After a joke from his show was taken out of context and tweeted by Comedy Central’s @ColbertReport account, the hashtag #CancelColbert spread, and Stephen Colbert and his show were deemed racist at worst and culturally insensitive at best. Were people possibly also using the same hashtag to comment on how ridiculous the controversy was, therefore inflating the frequency of usage when reported on by news outlets? Yes. Is this the problem with discussing topics on Twitter? Most certainly. And 72 hours after Colbert’s “controversial” show aired, he finally responded on last night’s show to the entire thing — taking a naturally humorous response, but with quite a bit of truth: “To recap: A web editor I’ve never met posts a tweet in my name on an account I don’t control, outrages a hashtag activist, and the news media gets 72 hours of content. The system worked.”
