What I Think About When I Think About Liberal!"Stephen"

[erinptah]

Check it out, I wrote some actual organized meta :D

Okay, semi-organized. It's a collection of thoughts on liberal!"Stephen".

Background, for those of you just tuning in: On October 2, 2007, TCR flashed briefly into an alternate universe. The Wørd: Troops Out Now. The host: a pipe-smoking long-haired peacenik hippie version of the straightlaced conservative character we know and love.

There's obviously a wealth of possibility with this guy. (Fellow liberals, ILU, but you know we are totally mockable.) But there's only so much characterization you can get out of one short clip.

So this is where I get the rest.




Please note that, in the following, "conservative" and "liberal" are used to make gross generalizations about two broad swaths of thought that dominate the American political system. Variations are unaddressed. Smaller groups (where my Libertarians at?) are ignored. Non-U.S. schools of thought are right out. Got it? Good.

Okay, so you're going to make a satirical liberal caricature. Where do you start?

One solution would be to take the regular Colbert character and just flip all his viewpoints. Hard-line hawk becomes hard-line dove, etcetera. But that doesn't match up with reality. You'd get a loud and bombastic pundit shouting uncompromising liberal views, and how many of those have you seen on TV lately? (Say what you will about Olbermann, but one angry liberal does not an equivalent make to O'Reilly and Geraldo and Hannity and Rush and on and on and on.)

Liberals don't just disagree with conservatives on the issues. We operate on a completely different set of assumptions.

So here's what I think about when I think about liberal!"Stephen".




I think about Robert Frost's observation: "A liberal is a man too broadminded to take his own side in a quarrel."

Conservative Stephen will take a stand on every issue possible, from the religion we should spread in the Middle East to the world's best type of sandwich, and then announce at the top of his lungs that anyone who disagrees must also be in favor of setting kittens on fire.

Liberal Stephen has his beliefs, yes; but if you disagree, well, you're entitled to your opinion. And if you really and truly feel that setting kittens on fire is a good thing to do, your belief is still just as valid as his, and who is he to tell you it's wrong?

I think about the related admonition, "If you don't stand for something, you'll fall for anything." Conservative Stephen will stand for nonsensical things. Liberal Stephen will fall for them.

And then there's the slightly graphic variation, "Keep an open mind, but not so open that your brains fall out."

Conservative Stephen has his mind closed and locked in a stainless-steel safe. Liberal Stephen's brains are slopping all over the place. People learn to keep at a safe distance to avoid stepping in them.




I think about this ThreatDown, in which conservative Stephen explains his rigid schedule: "With every second planned, I have no room for self-reflection or doubt. I had a free moment once, back in 1999, and I almost swallowed my tongue."

Liberal Stephen isn't rigidly anything. He's permissive; he's freewheeling; he's late for everything, because he claims that any kind of schedule is tyrannical. (He believes the same thing about hygiene, in contrast to conservative Stephen's no-hair-out-of-place image.)

And he is eaten up by self-reflection and doubt.



I think about that classic phrase, "With great power comes great responsibility."

Conservative Stephen grabs for power, power, power. He runs for president; he orders around the Nation; he claims to rule his household. But he can't stand responsibility. Religion "takes responsibility away from you and gives it to God," he proclaims, in one argument for the merits of faith. And he certainly doesn't have responsibility to, say, care for the environment, or feed the homeless.

(He doesn't actually want power, either, and wouldn't know what to do with it if he got it. But that's another essay.)

Liberal Stephen runs from power. He disavows it whenever he can; he declares himself to be unworthy of it. But if you tell him something is his responsibility, he'll accept that. He's a believer in socialized medicine — not the Democratic plans that the right vilifies as "socialism", but the real deal. While there is a soul in prison, he is not free.

Needless to say, he carries an awful lot of guilt.




I think a lot about Geoffrey Jellineck.

If Strangers With Candy's Chuck Noblet is a proto-Stephen, then Geoffrey contains a lot of the seeds of what could have been liberal Stephen. He's a sensitive artist who emotes all over the place.

In episode 1x07, "Feather in the Storm", convinced that Jerri is suffering from the deadly serious anorexia, desperate to get her parents to understand, he cries, "Let him talk!"

"Him who?" asks Jerri's mother.

"Him me," says Geoffrey earnestly.

Conservative Stephen will open a show with a rousing chorus of "Me-me-me-me!" But liberal Stephen, like Geoffrey, is pathologically unable to demand attention in this way — to such an extreme that, even when he believes it's necessary in order to save someone's life, he can only manage it in the third person.

