More embarrassing is the fact that each pundit who attempts the metaphor seems to think that he or she is super-clever and the first one with the idea — proving that even the people who produce news 24 hours a day aren’t watching this stuff.

Here are some of our favorite cheesy discussions of cheesy grits from coverage of the Alabama and Mississippi primaries. And yes, there are doozies from Wolf Blitzer and Chris Matthews.

Jamal Simmons: Poor guy, only the second time he’s had catfish ever and cheesy grits and a biscuit — it’s almost as if we’re watching Mitt Romney on safari in his own country. (Australia Broadcasting Company)

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Jan Crawford: Now as any Southerner will tell you, Romney didn’t quite get it right on the grits. It’s cheese grits, not cheesy grits. But grits and gravy like Gingrich said? Listen, I grew up in Alabama. you put butter on grits. Gravy goes on biscuits. But despite this gravy issue, people here seem to be cutting Gingrich a lot of slack, Erica and Charlie. They think he is smart, he’s visionary, and they like that he can take on President Obama. (CBS)

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Mary Matalin: Quit trying. Quit trying. I like the cheesy grits. Just do what you do well, which is be kind of a sort of a bad candidate, but a good leader, and just stay on message. That’s it. (CNN)

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John McCain: I think it’s very possible that Mitt Romney may win both Alabama and Mississippi tonight, putting to rest that myth that he can’t — that he can’t succeed in Southern states. By the way, I’m sure it’s because he’s grown to like grits… (CNN)

*
John King: All these guys are with us all night long. We’re going to make cheesy grits late tonight. (CNN)

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Ashleigh Banfield: I was just going to say, the cheesy grits.

(laughter)

Dana Bash: Yes, exactly. (CNN)

*

Suzanne Malveaux: Wolf, do you eat grits?

Wolf Blitzer: No. I have –

Malveaux: There’s been a lot of talk.

Blitzer: I’ll be honest, I have tasted them over the years, but I can’t say I’m a major grit eater.

Malveaux: There’s a lot of talk about cheesy grits and catfish, and this is coming from Mitt Romney.

Blitzer: I’m sure it’s delicious.

Malveaux: It is delicious. I grew up on grits.

Blitzer: Yes. (CNN)

*

Terri Sewell: He can’t even get the fact we have cheese grits, not cheesy grits. So, I agree with you that he is pandering to what he thinks Alabama voters are about, Mitt Romney, and not to what we actually are concerned about.

Al Sharpton: She is authentic. She’s there in Birmingham, still has on her very nice necklace and her nice attire. She didn’t come home with a bowl of grits tonight playing with me.

David Corn: She is a great reporter, though.

Erin McPike: I had grits and a biscuit for breakfast this morning. I tell you I did.

Corn: Bring some back.

McPike: Cheese grits and a breakfast. (MSNBC)

*

Chris Matthews: What about all this “y’all” crap of his? Is it going to work?

Former U.S. Sen. Trent Lott: Well…

Matthews: Does it work if you go down there and pander?

Lott: Well, you know, look, eating a little catfish and some grits, whether you call them cheesy grits or whatever…

Matthews: But it is cheese grits, not cheesy grits, right?

Lott: Well, they may have had it on the menu, “cheesy grits.” It may have had a little extra portion. I don’t know. But ordinarily, you say cheese grits, yes.

Matthews: What’s that place, Mama’s — or what’s that place in New Orleans we eat?

Former U.S. Sen. John Breaux: Mother’s.

Matthews: Mother’s, yes.

Breaux: They don’t serve cheesy grits at Mother’s.

Matthews: And then there’s Po Boys down there.

Breaux: And they’re great.

Lott: And you know, if he’d go in there and eat a Po Boy and eat it at Mother’s, he’d be a better candidate. (MSNBC)

*

Eric Bolling: Cheesy? It’s cheese grits. Cheese grits, governor. By the way, add a lot of pepper. Greg, cheesy grits?

Greg Gutfeld: I think it was a stripper I met in (the) Alamo.

Kimberly Guilfoyle: Oh my gosh. (Fox News)

But in other ways, the lightning rod has become a whipping post.

