Stephen Colbert questions QAnon cultists’ latest cuckoo conspiracy
JFK Jr. did not reappear in Dallas on Tuesday—or did he? (He didn't.)
TV News Stephen Colbert
Now, it’d be easy to mock the conspiracy cult known as QAnon—so Stephen Colbert got right on that. Braving a barrage of bananas crazy-mail, the Late Show host aired a Wednesday segment dedicated to debunking the fringe conservative movement’s collective disillusionment over the dramatic non-appearance of the very late John F. Kennedy Jr. in Dallas, Texas on Tuesday. Introducing another in his unfortunately recurring bits on the dangerously unhinged right-wing sect, “The Q Files” (tagline: “The truth is out there, the lies are way out there”), Colbert dug deep into the Republican Party’s molten, gooey kook layer to expose QAnon’s most recent mass public face-plant.
Noting that hundreds of people gathered in Dealey Plaza on Tuesday in the fervent belief that the son of former President John F. Kennedy—who famously died in a plane crash in 1999—would not only reveal himself to be miraculously not-dead, Colbert indeed debunked QAnon’s big reveal, sort of the way that the sunrise debunks the nighttime. As to just why the people you’re most dreading having to sit next to at Thanksgiving imagine that John-John is not only alive, but is also the shadowy “Q” of QAnon himself and is secretly planning to run as seditious, twice-impeached former POTUS Donald Trump’s 2024 running mate, Colbert could only speculate. (Especially since there’s already an existing-in-this-reality Kennedy son spouting the sort of anti-vax conspiracy bullshit Q types can really get behind.)
Nope, as Colbert noted wryly, QAnon-ers had to take things just one step too far by throwing in the detail that JFK Jr.’s big prestige would occur at the very spot in Dallas where his dad was infamously gunned down in 1963. “And they had to throw in the grassy knoll,” lamented Colbert, adding sadly, “Up ’til then, it had the ring of truth.” When JFQ stubbornly refused to materialize (even in his scraggly, MAGA-rallying spectral form) at their “créme de la cray-cray” rally (what with being 22-years dead and all), Colbert noted how, like all doomsday cults who foolishly peg their gabbling grab-bag of nonsensical gibberish to a specific time and place, the minions of Q simply shifted their epoch-shattering announcement down the road a piece. That being Tuesday’s concert appearance by the conveniently still-alive members of The Rolling Stones. “Guys! Come on!,” ranted Colbert, “You can’t always get what you want! But if you try sometimes, you just might find you get what you need.”
As to whether this conclave of deeply deluded loudmouths deserve such a media walloping, one need only point to the undeniable fact that QAnon adherents have being doing some real-world damage. There are Republican Q cultists roaming the halls of Congress, and excreting their crazy all through your local elections, not to mention the occasional eruption of gun-toting violence from rank-and-file cultists who take all the Q-talk of Jewish space lasers and Democratic pedophile cannibal rings all too seriously. (The clip Colbert showed of the hundreds-deep Dallas rally included an enthusiastic call-and-response chant about the U.S.’ supposedly faked moon landing, just to fold some more Camelot into the fairy tale.)
With Colbert noting how the younger (but still very not-alive) JFK Jr.’s no-show at the Stones show inevitably gave birth to the mutated conspiracy theory that Kennedy is, in fact, actually immortal Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards, the host could only admire the tenacity of this hardy strain of reality-resistant conservative delusion. So keep watching the stages, QAnon. The Oak Ridge Boys are playing Dallas on Saturday—anybody could be hiding under that one guy’s beard.
60 Comments
My God, Dennis, your writing gives me a full-on headache. Just keeping track of the many, many clauses is a nightmare. Not every sentence has to be its own paragraph.
When you see the people at CPAC or Q rallies it answers the question of who exactly has been eating all of the Swanson frozen dinners all these years
well betweeen the stupid and the clogged arteries, shouldn’t this lot all be dead by now?
Lets hope
So they’re supporting Tucker Carlson in more ways than one.
We can joke but these people are running for school boards, city councils, sheriffs, judges, and as state and federal reps all over the country, sometimes unopposed. The apathy shown in Tuesday’s elections is exactly what gets them in office. We can’t let them win any of those, please vote in every election.