While the conservative Stephen is suspicious of everyone and everything, the liberal version is intent on thinking the best of everyone, in blatant defiance of self-preservation. This is clear in his lone segment, "Troops Out Now", in which he figures terrorists will all come around if we just sit down and talk. It's the same principle underlying SWC episode 3x09, "Bully", in which Geoffrey cannot seem to process the idea that the new teacher is a raging homophobe.

In fact, "Bully" explores all kinds of weaknesses of Geoffrey's philosophy. "Listen I think we got off to a pretty bad start there," he says cheerfully. "It's probably my fault." (Sense of great responsibility.) "Tell ya what, why don't we head over to my class. I have a blow torch, we'll fire up some crème brulees, have a little rap session and work out this whole misunderstanding!" (Then we'll each share a feeling...) When the homophobe tells him to either quit or fight, Geoffrey's perkiness never fails: "I appreciate your opinion but I won't be doing either." (Your belief is still valid, though!)

"Nothing you do or say will cause me to react or protect myself in any way," Geoffrey declares, when finally called out to fight. He ends up beaten bloody.

Robert Frost, eat your heart out.




I think about Russ Lieber, a TCR character who hasn't been seen for a couple of years (which is really a shame). Judging by the title of his book, he's another Geoffrey type: Raising Your Voice by Raising Your Hand: A Non-Confrontational Dissenter's Guide to Fighting Back Politely.

And I think about Politically Neutral Dog, a meme which, at its best, is liberal Stephen in canine form. (I realize that leads to several dozen pages of macros, half of which are in Portugese, so let me link to a few of the most on-point.)

To Godwin an argument with liberal Stephen, say "You're the kind of person who appeased Hitler." (Witness the ACLU defending the rights of neo-Nazis.) To Godwin conservative Stephen, say "You're the kind of person who followed Hitler." (He's openly pro-fascism.)




I also think about relentlessly cheerful Onion columnist Jean Teasdale. And that, in turn, makes me think about the Serenity Prayer.

Conservative Stephen is completely unable to accept the things he can't change. He will shout at them until they have to change, damnit!

Liberal Stephen — like Geoffrey; like Jean — thinks he has to accept everything.

All of them could use a little more wisdom.




And, speaking of the Serenity Prayer, I think about a scene from Desperate Housewives. (Bear with me, now.) Main character Susan is trying to show off in front of her ex, so she brings out her new husband, Mike. After one-upping each other about salaries and recently-bought houses and how well their kids are doing, the ex notices Mike has a keychain. "Oh, yeah," says Mike casually, "that's for being thirty days sober."

This of course loses the contest for Susan, who gets very frustrated about it later on, in spite of Mike's protests: "But at rehab they tell us we're not supposed to be ashamed about it!"

That's liberal Stephen all over. If conservative Stephen's watchword is repression, then liberal Stephen is the embodiment of too much information.

An example: Conservative Stephen can be on the verge of a nervous breakdown, but he will still refuse to admit that anything is wrong. Liberal Stephen will tearfully spill his innermost feelings, and the probable psychosexual implications of the dream he had last night, to the bank teller who made the mistake of saying "How are you today?"

Another: Conservative Stephen insists that gay sex is vile and disgusting and sinful, and he would never, ever think about it. Liberal Stephen, meanwhile, will happily go into gory detail, santorum and all, about the gay sex he had last night. And he'll do it on Oprah.




I also think about this one scene from Black. White., a short-lived reality show from 2006.

One of the characters, a white girl, has brought home some acquaintances from her all-black slam poetry class. They hang out; they talk; they have a snack; they do some freestyle verse. All is going well.

Then the white girl's mother decides that all these poets have Inspired Her to unleash her own Artistic Spirit. She gets up in front of this group and allows her thoughts to flow freely. Her stream of consciousness, addressed to her audience, includes phrases like "beautiful black creature."

The guests unanimously take this as their cue to leave. The white daughter can barely look them in the eye as they trickle out, so hard is she cringing.

You almost prefer conservative Stephen's refusal to see race at all.




Liberal Stephen is all for programs that involve hiring completely unqualified people just because they're not white and/or male.

It's the same impulse that leads him to buy T-shirts for awful indie bands, only watch mainstream movies if they've been pirated, and run his computer entirely on ragged beta-version open-source software. Sure, his programs crash all the time, but at least he isn't supporting the hegemonic power of Microsoft.

Conservative Stephen only admits to listening to Top 40 artists, constantly admonishes his viewers against pirating, and runs everything on Microsoft products. He's a fan of unregulated monopolies.




I think about the prisoner's dilemma.

The classical form goes like this: "Two suspects are arrested by the police. The police have insufficient evidence for a conviction, and, having separated both prisoners, visit each of them to offer the same deal. If one testifies (defects from the other) for the prosecution against the other and the other remains silent (cooperates with the other), the betrayer goes free and the silent accomplice receives the full 10-year sentence. If both remain silent, both prisoners are sentenced to only six months in jail for a minor charge. If each betrays the other, each receives a five-year sentence. Each prisoner must choose to betray the other or to remain silent. Each one is assured that the other would not know about the betrayal before the end of the investigation. How should the prisoners act?"

