Today, the world of Twitter awoke to what is perhaps the stupidest hashtag movement in history.

Stephen Colbert is under fire because his show's Twitter account tweeted this: "I am willing to show #Asian community I care by introducing the Ching-Chong Ding-Dong Foundation for Sensitivity to Orientals or Whatever." This is a reference to an old skit, in which Colbert performs a racist Chinese impersonation "accidentally" captured on live feed, and then apologizes for it in the laziest way possible when caught. The attack came soon after, from a 23-year old hashtag activist named Suey Park, who started the #NotYourAsianSidekick campaign last year, and it quickly trended.

After the left-wing politically correct reflex haters enjoyed the latest of the hate-fests Twitter has opened up to them, the rightwing lunatics joined in with their typical complete lack of basic comprehension. It was Michelle Malkin, naturally, who tweeted this:

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Co-sign! RT @suey_park I'm sick of liberals hiding behind assumed "progressiveness" #CancelColbert — Michelle Malkin (@michellemalkin) March 28, 2014

She always has possessed an amazing capacity to suppress all perspective, even for a Tea Partier.

Twitter has an extraordinary ability, more than any other media, to encourage speaking before thinking. Did anyone stop, for even a moment, to ask themselves the reason Colbert made that joke? Did anyone question, even for the briefest flash, the motivations behind it? One microsecond of consideration would reveal the following: Colbert plays a parody of a rightwing hack. Rightwing hacks make racist statements. Therefore Colbert is parodying the racist statements of rightwing hacks. It would be weird if he didn't parody their fictitiously color-blind racism--it's a major feature of their personalities. Look at Fox News.

You do not need an advanced degree in critical theory to piece this together. You need functioning synapses and the willingness to fire them. And the excuse that the necessary separation from context which Twitter requires? All the context that is necessary is his name. Colbert's name is his character. His character is a parody. The irony of his statement was implicit.

Twitter is the hottest of media, in Marshall McLuhan's term. And what he said nearly fifty years ago, in Hot and Cool, applies perfectly to this case:

"When we invent a new technology, we become cannibals. We eat ourselves alive since these technologies are merely extensions of ourselves. The new environment shaped by electric technology is a cannibalistic one that eats people. To survive one must study the habits of cannibals."

Twitter has apparently decided to sit down and have a lovely meal on the bones of that most delicate and human creation, irony. In the process, the #CancelColbert crowd have managed to make anti-racism campaign seem hypersensitive to the point of the ridiculous (and let's remember that all of this began in a discussion of how to deal with the real racism of the Washington Redskins name.) It's also unclear what Colbert can do to respond. Because what it looks like to somebody who hasn't seen the skit, and who follows the struggle on Twitter or in the press descriptions of the Twitter struggle, is that Colbert made a racist joke and it flopped.

Naturally he has tried to apologize in a funny way.

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It's really his only option.

But the honest truth is that none of that matters. It is more than possible that, even as people tweeted their attack on Colbert, they knew it had nothing to do with what he actually meant.

People don't go to Twitter for the democratic exchange of ideas. They go there to beat the shit out of somebody in the fury of their magnificent righteousness.

Twitter is the bar you go to when you're looking for a fight, and just like a bar fight, the actual words that sparked the confrontation are more or less irrelevant. By the time the struggle is over, the cause is long forgotten.

And why ask? Why bother finding out what really happened? The outrage is just too much fun to pass up.

Stephen Marche Stephen Marche is a novelist who writes a monthly column for Esquire magazine about culture.

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