This past Tuesday should be a wake up call to Democrats to get their shit together. 2022 is going to be a Republican landslide. The progressive cultural agenda is causing the right wing nut jobs to snap back and vote. I say this as a staunch 2 decades+ registered non-partisan.
Get what shit together? I get that the Dems suck at propaganda, but VA’s election is basically proof that Americans are happy with Trumpism as long as it comes wrapped in softer language.
And conversely, maybe if Democrats wrapped some of the progressivism in “softer language,” they would have better results.
Lack of softer language isn’t what’s driving the Dem propaganda deficit.
Sure, but is asking for things better income equality, better healthcare alternatives, lower carbon emissions really a crazy progressive agenda ? Or should we just continue to follow the lead of cowardly pols like Joe Manchin ?
I’ll preface by re-stating that I am a registered non-partisan:Rambling responses below. Healthcare reform would be huge. But go after the insurance companies and how about some tort reform? As a business owner, my healthcare costs for my employees are absolutely obscene. And they go up yearly in double digit percentages. The prescription medicine thing is nuts. Pressure pharma. Other countries negotiate with pharma better than our country. WTF is up with that?Lower carbon emissions are great but you need to pay for them, and in the meantime, the economy has to operate. China is clearly completely ignoring this, as is most of the rest of the world. You want progressive energy, or jobs? If there were more fiscally-prudent democrats like Manchin in office, you could be less worried about 2022. I’ll swing back to the business owner thing here and raise you that I am an s-corp which is a pass-through. I make over $400,000 a year…..on paper. My personal income and business income are combined, in a somewhat simple explanation. The democrats big plan is to “get the rich.” So, I am a millionaire, and they are coming after me. I am not alone. There are many small business owners, or married couples, who earn that $400,000+. We are mostly socially liberal, but you want votes, stop targeting our wallets (real or on paper). Republicans still get that and realize how many of us there are. And lumping us in with “Corporate Interests” and “catering to the shareholders” is bullshit. We don’t do that, or have shareholders. It’s hard to run a business. The Republican race-baiting and stop the steal is energizing the rural base, which is ENORMOUSLY frustrating. The Democrats better start looking to people like me at some point, and back off the “tax the rich!,” and deal with the underlying race stuff in their own backyard if they want a chance.
Manchin isn’t fiscally prudent, he’s more beholden to corporate interests. And who should we tax….the poor ?
I will pose a question in response: where’s your break point of income for the raise taxes/don’t tax more? And why did you choose that number?Let’s separate income from wealth for this exercise.
I would leave that to the economists and maybe it’s different from state to state. I’ll flip the question around, how do you think things get paid for? Public schools, police and fire departments etc…? Taxes, that’s how and that’s how it’s always been. You can tell me how difficult it is for you to run your own business and my response is if it’s too burdensome then perhaps you should do something else.
Come on, that’s not very fair. I am trying to have a reasonable discussion here. At no point did I say anything about “no taxes,” and by saying “running business is hard” was simply stating an opinion garnered through 25+ years of personal experience. It was not a complaint. I’ll rephrase my question: given the current income-based federal tax classifications (there are 7 levels): where would you raise taxes? Maybe a better question is where WOULDN’T you raise taxes?
Well lets start with Elizabeth Warren’s suggestion for a wealth tax, 2% wealth tax on households over 50 million and 3% on households over 1 billion. Hopefully that won’t affect your bottom line.
You’re conflating income with wealth. You still haven’t answered the question.
You’re trying to have a “reasonable” discussion in the comments of an article about hundreds of people showing up to see a guy that’s been dead for 20 years. Have you not noticed that there is a powerfully unserious constituency that has taken over our political discourse? There is no room for wonky discussions about tax-rates of upper middle-class businesses owners. Do you really think this is what is moving voters? Moving the corp tax rates back to where they were 10 years ago, and going after the spaceship building class and tax cheats to balance spending? If you’re not talking about lizard people or discussing white kids getting anxiety when reading about American History, you’re barking up the wrong tree.
“If you’re not talking about lizard people or discussing white kids getting anxiety when reading about American History” or rallying troops against the scourge of mean comedy…
Sir, you are Joe Manchin, and I claim my five pounds.