Franzen’s comments at Tulane University that Twitter is “unspeakably irritating” and “stands for everything I oppose” stirred up social media networks in all the predictable ways, from irony to indignation. By declaring that serious work on Twitter would be the equivalent of writing a novel without the letter p, and drawing lines between serious readers and social media yakkers, Franzen at least succeeded in distracting his critics. Book blogs had previously been aflame debating a New Yorker essay in which Franzen wrote about slowly appreciating the brilliance of Edith Wharton. He suggested, in part, that he overcame his bias against her life of privilege by balancing her fabulous wealth against her less than fabulous looks.

That a writer whose fiction is so hyper-aware can be so clueless to the way his work will be received might be the ultimate Franzen paradox. It’s been on display ever since he wrestled so painfully and publicly with Oprah Winfrey’s decision to include “The Corrections” in her televised book club. How is it that a genuine American master — one who sees the faults and flaws and doubts of his characters with such lacerating and uncomfortable intensity – can be so tone-deaf to his own?

Turns out that he’s not. There is no Franzen paradox. Despite all of the ink spilled over Franzen of late, both in print and online, an important point has been missed. He is not out of touch. His opinion would not be any different if he actually spent time on Twitter before criticizing it. He wouldn’t feel any differently even if he was a struggling young writer who needed social media to market his work.

Jonathan Franzen means every word. He’s completely sincere. He knows exactly how some might respond. He not only doesn’t care about whether he starts a firestorm on Facebook, he feels liberated to speak his mind – indeed, he sees it as a prime authorial duty, as the essence of truthfulness. And he learned this while watching his mother die.

In a startlingly and sometimes uncomfortable lecture titled “On Autobiographical Fiction,” presented as an essay in his forthcoming collection “Farther Away” (May, from FSG) but pieces of which can also be found online, Franzen delves into his divorce and awkward family life, and strips himself as bare as “The Corrections” Chip Lambert or Patty Berglund in “Freedom.” But it’s the discussion of a last conversation with his mom that resolved the Franzen paradox for me. As he told his mother secrets about himself on her deathbed, and tried to explain who he was and why he’d be just fine without her, his mother ultimately nodded and said “Well, you’re an eccentric.” And in those four words, in that summation, Franzen heard “the implicit instruction not to worry so much about what she, or anybody else, might think of me. To be myself, as she, in her dying, was being herself.”

Let’s get beyond, for a moment, the general ickiness of the way Franzen turns his mother’s death into an excuse to let his own freaky narcissism flag fly. Is it possible to find a new understanding, even a new empathy, for Franzen in this anecdote? Might it explain exactly why the Internet hates Jonathan Franzen, but also Jonathan Franzen will never stop being anyone other than himself? And could it explain why Franzen is right about the Internet — it is, after all, full of phony friendships and false poses, it really is hard to make an argument in 140 characters — but also why the Internet is often right about Franzen. It might also explain why they’re both talking completely past each other.

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Let’s back up for a moment. The Internet has been amazing for book talk. There is more of it, and at a higher quality, than perhaps at any other moment, certainly in my lifetime. Dinosaurs love to lament the lost space in newspaper book reviews; a few years ago, the National Book Critics Circle fought, what seemed to me, a self-serving campaign to save the book review, by which a handful of people really wanted to save their right to sell the same lame 450-word book report to a handful of regional dailies. You didn’t have to bother reading the book to write many of those reviews, and as a one-time daily books editor myself, who once assigned reviews to some of those active in this debate, it was clear that many critics did not. Now we have the Rumpus and the Awl and the Millions and the Morning News and Maud Newton and Bookslut and the Nervous Breakdown and Full-Stop and the Los Angeles Review of Books and HTMLgiant and you get the idea. Professional freelancers didn’t save the book review – the battle was won by the Internet and people who love reading. The culture is richer for it. Twitter’s a useful tool for keeping track of the idea explosion.

And as the savvy critic Roxane Gay wrote on Salon earlier this week, the Internet has also reorganized the relationship between readers and writers. The conversation is not one-way, through a new book that’s handed down every 18 months. It is ongoing, through all of these social media forums Franzen is so suspicious of, whether Facebook or Twitter. At a time when major publishers spend less time genuinely building an author’s career, a writer these days must – by mere dint of not being fortunate enough to have Jonathan Franzen’s sales or, perhaps, talent – not to curate your brand, to collect followers and friends, is to limit one’s chances to have a career.

