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May 6, 2008

Colbert Baiting

TV persona Stephen Colbert famously urges his viewers to vote for him in polls of influential people, or in Hungarian bridge-naming contests. We're not sure, though, if anybody has ever urged him to urge his viewers to vote for him—until now. In an open letter to Colbert, Foreign Policy web editor Blake Hounshell essentially attempts to bait the satirical talk show host into mentioning his magazine's poll on the world's top public intellectual. In inviting Colbert to "make his case" for inclusion on the list, it's pretty clear that the letter's main purpose is to garner some publicity for the poll, the blog, and the magazine.

Truthiness

Though it's a shameless ploy, we don't necessarily have a problem with it. The "Colbert bump" is a real phenomenon—at least for pop essayists, pinkos, and the Doritos company. Why not a monthly journal of international affairs and its related blog?






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