Hah, 5 pounds of red meat these days is a pretty penny. I’ll consider it Captain 🙂
The “Tax the Rich” message would be far more effective if it were made clear that the targets of that campaign are the super-wealthy who use loopholes and dodges to pay little (3% or less) to no taxes on personal wealth factoring into the high millions to low billions of dollars.The amount of capital that could be raised through higher, collected taxes on about 70 people out of the millions who live in the US is truly staggering, and it should be mentioned that those higher taxes would have little to no effect on those people’s true bottom lines – except maybe, instead of having their yachts trimmed with snow leopard fur, they’ll have to settle for something synthetic.But of course, the Democrats are abjectly unable to get this message out because they’re just collectively bad at it, and because nuance and context is impossible to hear when they are drowned out by a GOP message pitched at the dumbest and loudest people in the nation.
I agree with you 100%. Well-stated.
It’s harder to get the Democratic message out than the Republican one, because the Republican message is simple. Their message is, “Democrats hate you. They want your guns, want to make you live next door to poor people and brown people, want to raise everyone’s taxes and give the money to people on welfare, and want America to beg every foreign country for their forgiveness for being so awesome for all these years.” Not a lot of nuance there.
Sad but very true.
Every election is a wake-up call for Democrats to get their shit together, and yet…
…here we are.Cheers, +1
why start now?
As a progressive, I would love to hear about this agenda that’s supposedly costing Democrats elections. I held my nose and voted for Biden but he’s been an utter failure. The only thing I can credibly say he’s done well is the vax rollout, but that’s it.
Some good columns in today’s WSJ and NYT addressing just that. Check them out.
He’s not my favorite but he’s been president for TEN MONTHS.
But another way to say that is: 21% of his term has gone by already.
And besides the vax rollout, what does he have to show for it? He’s got about 13 months to protect voting rights before Republicans win in 2022 (and they will win) and completely dismantle the democratic system as we know it. His big focus right now is would you guys like a neutered infrastructure bill that doesn’t fix any of the most pressing problems?
Every time he tries to pass a bill that says air is good, he has fifty Republicans sworn to stonewall. The problem isn’t Biden, the problem is the country is gerrymandered to let bigoted microbrains who are scared of reading the word “racism” have a disproportionate sway on national policy.
People don’t want “whitey bad” taught in schools.
In what way has Biden been a failure, exactly? in not convincing all fifty Democratic senators to agree? Because that’s been the main roadblock to his agenda, and I’m sorry, but even the greatest political genius in the world would find it nearly impossible to get legislation through an evenly divided legislative body. There are certainly a few things Biden could have done better so far, but the main problems, which are a divided legislature, an economy that’s still recovering from Covid, a minority of the population stubbornly resisting vaccination, and the Afghan clusterfuck, were all essentially beyond his control. Biden can’t make Manchin and Sinema vote how he wants, he can’t make dipshits get the shot and he couldn’t make the Afghan army stand up and fight, but nobody else would have been able to either. If you ask me, the biggest mistake the Democrats have made this year has been dragging out their budget negotiations over several months and doing so in public. It would have been much better for them to negotiate behind closed doors, and for both the progressive and moderate wings of the party to agree to keep their disputes out of the media as much as possible.
the main problems, which are a divided legislature, an economy that’s still recovering from Covid, a minority of the population stubbornly resisting vaccination, and the Afghan clusterfuck, were all essentially beyond his control. Biden can’t make Manchin and Sinema vote how he wants, he can’t make dipshits get the shot and he couldn’t make the Afghan army stand up and fight, but nobody else would have been able to either.Making a strong case for his re-election here. Funny how when Republicans have control of the gov’t they ram their agenda down your throat but when it’s the Democrats in charge, we get the legislative equivalent of tote bags that say yasss kween.
I’m Stevie Nicks and I approve this message.
Voted. Got my lil proud “I Voted” sticker. All blue across the board. As I do in every election. My Democratic-Socialist candidate lost handily. Now what.
Get other people to vote so that stops happening. Don’t give up.
8 people who were at the Jan 6 insurrection won seats this past Tuesday at various levels.