To this argument, Franzen would probably say That’s exactly my point. These Twitter and Facebook personalities are about image, they are about sales, they are advertisements for your best self. They are not your true selves – they’re carefully edited selves. And however much careful editing might be part of the writing process, holding one’s true self back is antithetical to the author’s task.

Isn’t it possible that both Franzen and his critics are both right? When we organize ourselves online into groups based on what we’re most passionate about, we also form new families and tribes. In the early days of the Internet, back when we all had AOL addresses, I was part of an indie-music mailing list and got an early lesson in the way new identities were constructed online. People took new last names – the name of whatever their ‘zine or record label or band was called. It meant taking the one thing you could not change about yourself – the family name you were born into – and turning it into your truest passion. Two decades later, one’s Twitter name is the same thing; it’s easy to imagine writers and readers at the AWP conference last week or at South by Southwest this week introducing themselves with an @ in front of their names.

That the online book culture is full of branding and image-burnishing is hard to deny. But it is also a generous place, at its best, and writers who use these social media tools understand this. They retweet, they send out links to positive reviews and articles about other people, they congratulate each other on publication day. Promotional, sure — but if it’s news that a favorite writer has a new story in a small journal I wouldn’t have known about, well, that’s valuable news. Indeed, it’s at least as valuable as the phony and promotional blurb industry which Franzen seems to have no problem being a part of.

Unlike the blurb conversation, which is full of secret links between agents and editors, writers and MFA advisers, the Twitter talk is open for all to take part in and follow. To misunderstand (or to have the privilege not to understand) the power of this community building, or the way writers in an evaporating publishing world use this to amplify their own diminishing voices, is to miss something fundamental about how both the book world and the Internet works. As Forster might have said, being online is one way to “only connect.”

*

But no matter how generous the online book world might be, the name of the game, for many, remains branding, positioning, spinning. That’s the dishonest hall of mirrors Franzen objects to. And the sometimes dishonest response to his comments online, in many ways, only proves his point.

Sure, there’s clubs and cliques online. If Washington is Hollywood for ugly people, the Internet’s book world is where some folks who were once-marginalized — readers! — have now become the popular people. To my thinking, these readers and writers have built something deep and enriching. But with publishers and authors unsure of the future, but certain that it somehow involves being online, the Internet has the upper hand, and not everyone is comfortable with that transfer of authority and influence. Most big-name literary authors engage online in some way – Jennifer Egan, Rick Moody, Tom Perrotta, Nathan Englander, Bret Easton Ellis, the list goes on and on. Some authors are amazing at it; others are dragged kicking and squirming. If your favorite author isn’t already part of the conversation that any reader can follow, they likely will be when their next book comes out. Follow me, like me, be my friend.

Jonathan Franzen is the biggest celebrity in this world. He will not play in this sandbox. More than that, he thinks the sandbox — this community — that these young writers and midlist writers have worked hard to build — is worthless and the opposite of the real tasks performed by real writers. So sure, it is easy to understand why the Internet reserves such special bile for him, in return. It’s almost too easy. There’s the offense taken when someone who isn’t online, criticizes something they don’t really know anything about. There’s the ease of saying things about someone who isn’t listening, while everyone else is RTing and liking. (Aimee Mann learned that the hard way; while you’d think we could all agree that Ice-T is a limited actor on “Law & Order,” when she said so publicly on Twitter, the man himself was listening and suggested she do something untoward with a fiery bowl of penises.)

And he makes a damn good lightning rod, because if the Internet is also about sending spitballs at the elite, there’s no bigger target than this rare writer who has figured out sales and acclaim, who wins awards and tops bestseller lists. Who appears on Charlie Rose and the cover of Time magazine.

Want to start a debate about middlebrow vs. highbrow, men vs. women, commercial vs. literary? Franzen guarantees you attention. He gets dragged into many of these arguments — and often simply allows them to flare, without comment of his own, the price of smart debate. When Jennifer Weiner and Jodi Picoult coined the term #Franzenfreude as a Twitter hashtag to describe their pain over the “multiple and copious reviews being showered on Jonathan Franzen,” it wasn’t really about Jonathan Franzen. It was about who gets taken seriously and who gets to decide. It was about respect and fairness and balance. But in the end, Weiner merely hoped that other women writers would be reviewed as often as Jonathan Tropper, not that everyone got Franzen-level acclaim. Of course, #Tropperfreude would hardly generate the same coverage in the New York Times or on NPR.  And that Franzen has written introductions to the work of Paula Fox and Christina Stead that certainly turned thousands of readers on to their work (well, at least me), giving the amazing gift of a new readership decades later, often gets lost in the din.