Or, to adapt Wikipedia's handy table:

	B Stays Silent...	B Betrays...
A Stays Silent...	6 months each	A: 10 years B: goes free
A Betrays...	A: goes free B: 10 years	5 years each

The table makes it pretty clear: if you care only about yourself, then the rational thing to do is betray your partner. It means less prison time for you, no matter which option your partner takes.

However, if you care about your partner's welfare, and you trust your partner to stay silent, the rational thing to do is keep mum yourself. That leads to the best outcome for the team.

Put in this situation, conservative Stephen will always betray. Always. He doesn't trust anyone. ("Jon Stewart and I don't talk," he insists over and over, to Bill O'Reilly or Larry King or whoever else is interviewing him. He's Peter, and the cock is crowing.)

Liberal Stephen will always stay silent. No matter what. After all, he couldn't possibly be so disrespectful as to imply that his partner might not be trustworthy.




As long as we're talking about incredibly nerdy things: Liberal Stephen is a carrier of the Five Geek Social Fallacies, especially the pathological versions of GSF1 and GSF2. Conservative Stephen is the kind of ostracizing, judgmental person who induces those fallacies in the first place.

To keep up the nerdiness: When it comes to liberal Stephen, Tim Minchin has got him pegged.




I think about Nice Guys.

They're diagrammed further in this xkcd strip, and immortalized in verse by this marvelous poem.

Conservative Stephen is (or tries to be) the archetypal jerk. He is In Charge and it's All About Him and everyone must Follow His Orders. He's deeply insecure at heart, but he covers it as best he can with shouting and ego and declarations of authority.

(Secretly, he would love to find someone to tie him up, slap him around, and shag him senseless. But his inability to trust anyone throws a bit of a wrench in that plan. Besides, he can't let anyone suspect that he can be vulnerable.)

Liberal Stephen, on the other hand, tries to be the Nice Guy. He's open about his insecurities; he refuses to shout or get angry; he's always doing things for other people. (Including indie publishers and open-source programmers.) He's afraid that he's selfish at heart, so he goes overboard to compensate.

(Secretly, he would love to find someone he could tie up, slap around, and shag senseless. But he doesn't trust himself enough to go through with that plan. Besides, he couldn't bring himself to be that mean.)

In this lovely parable, it's easy to see at which stage each one is stuck.




Finally, a note about family.

Both versions of this character come from a Strict Father family, archetypal to the point of ridiculousness. (I Am America (And So Can You!) has the details.) It's all there: obedience and discipline, pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps, rational self-interest, the works.

Conservative Stephen embraced this philosophy and never looked back. It's how he relates to his government; it's how he relates to his religion; and these days he is (or claims to be) the head of such a family in his personal life.

Liberal Stephen took this philosophy and ran as far as he could in the other direction. His ideal for everything is the archetypal Nurturant Parent family. If he weren't childfree, it's the model he would be using with his own kids.

So in spite of their differences, they're both cut from the same cloth, using wildly divergent tactics to cope with what are ultimately the same issues.




Okay, a confession.

I'm mostly posting this in the hope that it will strike people with plotbunnies. Because I love this version of the character, and crave more fic about him.

So if anything in here strikes you as possible fic material, take it and run with it. Or, if you think I have gotten some bit of this (or every bit of it!) completely wrong, throw together a fic about the way you think it really is.

As far as I'm concerned, this 'verse is a playground full of shiny new toys. Come on in and play.

Comments

[espreite.livejournal.com]

Ooh, thanks for posting this. It's really interesting to see where you derived the character from, and it makes a lot of sense. I'm not in a state of awakeness to make a coherent, specific reply, but suffice to say I'll be checking out links and rereading. Shiny new toy-filled playground indeed! :)

[erinptah]

Glad you like! It's a fun place :D

[rissaofthesaiya.livejournal.com]

Liberal!Stephen is truly the shiniest of shiny new toys. This was a great read, I always love seeing insights into a character like this and I think there are a lot of potential plotbunnies for him.

Thanks for the links, too, I'd seen some of them before but am new to Tim Minchin and Politically Neutral Dog. The kitten-burning link is also a great read and anyone who skipped it should go back and read it right now. (Or don't. Your call. (http://memegenerator.net/81859/overthrow-the-corporate-government-establishment-or-not.aspx))

I've been trying to write a comment on what you actually wrote, but it always ends up sounding horribly partisan so I'll just say I enjoyed reading it and go watch Countdown :)

[erinptah]

Now I'm wondering in what sense it was "horribly partisan." Was it a case of "augh, you got it exactly right, liberals are such horrible people", or more like "okay, maybe I can see this, but it's really conservatives who suck"?

