can say whatever he wants on NPR - he could still be in character. Hell Christian Bales does interviews with an American accent and he did one on NPR; when the reviewer asked if he was still acting he said he was trying to sell a movie. It's not like Stern or Limbaugh breaks character when either one appears in print or in an interview.

As for the catholic comment - I just wonder if the real Colbert believes in the whole church thing. That's not to say a liberal or conservative can't believe in fairy tales.

There's a whole blog out there just about TV SHOWS?? I guess we must've cured that pesky cancer already, eh?

/sarcasm

Wow Bruce, tell us how you really feel, maybe try switching to decaf. I love how if someone believes homosexuality is wrong, then they are a bigot. I have every right to believe that it is a lifestyle choice like alcoholism, and not genetic like race, that doesn't make me a bigot, it just means I have a different worldview then you, and that is my right (at least for now, in this country). Also the separation of church and state was not formed to protect the government from the church, but to protect the church from the government. The early founders of this country were for the most part religious moral people. If there had been more morality on Wall Street instead of greed, this country would not be in the place it is in now. Also if you look at the classification of the belief system that makes up a religion, yourself and those share your views, in a sense have become your own religion, and have no more right then Christians to force your beliefs on the rest of us.

So if there needs to be a 100-mile demilitarized zone between government and Christianity, that fence better go both ways, and be a 100-mile demilitarized zone between your type of views and the government.

Eric:

"I love how if someone believes homosexuality is wrong, then they are a bigot."

That's like saying it's okay for you to believe people with high melanin content in their skin such that it is a dark brown hue are immoral, but that doesn't make you a bigot. Or to put it another way, it's like saying "I don't dislike black people, I just dislike black skin." No reasonable person would actually buy into that attempt at distinguishing bigotry from personal preference.

"I have every right to believe that [homosexuality] is a lifestyle choice like alcoholism, and not genetic like race, that doesn't make me a bigot..."

I don't believe people have the right to be wrong. There is no right to believe 1 + 1 = 3. No reasonable, rational person would really believe homosexuality is a "choice." The only people who make that claim are religious people, like you. Religious beliefs are expressly based on faith, rather than fact and reason. The Bible/Koran/Torah/Dianetics says X, so you "Know" (with a capital "K") that it is the "Truth" (with a capital "T"). The more ridiculous X is, the prouder you are for Knowing it is "The Truth."

With regards to homosexuality, all the evidence supports it being genetic. It occurs in nature (many animals display homosexual behavior) and humans know they are attracted to the same sex when they're young children, before they even know what sex is all about. Meanwhile, nobody would voluntarily "choose" to be homosexual - even if it did not mean guaranteed persecution, animosity, theological presumptions of immorality, hatred, and inequality under the law - simply because 'penis goes into vagina' is the normal reproductive biological state. All else equal, people want to be normal and all animals, including humans, have an instinctual desire to reproduce.

As for your position, there is absolutely NO evidence to support the theory that homosexuality is a "choice" (the Bible is not evidence, nor does it provide any evidence, and it's the same book that says pi = 3 so even if it did offer evidence that homosexuality is a choice such evidence would be inherently unreliable). So no, you do not have the right to believe homosexuality is a choice any more than you have the right to believe 1 + 1 = 3. Obviously nobody will throw you into prison for having such a belief, but your factually unsupported (and easily contradicted) beliefs are entitled to absolutely no respect.

"Also the separation of church and state was not formed to protect the government from the church, but to protect the church from the government. The early founders of this country were for the most part religious moral people."

Wrong. First of all, your big problem is that you equate religion with morality. Nothing could be further from the truth. There is a direct correlation between religiosity and immorality. Just last week there was a survey that showed the more frequently Americans attend church, the more likely they are to support torture.

Anyway, if by "founders of this country" you mean the pilgrims then yes, they were indeed religious, though not particularly moral. But they were not the founders of the United States of America; rather, they founded a British colony, and the last thing they were interested in was separation of church and state. Their religious beliefs were being oppressed in Britain, so they came here to practice their religious beliefs where they quickly oppressed all differing religious beliefs (taking hypocrisy to new heights).

The founders of America would be the framers of the Constitution. Jefferson, Madison, Franklin, etc. They're the ones who devised separation of church and state (while the actual phrase doesn't appear in the Constitution, it is embodied in the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment and the writings of Jefferson and Madison make this unequivocally clear). Most of the Constitution's framers were explicitly not religious. They were not a throng of Christians, as the "America is a Christian Country, dammit!" crowd of misinformed conservatives would have you believe. Many were deists, and keeping religion out of government was both for the benefit of government and the benefit of religion, but most importantly for the benefit of individual liberty and personal freedom. Read the Federalist Papers, particulary Madison's "Federalist 10" where it discusses the evils of factions. There will always be one religion with more followers than the others, and they will always want to make the government recognize their religion above all others, and use the government to expand the power of their religion, to the exclusion of all others. That's what Christians are trying to do in America right now. Gay marriage is a prime example of that.

If you respond to this, I'm happy to discuss these issues further, but please note that I have a policy of ignoring all arguments that invoke "the children" as I deem such arguments to be wholly baseless as they are nothing more than the logical fallcy of appeal to emotion.