Likewise, as Laura Miller pointed out on Salon this week, the online response to Franzen’s focus on Edith Wharton’s looks was in some ways a misreading of what he actually wrote.

The way I read it, he wants to see Wharton as, at heart, “an isolate and a misfit, which is to say a born writer,” and no doubt a lot like himself. In the same way that a novelist uses a character’s desire to coax readers into sympathy across boundaries of gender, class, race and time, for Franzen, teasing out this kinship is what stirs his sympathy and allows him to identify with Wharton. Unfortunately, it’s a strategy that seems to have had the reverse effect on how everyone else feels about him.

*

Doesn’t he care? Shouldn’t he be embarrassed, or worried that his points are being lost, or something? Shouldn’t someone have said, “Dude, stop talking about Oprah in interviews”? Or isn’t there a New Yorker editor who might have pointed out that Franzen could come off as small and petty and jealous in what was supposed to be an appreciation of his late pal David Foster Wallace? After all, for someone who seems to hate Twitter for the way people live out loud, he sure does seem to live out loud in careless ways.

That’s a trick lots of other Times writers can’t claim; the Times has described everything from children’s books to Brooklyn restaurants with a “Portlandia” adjective.

But they’re hardly the only writers obsessed with comparing things to the comedy show. From GQ and New York magazine to Gawker — and whether writing about arrests for public sex, coffee shops across America, or combination bike fair/film festivals — “Portlandia” has become a lazy shorthand for oddball, quirky cool. And no, don’t say that should be a “Portlandia” sketch.

“Portlandia” in the New York Times

Calyer, a restaurant in New York

One red (wine) is described as ”textured and bright with hints of volcano.” Those who like this sort of thing will find Calyer endearing. Those who don’t will be sure they’ve stumbled onto the set of ”Portlandia: East.” (Jan. 25, 2012)

A park in Portland

Trying to locate this year’s fifth annual Pie Off in Laurelhurst Park in Portland, Ore., was like a sketch from the TV show “Portlandia”: first you had to pass by what was billed (in chalk on the asphalt path) as an “organic free-range wedding,” then a free performance of Shakespeare’s “Much Ado About Nothing.” (T Magazine, Aug. 2, 2011)

Goings-on at a rich person’s estate in the Hamptons

If it all seems like an episode of ”Portlandia,” the arch sendup of Northern left coast culture featuring an ad agency where employees navigate Frisbee mazes and ideate in hot-air balloons, that’s no mistake. (July 27, 2011)

Coffee shops in Oregon that aren’t even in Portland

Later, I’d see the same barista manning the counter and squeegeeing condensation from the windows at the Blue Scorcher Bakery Cafe, in downtown Astoria, an organic, vegetarian cooperative with a quixotic magazine rack. Viewed through cynical eyes, the coffee shop might look like fodder for the satirical television series ”Portlandia,” which pokes fun at the region’s cultural quirks and earnest, progressive ideals. (March 25, 2011)

Things in Portland, as described by the city’s daily paper, the Portland Oregonian

Puppet shows

It sounds like a “Portlandia” sketch, but the “Quick ‘N’ Dirty” Puppet Slam is for real.

A bike fair/film fest

It’s an event so steeped in the eccentric ways of our fair city that it almost seems like something cooked up by the spoofmeisters of “Portlandia”: Scores — nay, hundreds — of bicyclists turning a modest commercial intersection into a spontaneous springtime fair, with craft beers flowing, DJs spinning, bikes and bikewear being flaunted, bike gear being raffled off, and, most importantly, independent short films about the world  — nay, the universe — of bicycling screening in a theater just steps from the action.

A bicycle-based talk show

Although it seems like something from a “Portlandia” sketch, “The Pedal Powered Talk Show” is the real deal.

Stocking stuffers

RadCat cat toys: These handmade pillows, collars and toys are made with recycled, vintage materials and are “Portlandia-style cute” …

Restaurants

In Queens

Highfalutin grilled cheese sandwiches, coffee-geek coffee, and craft beer together at last. Yes, it sounds like a “Portlandia” parody, but we’re not ashamed to admit that we like it. (New York magazine)

In Austin, Texas

What with its devotion to today’s locavore and organic philosophies, 24 Diner could star in an episode of “Portlandia”: it’s very serious about what it does. (Texas Monthly)

In Boulder, Colo.