I know there were a couple of places where I cut things short because they were going in a weird political direction. Didn't try to unpack the socialism or the Eugene Debs quotation too far, for example, because while l!Stephen takes it to extremes, a sense of duty towards the poor and the sick is still a good thing, and people in general should have more of it.

But I do think there is plenty to mock about us liberals. If only there were more clever, funny conservative comedians. (If loud shouty angry punditry is dominated by the right, then comedy - the good kind as well as the nasty kind - is totally the province of the left.)

[rissaofthesaiya.livejournal.com]

It was just a sort of 'yeah, us liberals can be pretty dumb sometimes' sentiment, I'm just a bit wary of talking about my own politics at the moment because I've got into too many internet arguments that way.

I am totally with you on the comedy thing. I wish the Half Hour News Hour had been GOOD, I would have watched it! Everyone needs to be made fun of occasionally, if only to keep your head at a size where it can still fit through doorways.

I actually maxed out the character limit the first time, wtf.

[sarcasticsra]

This is incredibly interesting, and I love it.

Some random thoughts I'm going to share:

I've been trying to write that alt!Needverse fic I mentioned (I have about 200 words, bah) and it keeps stalling on me, and I'm honestly not sure if it's because I'm just writer's blocked (though I've been writing original stories like mad lately, so I don't think it's that) or because I...don't think I like liberal!"Stephen" very much. I mean, the meta fascinates me, as do the possibilities of exploring the role-reversals, and as a character he's certainly interesting, but as a person? He just annoys me. Far more than c!"Stephen" ever has.

I keep going back to the thing Jon always says, about comedy and ideology, and I wonder if that's why. I mean, obviously, it's not like I think liberals are unmockable, because...uh, I have a brain. And I tell myself, it can't be that, because I laugh when TDS makes fun of Democrats and Obama. But! I'll add, I don't really consider either most Democrats or Obama to be liberals. I'm much, much more liberal than both, after all, and when asked I never describe myself as a Democrat. I always say liberal. So then I think about it, and I think about the characters, and I know if I knew both in real life, I'd probably want to kill them both pretty quickly. c!"Stephen" and I could at least get into a few shouting matches, though, and I'd run circles around him, because I'm smarter and louder and he kind of folds like a cheap card table when confronted with any real adversary, and it'd be fun. With l!"Stephen"...I don't know. I'd just be like, "Yeah, I'm pretending you're not on my side. Bye now." and leave before I was tempted to strangle him. I'm not sure. It might just be because, as a liberal, I've had to deal with so many stupid-ass stereotypes about liberals, writing about a walking, talking breathing one just pushes my buttons in a way that writing about a conservative stereotype doesn't. (Not that c!"Stephen" strictly fits that stereotype, of course.) And if this is the case, if there's anything I can do to get over it.

As far as Needverse goes specifically, though...I'm wondering if I just like writing sub!"Stephen" too much to ever enjoy writing dom!"Stephen". Obviously, they're characters, but sub!"Stephen" is...someone I could help, if that makes sense, and so writing Jon taking care of him is my way of...vicariously helping, I guess? I couldn't help dom!"Stephen" in the same way, because I'm just not at all a submissive person, so writing it might just be harder for me because of that.

Oh, and since I was recently re-reading our comment threads on my one fic: In one comment I said I thought liberal!"Stephen" secretly knows he's pushing people away, if in a really round-about manner, and you replied that you didn't think he had that kind of guile. So I was thinking about that, because I never really addressed it in my response to you, and I don't know how exactly to describe what it is, but I don't see it as guile. It's like c!"Stephen" secretly knowing he's gay. Part of him, deep down, is completely aware of it, but he's built of so many defenses and created so many rationalizations that he doesn't really...think about it. His hiding it isn't guile, per se. He doesn't wake up every day and go, "Okay, how do I hide the fact that I'm gay today?" It's something he knows but it's buried so deep that he can genuinely play oblivious. It'll crop up every now and again (See: him going to his mirror late at night and saying, "You're gay." and nodding and then getting angry.) but for the most part, it stays hidden. I think l!"Stephen" is the same way in the boundary department. Deep down, he knows that the way he acts is going to scare people away, but he's justified it to himself as Boundaries Are A Bad Thing so many times that he doesn't think about it all the time, and can genuinely play oblivious. It might crop up eventually, and since he's l!"Stephen" he'll analyze it to death and get fifty-three different contradicting opinions and try to take them all to heart and end up going absolutely nowhere, and by the time he's done, it'll have been long buried again.

