Why colbert report cancelled

Who would have thought that a means of communication limited to characters would ever create misunderstanding? Colbert then talked about the barrage of coverage in the news media over the CancelColbert debacle, which he said was a top five trending topic on Twitter for more than 36 hours and prompted three straight days of incessant coverage.

Also during the segment, Colbert asked viewers not to give CancelColbert trend starter and activist Suey Park a hard time. Nine years of brilliant satire demolishing hypocrisy and injustice? Eh, fine. Five seconds of reading a tweet? CancelColbert — I agree! Just saw ColbertReport tweet. I share your rage. Trend it. Ongoing threats forced Park to leave her home in Chicago.

Park spent a lot of time in a series of safe houses and used burner phones to keep up with people in her life. Colbert himself asked his fans to leave Park alone, but the damage was done.

CancelColbert started with Suey Park, a twenty-three-year-old writer and activist, who, in December of last year, came to Twitter prominence when she set up NotYourAsianSidekick, an online conversation that encouraged Asian-American women to voice their frustrations with traditional feminism.

The hashtag has generated tens of thousands of tweets, which in turn led to wide coverage from mainstream media organizations. The resulting discomfort has nothing to do with the intentions of the joke or the political views of the people laughing at it.

If we take CancelColbert at face value, we can easily dismiss it as shrill, misguided, and frivolous. But after speaking to Park about what she hoped to accomplish with all this a paternalistic question if there ever was one , I wonder if we might be witnessing the development of a more compelling—and sometimes annoying and infuriating—form of protest, by a new group of Merry Pranksters, who are once again freaking out the squares in our always over reacting, always polarized online public sphere.

Jay Caspian Kang was a news editor for newyorker. More: Race Twitter. The Daily The best of The New Yorker , every day, in your in-box, plus occasional alerts when we publish major stories.