From its top-notch farmers market on Wednesday evenings and Saturday mornings, to its “Portlandia”-(t)ype “Is it local? Yes, it’s local” menu options, you pretty much can’t miss, anywhere you hit. (Colorado Springs Independent)

In Portland

But this isn’t just some dutiful, farmy, “Portlandia”-esque ideal …  (GQ)

Pork festivals

This is the third year of the Cochon 555 tour, a production of Atlanta-based pig promoter Brady Lowe, which hit Los Angeles for the first time this year. The strip-club fracas after last year’s Oregon event, which began when a renowned local chef objected to the trophy awarded to an Iowan pig and ended at 2 a.m. with tasers, contusions, arrests and Lowe’s broken leg, could have been a sketch from “Portlandia.” (LA Weekly)

Spas

Billed as a “retail relaxation station,” Oasis carries everything from terrariums by Twig to bespoke lemonade by Sips and Bites to vegan beauty by Meow Meow Tweet, which sounds like a “Portlandia” sketch but is actually a line of handmade apothecary products. (Racked NY)

Liking things on Facebook

IFC also has another clip for you, but you have to “like” “Portlandia” on Facebook before you can actually watch it. Which, ironically, seems like something out of a “Portlandia” sketch. (Crushable)

Commenting on websites

Of course, not everyone finds the city’s oddballs so charming. When the website Deadline Hollywood first posted about “Portlandia,” it inspired such ultraserious rants that it could’ve been a “Portlandia” sketch in itself. (Los Angeles Times)

Strange public sex

A Portland couple was arrested last night and accused of disorderly conduct after police heard multiple reports that a woman was “tied up in a car with duct tape over her mouth.”

The police thought they were dealing with a potential kidnapping case. Turns out the captive was just enjoying Valentine’s Day with her loving boyfriend.

The story reads something like a discarded “Portlandia” plot line-complete with a Subaru cameo. (Gawker)

Jodie Foster in “Carnage”

Foster’s performance makes the character resemble a really, really intense resident of politically correct “Portlandia.” (Creative Loafing)

Los Angeles hipsters excited about Vanilla Ice

“I personally liked it because we’ve been doing ukulele covers of Vanilla Ice on tour for years and years. It’s great, like, seeing the master,” says a local and possible “Portlandia” extra. (Curbed LA)

Colin Meloy and Carson Ellis’ children’s book

Sometimes things get almost too Portlandy, as though the characters from the brilliant TV satire “Portlandia” have gotten lost in Narnia. (New York Times)

C.S. Lewis meets “Portlandia” in Wildwood, the debut novel by Colin Meloy, frontman of the Decemberists and brother of “Apothecary” author Maile Meloy. (USA Today)

Prue, the book’s bicycle-pedaling, steamed-milk-sipping, library-book-addicted adolescent female protagonist acts like a child extra from the hipster-satire TV show “Portlandia.” (Creative Loafing)

Colin Meloy and Carson Ellis themselves

(As) they walk along the road in Forest Park, they could pass for the king and queen of Portlandia. (Portland Oregonian)

Sarah McLachlan

She’s sort of a hyper-ethical eco-mother, the type of individual who could easily be lampooned on “Portlandia,” even though she calls Vancouver, B.C., home. (Seattle Weekly)

Barn raisings

The very phrase seems somehow so very Portland, as if would inspire writers for the “Portlandia” TV show to immediately stand up and take notice: an urban barn raising. (Portland Architecture)

Media criticism about coverage of Portland

And we were all over it when The Wall Street Journal did a profile/real-estate story on Stumptown Coffee founder Duane Sorenson of Portland and managed to out-Portland “Portlandia,” the IFC show which purports to poke gentle fun at the city’s people but couldn’t have come up with a guy like Sorenson on a bet. (Seattle Weekly)

It’s painfully and excruciatingly funny, yet in early episodes, at least, Davis is an extraordinarily likable Napoleon. In an interview last week, Gervais insisted that the show is not making fun of Davis or little people. And in a wide-ranging discussion that might surprise some after his controversial and sometimes mean turns hosting the Golden Globes, Gervais says that comedy and humanity can’t be separated. “Comedy is about empathy,” he says. “Comedy is about the blind spot, comedy is about rooting for them, comedy is about flawed characters.”

