Where Daily Show anchor John Stewart plays it in some ways more conservatively, holding to a tradition . . . → Read More: Stephen Colbert on Social Inequality]]> As anyone fond of “truthiness,” humor, or television knows, long time Daily Show member Stephen Colbert has, since October 2005, had his own show: The Colbert Report.

Where Daily Show anchor John Stewart plays it in some ways more conservatively, holding to a tradition of fake news and riffing on the real news that’s been part of comedy for a long time, Colbert’s a bit further out there. He’s constructed an entire seamless persona, one he calls a “well-intentioned, poorly informed, high status idiot.” In other words, he’s only half a twist further along the spiral of self-parody from half a dozen talk show hosts who take themselves seriously (and don’t know they’re parodies of themselves).

On June 23, Colbert hosted Barbara Ehrenreich. You can watch the entire episode online here. (And if you just want the Ehrenreich segment, you could go here.)

Ehrenreich came on to promote her new book This Land is Their Land, an analysis of the extreme economic divide in America. Ehrenreich’s message is familiar to those who have read her work before. For years she has been advocating for greater social and economic equality, investigating circumstances that go underreported (often through living them), and analyzing the social forces at work.

Despite Ehrenreich’s practice skill and focus, it is Colbert’s willingness to play the fool during their exchange that exposes so many of the economic attitudes coursing through the American body politic. Most people express them in a shaded or hesitant form, coding them, or leaving them implied.

Colbert does not. He flatly asks what is wrong with a divided country, with massive inequality, and why the poor can’t work harder. He even suggests that the lottery be embraced as a way of tricking the poor into thinking they have a chance, so they’ll get back to work.

His bald satire is shocking. It made me wince. And yet, and yet, and yet…he’s only saying directly what a lot of other people are insinuating. He’s trotting out free market aphorisms at their most social Darwinist.

And, again, yet…for all that Ehrenreich was very clear about what she thought was wrong with the situation, the solutions she mentioned during this encounter were…dubious. Taxing the rich was the main one articulated, but that was suggested without much more context than Colbert’s satire.

Perhaps solutions are proposed in more detail in This Land is Their Land. Perhaps her sound bite solutions were the result of the sound bit situation. And perhaps the situation is so complex that identifying any working situation is simply very difficult.