The fact that these people exist in 2021 is a telling sign that humanity will not end thanks to nuclear war, but dwindle away in the ashes of stupidity… well OK, maybe just the United States at this point.The US Government is a failure at this point, as allowing this many people who are patently delusional into office and to maintain those offices? That’s a failure I never thought we would ever see and it’s only gaining momentum still.
QAnon is cosplay for Left Wing Nut Jobs. Stephen Colbert should have died in a fiery plane crash with his daddy and bro.
I’m surprised the QAnons haven’t latched on to the very much still alive but deeply antivax Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Maybe Cheryl told him to STFU.
Dave Coulier suggested they cut. it. out.
I’m surprised the QAnons haven’t latched on to the very much still alive but deeply antivax Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Yeah – in fact when I first heard about this, I thought, no, they must mean THAT Kennedy, not… you know, two of the dead ones.
I read RFK Jr’s Wikipedia article after posting my comment and, dear Lord!, it goes way beyond being just an anti-vaxxer with him. If he wasn’t left-leaning, he could be Qanon’s figurehead.
Have they not checked the NY Health Club or Marla’s bedroom???
My biggest question with all these “rallies” is, What Do These People Do For A Living??? Who has the time to take off from work to travel from states away from this and shout “NO”. I’ll take the banner. These are the same idiots who say “No Socialism” yet live off of the government. Idiots be idioting. Fuck people.
It’s fascinating to watch cultists adapt after prophecy after prophecy fails to come true. People have an amazing ability to ignore inconvenient realities. If psychology students aren’t writing theses about Qanon they are missing a trick.Meanwhile, it’s downright terrifying that some of these people are in public office. God help us all.
The failed prophecies are a feature not a bug. Doomsday cults actually thrive best when Doomsday gets pushed out at random. They get drawn in with the promise of prestige for having secret knowledge others do not, and are kept in with social pressures including financial and sexual coercion. Qanon is no different from Scientology or any other cult.
I have to admit that I thought this was a joke when I heard about it. I was actually surprised to hear people showed up for this crap.I mean, it’s not like John-John disappeared into the mist never to be seen again when he was flying out to Martha’s Vineyard. The Coast Guard, Navy, and even NOAA searched for the aircraft, found it and recovered the bodies, which were identified as Kennedy, his wife and his sister-in-law. They were then autopsied to find their causes of death—big surprise here: blunt-force trauma as the result of a plane crash. And the cause of the crash? Pilot error, not an uncommon end for a novice pilot flying at night.That said, this particular QAnon theory seems even more ludicrous than usual. Even if Kennedy had secretly survived, AND somehow managed to supposedly stay plugged into the nation’s secrets, AND was the mysterious QAnon himself, why in the actual f**k would he be endorsing Trump????
I wouldn’t even think JFK Jr was ever particularly “plugged into the nation’s secrets”, unless they gave him top level access when he was 2 years old, or George magazine was way more influential than it seemed.
Very true. I doubt he knew anymore about the inner workings of government than you and me.
I just wonder … a thousand or so people were lined up at Dealy Plaza waiting for JFK Jr. (and JFK I guess?) to show up… and I wonder what they would have done if it had happened. I mean… that would have been magic, right? Actual true magic? Did any of those people really think it would happen?Because…. that’s crazy. Clinically crazy. Fortunately a lot of those people have regular jobs that keep them sane. Like, you know. Judges and cops and such.
Yeah, how on Earth would they justify JFK, sr. being alive? Literally every single one of them has seen film of him getting his head blown apart, and on top of that he’d be 104 years old. So the odds of him being around today are…not great. It would have to be a resurrection. Like a literal resurrection. Which means that at least some of these people probably think JFK is the second coming of Jesus? Even more ironically, most of these people are probably Protestant evangelicals, and they’ve somehow convinced themselves that their saviors (aside from Trump) are the most prominent Roman Catholic in American history and his son? I have to wonder if 200 years from now Qanon will be a full-fledged religion, with Trump as the messiah, the Kennedys and who knows who else as saints, and the Clintons, the Bidens and Tom Hanks as literal devils.
Remember the good old days when folks like these literally drank poisoned kool-aid and, you know, died n’ shit?
These same idiots thought JFK Sr. would come back from the grave to hand Trump the keys to the White House again. Never mind the fact that JFK was a Democrat.