You have a tradition of writing and playing characters who are dangerously self-deluded, who can’t see the blind spots everyone else notices right away. “Life’s Too Short” follows a dwarf actor who not only says he wants to be the Martin Luther King Jr. of little people, but believes that if anyone takes offense at that, he points out that he’s never seen a black person shot out of a cannon before. Was part of the challenge for you making it both OK to laugh at a dwarf in these circumstances, but also somehow humanizing him so completely?

Well, the thing is, we wanted to make it clear that we weren’t laughing because he was a dwarf. There’s nothing mildly amusing about that. He doesn’t have to be a dwarf at all, really. It’s that he’s got small man complex. He’s conniving, manipulative, pretentious. When he falls out of his car, we’re laughing at him because he chose a car that’s not right for him. Way too big for him. And he was just saying, “I carry myself with dignity.” It’s about getting his comeuppance.

So, we want people to see the difference between a show that exploits little people and a show that shows exploitation of little people, and this is clearly in the latter. And Warwick is so likable, we had to make him into a little Hitler to feel that you could laugh at him and want him to get his comeuppance. Because despite everything, he’s drenched in humanity.

You’re right, we had to make sure people knew that they were allowed to laugh. And there will still be people that aren’t sure – around England there are people saying, “Oh, why is it funny that he’s caught in a cat flap” [trying to get back into a house after his wife changes the locks]. It’s funny if anyone gets caught in a cat flap. How is that not funny? [Warwick] is a fantastic physical actor. He’s like Chaplin or Harold Lloyd or something. So we’re going to exploit that. And I mean that in the sense of exploiting his skills, as opposed to exploiting his height, which we don’t. And if people think that a dwarf actor is not allowed to do slapstick, that’s their prejudice. How dare they say that Warwick Davis can’t do slapstick in case someone might think that we’re just laughing at him because he’s a dwarf falling over, as opposed to all the other reasons.

Some people might think that’s convenient: You get to make the joke about the dwarf falling over, after all, and immunize yourself from criticism. Or are people just too quick to take offense?

Some people believe it’s their job. And what you’ll notice is, it’s always someone taking offense on someone else’s behalf. You know? It’s always the person saying, I’m not a dwarf myself, but I find that offensive. It’s crazy. You see that all the time. And I’ll tell you why, it’s because whenever you do something slightly taboo, or contentious, or you’re dealing in any irony or satire, people mistake the subject of the gag with the target of the gag. You can tell a joke about race, without it being racist. You can tell a joke about disability, without it being disabilist. And I have done it all my career. David Brent (Gervais’ character in “The Office”) felt uncomfortable around people of difference.

So he goes up to a black man in “The Office” and assures him “I love Sidney Poitier.”

Right, clearly we’re laughing at him not knowing how to behave. When he grabs the girl in the wheelchair and says, “I’ll take her down the stairs,” because he wants to be seen helping out on camera. And when Gareth says, “Well, the disabled should be tested to make sure they are claiming benefits and they’re really disabled. Stick pins in their legs, or something like that.” We’re laughing at their stupidity. And, let’s not forget, people like that exist. People like that exist.

As cynical as people think I am with the subject matter I deal with and the flawed characters I show, I’m a romantic. There’s always hope in my characters and there’s always hope in my shows. And there’s nothing more exhilarating than redemption. Forgiveness is very important as well. I like to take an absolute asshole, and show him the error of his ways, and have him say sorry. Who can’t forgive when it’s a genuine apology.

What humanizes them is that gap between the way they see themselves — the aspirations they have, who they hope to be — and the person they really are.

That’s a staple of British comedy. It’s always about the blind spot. It’s always that we’re laughing at the difference between how David Brent sees himself and how the rest of the world sees him — particularly with middle-aged, midlife-crisis males. Men as boys, men who never grow up — the man wants to be cool and loved. And Warwick’s a branch of that tree really. He wants to be thought of as the Martin Luther King of little people. He’s not and he never could be. And he doesn’t really care about dwarf rights; he cares about himself. He exploits dwarfs, he takes all the best jobs for himself. [In a later episode] he goes on the board of the Small People’s Society – he’s the deputy president, but he wants to be president. That’s what annoys him more, he wants to be president. So he’s more worried about being top dog – he doesn’t care about their rights. In fact, one episode he’s there and there are a lot of little people there, and he’s trying to recruit them to be human bowling balls. And the president says, “I don’t think this is the right forum for that,” and he says, “This is the perfect forum, it’s full of dwarves, isn’t it?” He’s like David Brent: He thinks he’s going to try to fight sexism and racism, but he doesn’t really know how to. Because he’s a bit sexist and racist himself.