I have no idea if any of that is remotely intelligible or interesting, but yeah. Whoo, meta at five in the morning! Good times.

Re: I actually maxed out the character limit the first time, wtf.

[erinptah]

Ooooooooh. Ridiculously long commenting FTW.

I really do think I've emphasized l!Stephen's annoyingness too much. He's a sweetheart, he really is. For instance -- you know how c!Stephen is always demanding the Nation do things for him, send him things, vote for him in contests? Even when he does fundraisers for charity groups, he'll say "the money goes to X, the glory goes to me". And he manipulates Jon into coming over to the studio when he's upset.

In contrast, l!Stephen is always doing things for people - his personal friends as well as the Nation in general. (There's a bit of Oprah in him that way. He does a lot of giveaways.) He works very hard to be generous. And sometimes the gifts are misaimed (as with the basket of sex toys), but sometimes they're exactly right (as with the puppy). And he would never lie to scare Jon into running to his side.

So he has a lot going for him. I've just been shying away from focusing on it because I don't want to do too much "and this is why liberals ROCK." (Obviously we do, but it seems a little self-serving to write about it =P)

If you walked away from c!Stephen, he would dismiss you as a bleeding-heart tree-hugging tax-and-spending person-he-doesn't-want-to-be-friends-with-anyway, and probably name you Worst Person in the World a person Who's Attacking Me Now on his next show. If you walked away from l!Stephen, he would send you a card with cute fuzzy animals saying "I'm Sorry", and probably a gift card for a nice restaurant or something.

I have a ton of dom!l!Stephen snippets floating around in my head right now, so no worries about stalling on this end ^_^; They might fit into your vicariously-helping theory, too. Like, l!Stephen will slap Jon, and then panic - "oh no are you hurt I'm sorry I'm a terrible person how could I have enjoyed that" - and Jon will reassure him that it's okay to have a bit of an inner sadist. Which is definitely something I've felt guilty over. (Don't know how useful that is to you, though - especially if you never have fantasies about smacking someone around in the first place =P)

Okay, maybe guile isn't the right way to think of it. I'm still not convinced that...I mean, you keep coming back to l!Stephen knowing it, at some deep level. And I think that knowledge itself takes an emotional IQ that I'm not sure he has.

At least, at first. His gut instinct may cotton on to the pattern eventually. That would be the point when his brain analyzes the instinct, can't come up with a rational reason for it, and dismisses it. But even then, no level of the system is saying "how can we push people away?" His gut is saying "This will drive people off, so don't do it," and his brain is saying "I don't want to drive people off, but you're not being logical, so I won't listen to you."

...since he's l!"Stephen" he'll analyze it to death and get fifty-three different contradicting opinions and try to take them all to heart and end up going absolutely nowhere...

This is exactly, to a T, what happens when anyone tries to point it out to him. Until he starts accepting the idea that not everyone deserves to be trusted, and that sometimes he really does need to stop thinking and just go with his gut.

(And so, once again, the moral of the l!Stephen saga: be more like c!Stephen! And vice versa. Which never fails to fill me with geeky glee :D)

Re: I actually maxed out the character limit the first time, wtf.

[sarcasticsra]

So he has a lot going for him. I've just been shying away from focusing on it because I don't want to do too much "and this is why liberals ROCK." (Obviously we do, but it seems a little self-serving to write about it =P)

I think you're going to have to play it up just a little bit more; anyone who writes him is, really. We all play up c!"Stephen"'s endearing traits a lot when we write him, so why not l!"Stephen"'s? It makes him likable enough that we're willing to deal with his less endearing traits when they manifest. And obviously l!"Stephen" is a very new addition to the fanon world, one we don't have years of canon for, so we'll have to work a little harder at it.

If you walked away from l!Stephen, he would send you a card with cute fuzzy animals saying "I'm Sorry", and probably a gift card for a nice restaurant or something.

This probably says more about me than l!"Stephen", but that would bewilder me a little. Especially if we'd just met and I already didn't like him; I'd be sort of suspicious of his motives. But then, as I've said before, c!"Stephen" and I have a lot more in common that way.

Like, l!Stephen will slap Jon, and then panic - "oh no are you hurt I'm sorry I'm a terrible person how could I have enjoyed that" - and Jon will reassure him that it's okay to have a bit of an inner sadist. Which is definitely something I've felt guilty over. (Don't know how useful that is to you, though - especially if you never have fantasies about smacking someone around in the first place =P)

Heh, I've long since gotten over any kind of guilt about my kinks at this point, so...that's not so helpful. I'm sure if I keep trying it'll eventually let me finish writing it; it's just not playing nice at the moment. Oh, muses. You can be so fickle.

But even then, no level of the system is saying "how can we push people away?" His gut is saying "This will drive people off, so don't do it," and his brain is saying "I don't want to drive people off, but you're not being logical, so I won't listen to you."

