The Opposition aims for rash of rabid views
NEW YORK — Someone once famously said that “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.”
That was then, before objective truth lost its power to persuade; before facts were swept aside like pesky tumbleweeds. Now, it’s not just evidence that’s putty in the hands of every partisan. Entire cosmologies are now do-it-yourself projects, made to order for each person’s mind-set.
So say hello to The Opposition w/Jordan Klepper, whose host aims to rally a rash of rabid world views. The show airs Mondays following Comedy Central’s nightly fake newscast, The Daily Show.
A promo for The Opposition with Klepper wearing a know-itall sneer, helps explain: “THEY say, ‘Investigate Trump.’ I say, ‘Impeach Hillary.’ … They say, ‘Our children should learn Chinese.’ I say, ‘China isn’t real.’ ”
TV-Klepper is opposed to mainstream media. Opposed to Oprah’s Book Club. Opposed to that Vietnamese soup with the name that sounds vaguely like the movement known as “antifa.”
Klepper, 38, was a correspondent on The Daily Show for three years and before that performed with the Upright Citizens Brigade and Second City improv troupes.
Now giving a tour through the rambling, recently occupied quarters of The Opposition in a building across from New York’s Penn Station, the off-screen Klepper is a rangy six-foot-four with an affable manner and a hearty laugh. Not the sort of chap for whom mad-dog fulminating would seem to come naturally.
Do the times make the man? Adapting to the current media ethos, with its even harsher, even more absurdist pitch, Klepper will in effect host a supercharged version of The Colbert Report, which from 2005 through 2014 occupied the same time slot, with Stephen Colbert posing as a priggish conservative blowhard.
“We’re not ideologically based,” Klepper cautions. “We’re AGAINST it. What’s ‘it’? We’ll get back to you on that. But whatever ‘it’ is, we know we’re taking a strong stance against it.”
On The Opposition, Klepper will preside over a team of zealous correspondents who, like camcorder-packing conservative activist James O’Keefe, will produce field reports that advance his or her own version of the opposition cause.
“We’ll have correspondents who live in their own ‘alt-media’ silos: a conspiracy of paranoid dunces,” says Klepper. “It used to be a matter of choosing your own truths. Now it’s more a matter of concocting a reality you live inside, complete with its own echo chamber.”
Klepper notes that, increasingly, people take refuge with a chosen media outlet — whether somewhat mainstream or out on the fringe — that reinforces what they want to think.
His guiding principle for The Opposition: “We promise not to challenge you with anything that will challenge you. We are here to make you feel good about yourself, or to feel more afraid so you can feel good about being afraid. But whatever we do, we won’t try to change your mind!”
While The Opposition will embrace the chaos of the current day in its search for laughs, there will be an underlying method to its madness: The conspiracies it lampoons will be mined from reallife theorists.
“Every argument that we make will start with an argument from Breitbart or Milo Yiannopoulos or [Fox News Channel host Sean] Hannity, and, from that, we will concoct an even bigger ‘reality,’ ” Klepper explains. “It’s OUR job to heighten it. That way, you can see how the little nugget of [crap] we started from can be very dangerous, because it can get so big so quick.”