And yet, on some level, we’re all a little afraid that we have some David Brent in us, aren’t we?

We see ourselves in them, of course we do. We look at David Brent, and everyone, it’s fundamental — everyone is worried about their reputation. David Brent wasn’t a bad person at all. People say, “Oh, nasty boss from hell, bastard.” He wasn’t any of those things. His worst crime is he made the mistake of confusing popularity with respect … But the downfall of society will be people just wanting to be famous. And everyone is now. Everyone on Twitter is a broadcaster. TV shows are obsessed about what people say on Twitter. It’s bizarre. Just make the show!

I use Twitter as a bit of a social experiment. I’m working on a show at the moment, so I do the odd tweet to see what happens. And I think people might think I’m schizophrenic cause I’m playing a few different characters now and again because I’m trying to see the reaction. It’s fascinating what comes back.

What can you share about the characters?

It’s a new sitcom set in an old people’s home and it’s about the forgotten — everyone’s forgotten. Just like all sitcoms, when it comes down to it, it’s them against the world. It’s a family. It’s all these arbitrary people who didn’t know each other, and they’re in there now because they’re in the last years of their life. And it’s about the people who help them, who themselves are losers and have their own problems. It’s about a bunch of people with nothing, but making the most of it, and they’re together.

It’s a show about kindness. Kindness is more important than anything else. Kindness is more important than intelligence, than success, than rewards, everything. Kindness is the most important thing. And it’s about that. So, it’s a very good experiment for me, Twitter. Because you see the absolute worst and best in people.

It’s interesting that you use the word “kindness,” because that’s exactly what Tom Hanks accused you of not being when you hosted the Golden Globes last year.

Right, “He used to be a tubby, kind comedian.” “And neither of those things he is now.”

Were celebrities genuinely offended at your jokes, or was it all a game to generate attention?

No, no, they weren’t. A couple of people said that people were, so that goes into legend. But who was really offended by it, you know? And the other thing is that I’m not going out to hurt people’s feelings and embarrass them; I’m going out to make people laugh. But I also have to make a decision as a comedian – do I pander to the 200 people in the room, or the 200 million people watching at home?

There were critics this year who expected an edgier performance.

I started with a backlash. If you’re going to stand up there, and you’re going to say what’s on your mind, and you’re going to take contentious subjects head-on, as many people are going to hate you as love you. And I wouldn’t have it any other way. I cherish the gasps as much as the cheers. And the groans as much as the laughs. I look at it in Darwinian framework. I’m going to do what I do – not so much proudly, but because I have to do this – and I’ll either survive, or I don’t. And so be it.

Seeing as it’s televised, there’s no doubt about it. If you just want a sycophantic back-slapping session, by all means, but don’t put it on telly, because there’s nothing in it for us watching at home. There’s nothing in it. Winning awards is the most boring thing to watch you’ll ever imagine, so I try to make it a spectator sport. So that was doing my job as a comedian, I think. Two, whatever you say, someone will claim it’s offensive. And to that I say, offense is taken, not given. It’s up to you whether you’re offended. And I’ll add one more thing: Just because you’re offended, doesn’t mean you’re right.

If people are offended, they certainly have a funny way of showing it — Sting, Liam Neeson and Johnny Depp are all among the celebrity cameos on “Life’s Too Short.”

Well, I understand why they do that now. Because I’ve had a taste of my own medicine recently when I did “Curb Your Enthusiasm.” When you play a twisted version of yourself, you realize that the more awful you are, the more armor you wear, in a way, because you’re saying, “Oh, I can’t be like this, because that’s too mad, it’s too terrible.” And so, it’s sort of like you build a credibility shield.