That's what I was trying to articulate: that part of him, at some level, will say, "you know if you do this it'll scare people away" but nothing too conscious, so it manifests as that gut instinct, which he can then dismiss as illogical. And, of course, like you said, every so often someone will point it out to him, but because he tries to trust everyone, he goes nowhere, and nothing changes, and the cycle repeats itself.

[sirdrakesheir.livejournal.com]

I HAVE NOTHING USEFUL TO SAY BUT WHY DOES EVERYTHING ABOUT L!STEPHEN MAKE ME LAUGH TO THE POINT OF TEARS OH GOD

[erinptah]

I DO NOT KNOW BUT I AM GLAD TO HEAR IT. I THINK.

[sirdrakesheir.livejournal.com]

I THINK BASICALLY IT'S JUST BECAUSE IT'S ALL SO TRUE

I THINK IT'S MOSTLY BECAUSE, HAVING BEEN BOTH A CONSERVACHRISTIAN OF THE TYPE C!STEPHEN IS MOCKING AND A BLEEDING-HEART LIBERAL, L!STEPHEN IS BY FAR THE MORE ACCURATE PARODY AND IT MAKES ME LAUGH

[profxuanwu.livejournal.com]

Since you asked me to post this here, here's some thoughts on l!Stephen. I modified and expanded it from the original.

Both l!Stephen and c!Stephen have a common heritage in that they're both the products of Real Stephen, a Democrat. Thus, c!Stephen and l!Stephen stem from left-wing constructs, where Conservatives are unthinking and inelegant and Liberals are wishy-washy push overs. Notice how the Liberal stereotype takes a positive trait - open-mindedness - and pushes it to the extreme, while the Conservative stereotype is at best rooted in "they mean well." (I think r!Stephen's specific words were that c!Stephen is a "well meaning idiot.") This is a key trend.

A fun meta exercise: how would c!Stephen and l!Stephen look if they were created by an AU Stephen (AU!Stephen) where he was as much a Republican as r!Stephen is a Democrat? AU!Stephen version would be a lapsed Catholic, performing opposite a TDS hosted by Jon Lebowitz, who never works on Saturdays and doesn't eat pork. That is, how would a right-leaning or even Conservative (in the non-exaggerated real world sense) AU!Stephen satirize Conservatives and Liberals through his character of Stephen Colbert?

The GOP doesn't stereotype Liberals as wishy-washy, so AU!Stephen wouldn't create a hippie version. l!AU!Stephen would be more the hands-off, elitist, Ivory Tower liberal stereotype (popular with pundits like O'Reilly and based on a grain of true behavior like l!Stephen). He's willing to give someone the shirt off *your* back, speculates on policies in grand theoretical (but inherently impractical) terms, and never once got his hands dirty planting a tree - though he voted for a law to make someone else do it. Unlike l!Stephen, he'll argue - loudly and at length - for his beliefs and insist it's "for the children" or "for the greater good." But while c!Stephen shifts responsibility to God, l!AU!Stephen shifts it to the "responsibilities one person has for another." l!AU!Stephen likes to declare lots of things as "rights" and then advocate everyone have them, as opposed to c!Stephen who's all for differences in material wealth.

c!AU!Stephen would be made to represent the "silent majority:" firmly held, poorly articulated, beliefs, but too quiet for his own good and easily distracted from serious issues by pop culture. This matches the lament of conservative pundits who decry how the American public never seems to mobilize to fight for their freedoms. Those pundits argue America is a "center-right" country, so c!AU!Stephen is right there in that spectrum - reflected in how incredibly average he is.

c!AU!Stephen laments the status quo even as he sends incumbents back to Congress; he wishes politicians would listen to him, but is too busy reading news feeds on the Gosselins to call them; and loves going to Church, but doesn't wear his love of Christ on his sleeve to avoid seeming like a generic white guy - which, in turn, makes him more of a generic white guy. Like l!Stephen, he's polite to a fault, but would disagree with someone on issues - albeit quietly and with little exposition. While c!Stephen will blather on about a topic even when he has nothing to say, words just don't come easy to c!AU!Stephen. He's a painfully bland character, out of place on national TV. If c!Stephen interviewed him, he'd ask, "Tell me about the c!AU!Stephen no one cares about."

Here we see the same trend with r!Stephen's thinking copied with AU!Stephen: now it's the c!AU!Stephen who has a positive trait - normalcy - carried to an extreme, while l!AU!Stephen is the "well meaning idiot." Thus these two characters are not so much opposites of each other as they reflect the mirroring in techniques between AU!Stephen and r!Stephen.

