Colbert '08?

I'm a little late with this post, but I wanted to get it right.

People always say that college students don't really pay attention to the world around them. To some extent this is true--we live in a bubble. For the most part, we get our news from The Diamondback, not the Post or the Times. Instead of the TV News, we watch Best Week Ever and The Daily Show and the Colbert Report. Now there are exceptions to these rules, but I'm making sweeping generalizations on what I see around me. So personally, I try to do what I can to stay informed. And one thing I noticed over the past few weeks, was that every time I'd look at different news sites, Colbert's name kept popping up.

For the most part, when we ran our focus groups, the people we talked to said that their decisions to vote or not vote were not really influenced by the media. But I'm not sure how much I believe this. For one thing, the sample of people we talked to was not a representative sample of UMD students. The students who came were the ones who are interested in our topic and already have views on the issues we're concerned with, regardless of what those views might be. So when I was reading all those articles about Stephen Colbert's presidential bid, I couldn't help but wonder how effective this tactic might be for our purposes.

Don't get me wrong, I know it was a complete publicity stunt--I mean, running in South Carolina as a Democrat AND a Republican? But I keep thinking about all the people who, over the past three years, I've seen with shirts, bumper stickers, sweatshirts, bags, whatever merchandise, that reads "Stewart-Colbert '08". Yeah, they're meant as a joke, but would it actually work? What I mean is, John Stewart and Stephen Colbert have a massive fan base, and most of that following they have is made up of the younger generation--mostly students, and probably some young professionals. So if the two of them actually did run for office, wouldn't it logically bring more of that demographic group to the polls?

Now, Colbert's candidacy has been ended because it was just completely ridiculous. But one of the articles I read raised a number of points of view on why Colbert should or shouldn't be allowed to run. The one argument that stood out the most to me was that having Colbert on the ballot would siphon votes from other candidates. But his 'candidacy' also united so many people behind him (I can't find the article I read this in, but somewhere I read that the majority of the population of the University of South Carolina was supporting his bid).

But that brings me back to the whole issue of living in a college bubble. Colbert seems to have raised awareness, among the youth population of S.C., of the election process. But this effort was shot down, because essentially the way he went about it was deemed insulting by so many people. So what we really need, I think, is to expand the college bubble to include the political system--if we can unite behind Colbert, we should be able to unite behind the idea that our votes today affect our lives, now and in the future, and we should use the opportunity to make sure that our voices are heard.

So yeah, he did this as a joke this time. And yeah, the way he went about it outraged a lot of people, who said he was making a mockery of our system. But I guess the question that I'm really trying to pose is this: Will Colbert's little publicity stunt, and the media hype surrounding it, help get more youth voters to the polls?

My answer? I certainly hope so.

-Supraja