Stephen Colbert has the best of both political worlds, a new study shows. Liberals watch The Colbert Report for Colbert’s hilarious, satirical, almost performance-art persona of a conservative blowhard. Conservatives watch The Colbert Report because they think Colbert isn’t joking. This is what a study out of Ohio State University has found (story via Huffington Post). Fortunately for Colbert, both liberals and conservatives find him funny. But this means when Colbert is openly mocking Glen Beck, “applauding” Beck for his insanity, conservatives think Colbert is on Beck’s side. It’s almost as if conservatives are not genetically programmed with the “satire gene” – in addition to lacking the “irony gene”.

Last week, Stephen Colbert revisited a segment he had done on Florida Representative Billy Posey, who sponsored a bill that “would require future presidential candidates to provide a copy of their original birth certificate,” in order to put insane rumors of President Barack Obama’s birthplace to bed.

Colbert thought a similar measure should be taken to end the whisperings that Posey was a human-alligator hybrid. Posey, in response to Colbert, said, “I expected there would be some civil debate about it, but it wasn’t civil…There is no reason to say that I’m the illegitimate grandson of an alligator.” And one wondered, “Does Posey not realize that Colbert is not speaking in earnest? His reaction seems uniquely stupid!”

Stupid, yes. But apparently it’s not unique at all, according to a study from The Ohio State University, which proves, with math and stuff, that lots of conservatives seem to not understand the intrinsic, underlying joke of The Colbert Report:

“This study investigated biased message processing of political satire in The Colbert Report and the influence of political ideology on perceptions of Stephen Colbert. Results indicate that political ideology influences biased processing of ambiguous political messages and source in late-night comedy. Using data from an experiment (N = 332), we found that individual-level political ideology significantly predicted perceptions of Colbert’s political ideology. Additionally, there was no significant difference between the groups in thinking Colbert was funny, but conservatives were more likely to report that Colbert only pretends to be joking and genuinely meant what he said while liberals were more likely to report that Colbert used satire and was not serious when offering political statements. Conservatism also significantly predicted perceptions that Colbert disliked liberalism. Finally, a post hoc analysis revealed that perceptions of Colbert’s political opinions fully mediated the relationship between political ideology and individual-level opinion.”

I think a lot of conservatives are going to pissed when they realize that Stephen Colbert’s performance at the 2006 White House Correspondents’ Dinner was not, in fact, an awkward and ineffective attempt to praise President George W. Bush, but actually a bitter and satiric criticism of his incompetence!

From The Huffington Post

I loved when Colbert started that rumor about the congressman having descended from an alligator. That was one of Colbert’s funniest bits all year. Here’s one thing I’ll give conservatives, though: Colbert is probably more conservative in his private life than most liberals want to acknowledge. He’s a devout Catholic, Sunday school teacher and family man – not that those qualities reflect his politics, but I’d bet Colbert has voted Republican a few times in his life.