For even more fun, add in Libertarian and Socialist/Fascist AU versions of r!Stephen to test the extremes. The only risk there is that they tend to see the two parties as the same (Libertarians see them both as Authoritarians seeking control, Socialists/Facists as too supportive of individuality and internal dissent), so there'd be hardly any distance between the two versions, save for some superficial differences meant for irony.

I enjoy picking r!Stephen's brain (and by extension the brains of his co-writers) even more than his characters, sometimes.

[profxuanwu.livejournal.com]

Two paragraphs I had to cut due to length:

Since c!Stephen has a crush he can't fathom on Jane Fonda, would l!Stephen have a crush he can't fathom on Sarah Palin? Ann Coulter or Michelle Malkin might also work. Or if you want to keep it an actor: Jon Voight. I can totally see l!Stephen wanting Jon Voight to sit in his lap and cuddle. "Tell me again how you became disillusioned with the anti-war movement after the massacres in Vietnam and Cambodia when the US pulled out? Squee!"

On the pundits issue, while Olbermann is just one angry liberal on TV, if you summed up the total number of angry liberals in newspapers, Hollywood, and academia there'd be far, far more of them than there are conservative pundits of any kind. There's also the pervasive left-leaning bias of vast tracts of TV news, which isn't very angry but makes up for it in sheer presence. So the idea that angry liberals are a minority is false - the angry conservative pundits just have higher profiles (and ratings) currently. A few spotlights can shine brighter than many light bulbs, but it doesn't change the fact that the spotlights are outnumbered.

[erinptah]

Yeah, there are more angry liberals in newspapers, Hollywood, academia, and the world in general than there are pundits on TV, so that's not really a fair comparison.

If you accept the idea that a lot of TV news is left-leaning, and that even so there are very few angry liberals on TV news, that suggests that angry liberals make up a small percentage of liberalism. Whereas, if conservatives in TV news are a minority but there are lots of angry conservative pundits, that suggests the opposite.

I do love the idea of l!Stephen having an inexplicable crush on Palin. He would be more open about it rather than being embarrassed, though. "I know she's an intolerant moral-majority non-blinker, but she's so hot! Also, her views are just as valid as anyone else's. Except maybe the bit about hunting. What did those moose ever do to her?"

(L!Stephen is a vegetarian. I should write something about that...)

[erinptah]

I do think there are positive traits in c!Stephen besides good intentions. Conviction is not a bad thing. Faith is not a bad thing. Wanting to protect children is not a bad thing. It's only when turned into unthinking convinction, blind faith, and moral panic that they become problems.

(The description of "Stephen" is "well-intentioned, poorly-informed, high-status idiot." It's an improv stock character.)

I like your general idea about flipping the stereotypes, but a lot of your specifics just seem off. Most notably, "The GOP doesn't stereotype Liberals as wishy-washy..." Since when? You remember the buzzword "flip-flopper", right? There are 7.5 million results when you google "Bush" + "you know where he stands", and only 2 million for "Kerry" + "you know where he stands" - and most of the results on that first page are actually applying the phrase to Bush. Sarah Palin had that whole schtick about how you have to make decisions and "you can't blink." Certainty is one of the GOP's major selling points.

And you can't really lump "socialism" together with "fascism". Most socialist governments are democracies, and were elected to be that way.

[profxuanwu.livejournal.com]

Kerry was so generically bland they struggled to find something to slam him with; indecision was the best they could come up with. I don't remember Clinton, Gore, or Obama being portrayed in that fashion. I would argue the stereotype of liberals as being elitist and looking down from on high at conservatives is *more commonly held* on the right than the indecisive one, especially these days. No one accuses Obama's administration of not knowing what it wants - they accuse it of wanting something very impractical/harmful and of being overly dismissive of critics. (See Press Secretary Gibbs and how he portrayed the grassroots protests against health care as "astroturfing" when it's nothing of the sort.)

"Certainty" as it relates to quick action is a buzz word for Neocons, less so for other Conservatives. "Certainty" mainly relates to how Conservatives (are supposed to) have a firm grounding in the principles of expanding individual liberty. The left is portrayed as less certain in contrast because it appears they lack a grand unifying theory of their own (not saying there isn't one, just that Liberals aren't very good at publicizing it).

The idea that either side is more "unified" or "certain" than the other is a false image, of course: Conservatives are supposed to be united behind the liberty ideal, but Neocons and Social Conservatives have advocated restrictions for the sake of "national security" and "public decency." The right isn't solidly together - it's just better at looking like it. The 2008 election primaries demonstrated how many different factions there are in the GOP and how they don't always get along. One of the main observations about McCain was his high level of uncertainty in his policy proposals (mainly because he was a Liberal mouthing faux-Conservative words fed to him by strategists).

