Tom had a post up the other day that I meant to discuss but didn't because of flu-having program related activities.
The other day Steve M. puzzled over a poll suggesting that in a three-way matchup, Stephen Colbert would take away more votes from Giuliani than from Clinton--his puzzlement summed up in the post title ("EITHER THEY THINK GIULIANI'S WHOLE ACT IS A JOKE OR THEY THINK COLBERT'S ISN'T")....
My initial response was that it probably wasn't about Colbert:
I have a feeling you could run a bowl of lime Jell-O as a third-party candidate and it would get upwards of 5%, coming disproportionately from Republicans....Polling three-ways at this stage of the game tells us much less about the appeal of the third candidate than it does about the level of disaffection with the other two (which in this case looks like it's higher among Republicans).
Yet Tom thinks there is even more to the story than that. Just like a certain number of conservatives liked All in the Family even though it wasn't supposed to be a "conservative" show,
They liked Archie Bunker because he said things they weren't 'allowed' to say. They took a fictitious character created to mock them and made him their own.
Which, I think, is happening (to a lesser degree) with Colbert. There are a fair number of conservatives who get that his act is a joke and that the joke is supposed to be on them, and they embrace him anyway--because they like his attitude.
There is something to this. But I'd also speculate (it would be irresponsible not to) that there's another itch being scratched here. "Movement conservatives" of the sort whose opinions about things one often encounters online are obviously fond of denouncing Hollyweird, but they also frequently display a rather desperate desire for the movies and the teevee to like them, to really like them. (For an analysis of this phenomenon see Edroso, R., here et passim.)
Colbert is currently cool, they want to be cool, so there you go.
(By the way, I apologize to Tom in advance for employing the ethically dubious and quite radical practice of quoting only parts of what he said and then linking to the rest. That's just not how blogs should work. I go to the box, you know, two minutes, and I feel shame.)