The key point I'm trying to illustrate with my approach to AU!Stephen and r!Stephen isn't how to caricature the left and right in the US, but the process in which they create their satirical characters. I'm commenting on the way real people tend to poke fun at their own ideology and opposing ideologies through the use of contrasting the two "real world" Stephens. It's satire of satirists.

Socialist and fascist governments are both authoritarian regimes. Socialism, like Fascism, believes individual liberty can be readily discarded for the sake of the greater good and that order must be maintained through central planning with the government and/or corporatism. Contrast this with Liberalism, which holds that a country needs big government to defend individual liberty from external oppressors; and Conservatism, which says individual liberty is best maintained with a small government and free market. Socialists and Fascists occupy the same relative position on the political map relative to the US left and right. That's why I lump them together.

[profxuanwu.livejournal.com]

On Kerry, thought of a better way to put it: they portrayed him as a flip-flopper because that's the kind of politician he was, not simply because he was a Democrat. Kerry voted for or against something based on what would get him elected, not because he holds any underlying principles (contrast this with Feingold or Kucinich). Many politicians in both parties have this flaw; Kerry just happened to have a recorded line ("I voted for it before I voted against it") that fed into it.

Contrast this with how Gore and Obama were portrayed: elitist know-it-alls. They weren't accused of being indecisive, but as thinking themselves as "better" than the average American. And that's the thread I get l!AU!Stephen from.

[greenpixiehair.livejournal.com]

After reading all this wonderful sort of bonus extra detail stuff (which you can see so, so clearly in your l!Stephen fics you almost don't need to explain BUT I'M SO GLAD YOU DID) it is a terrible condemnation of my sad porny mind that this is what stuck:

If c!Stephen would secretly love to find someone to tie him up, slap him around, and shag him senseless. But his inability to trust anyone throws a bit of a wrench in that plan. Besides, he can't let anyone suspect that he can be vulnerable.

And l!Stephen would secretly love to find someone he could tie up, slap around, and shag senseless. But he doesn't trust himself enough to go through with that plan. Besides, he couldn't bring himself to be that mean.

Then clearly...THEY WOULD BE SO GOOD FOR EACH OTHER. JUST ONCE. TO HELP THEM DE-FUCK-UP THEMSELVES.

After all, c!Stephen can trust and be vulnerable in front of himself! And l!Stephen is perfectly willing to hurt himself, just not other people! IT IS PERFECT.

LOGIC. IT WORKS.

Jeez, I need to sleep. Sorry if I made no sense.

[erinptah]

I have this mental image of them hooking up, c!Stephen trying to be controlling and In Charge and l!Stephen trying to be GGG and roll with it, until c!Stephen does something too far and l!Stephen loses it and yells at him - and c!Stephen automatically shifts into "yes, sir, please, sir, take me now" mode.

It would probably turn into a disaster, though. Because c!Stephen can't say no to authority, and l!Stephen has no filters of his own, so if c!Stephen never says no then he just won't stop.

(Maybe if the Jons were watching...? Dom!Jon would have a pretty good sense of where c!Stephen's limits are, and be able to put the brakes on if necessary. While sub!Jon, meanwhile, could catch l!Stephen if he started to really go out of control.)

[greenpixiehair.livejournal.com]

My mental image was the same... but didn't follow the natural progression to the clusterfuck in your second paragraph.

I really don't think things through. *sighs*

I guess I'm going to have to accept that they really need their Jons. So if they ever did, and it was a catastrophe, they have someone to run back to.

[maggiebloome.livejournal.com]

He doesn't actually want power, either, and wouldn't know what to do with it if he got it.

That doesn't so much give me a plot bunny as feed further into my vague idea in which Jon Stewart is a superhero and Stephen Colbert is his archnemesis. I read a fic once in which Lex Luthor (pre-crisis version), having spent his life plotting to take over the world, was suddenly placed in a position where he's about to have absolute power (but of course also has to run things) and suddenly realises that's not actually what he wants. Anyway I'm never going to write supervillain!Stephen because my grip on the characterisation is just not very good, but it would be pretty awesome.

[erinptah]

I feel like I've heard that Lex Luthor plot before. He's definitely the type who wouldn't know what to do with himself without Superman to oppose.

Take a shot at supervillain!"Stephen" anyway! I would totally read it :D

[maggiebloome.livejournal.com]

Haha these days I have the same problem with TCR as with SGA which is that I read umpteen times more fanfic than watch canon, so all the characterisation in my head is essentially fanon (and also I am reading all this really good fic and it is intimidating :P)

that said it's lol on one of my lists. The list of wips i've actually started is long enough, though :P

And I think the Luthor plot I referred to was in one of Shalott's stories...

[pr-scatterbrain.livejournal.com]

I love how your mind works.

[erinptah]

♥