There’s a line in the first episode of “Life’s Too Short” when you’re doing an excruciating improv session with Liam Neeson and he makes an awkward AIDS joke. You and Steven Merchant both try to talk him out of it. Neeson asks, well, why can you do it? You both just shrug. Well, why can you do it?

Because I know what I’m doing. And I know the real target of the joke every time. I’m not one of these people that thinks comedy is your conscience taking a day off. My conscience never takes a day off. I can justify everything I’ve done. I can tell anyone why that joke is justified comedically. Comedy is an intellectual pursuit – as soon as you bring real emotions into it, it stops being comedy and starts becoming rallying. I’ve seen comedians go out there and go, “Why are there so many immigrants?” and get a round of applause. And I go, well, where’s the joke? That’s not a joke; you’re just with like-minded bigots. And the reason why a real racist joke isn’t funny, why an actual racist joke isn’t funny, it’s not because it’s offensive. It’s because it’s not true. It’s based on a falsehood. As soon as someone says, “Why is it that Mexicans always …” I’ll say, well, they don’t. That’s not true. I’ll stop you there. You can’t go on. The punch line’s irrelevant to me now, because the premise is false. So, as I said, I can justify everything I do. And that’s why I can do it. And the fact that there’s anyone in the world that gets it, makes me know that it’s gettable. If everyone in the world said, “That joke’s terrible,” I’d have to go, “Wow, I’m the only person in the world that thinks that works.” But that doesn’t happen. It doesn’t happen at all. It’s the opposite. Ninety-nine percent of the people say that’s fine and 1 percent say you can’t say that. Well, watch me.

Do you have a line you won’t walk over? Or a Potter Stewart-sense of when a joke has gone too far?

I’ll tell you how I find that line myself. My own sense of morality. And that’s the problem with offense, it’s not right or wrong, it’s personal. It’s feelings, and feeling are personal. I’ll give you an example. I did a stand-up show and I played this non-reconstructed character who gets everything wrong. I say things like, “Steven Hawking. They say he’s a genius, but he’s not. He’s pretentious.” So it’s me getting stuff wrong, I’m the idiot. “I saw a documentary about this little Indian girl. She had to walk 12 miles every day just to get water. She should move.” It’s things like that. It’s getting it all wrong. I made jokes about famine, the Holocaust, cancer, AIDS, everything. Right? And I got a letter saying, we enjoyed the show, but we didn’t appreciate the jokes about the Holocaust. And I wanted to go, but you enjoyed the jokes about AIDS and famine? That’s your thing, and everyone’s got a thing. But it’s personal.

You studied philosophy for several years. How did that shape your perception of how comedy works?

I think there’s a similar train of thought with a joke: start with a real premise and take it through to its logical conclusion. There’s a flowchart of choices, and there’s a certain scientific method to comedy. Where, experimentation, the proof’s in the pudding. Particularly with stand-up. The audience picks your best jokes for you. It’s an evolution. The jokes are the genes, and it’s the survival of the fittest.

My first love’s always been sort of science and nature, and the arts, in equal proportions. It’s myth that if you’re a logician or you’re an atheist you can’t appreciate the beauty of nature. It’s a total myth. It makes it more beautiful to me that it was random events. I don’t see the problem in it. I just did this show with Richard Dawkins, it’s about the meaning of life and everything. My bit was “Well, if you’re an atheist, what’s the meaning of life for you? What do you get out of it? What’s the point of living?” And I just listed them: It’s friends, family, loved ones, a decent job of work, making a difference and creativity.

Right — things you can actually do in this life, without waiting for the next one.

I think religion was born, really, out of a certain spirituality. But the two are very different. Spirituality is a personal thing and there’s nothing wrong with that. If that helps you, thinking a superior being created the universe in six days and he loves you — if that gets you through and you do good things in his name and not bad, then good for you. I think the Dalai Lama said, ask me my religion, my answer is kindness. And there’s nothing wrong with that. I don’t think they’re right, I don’t think there is a God, and I don’t think they are going to go to heaven. But whatever gets you through, whatever makes you kinder, is fine by me.

Then there’s religion, which is a different kettle of fish. Now these are people who are arguing over whose God’s right and are killing people in the name of it. They’re stoning people to death for believing in the wrong God. That’s what I’ve got a problem with. I don’t think there is an afterlife, and what’s strange about even the kindest people among religious folk is they often say things like, “Well, if you think that this is all there is, then what’s the point?” Which is such a strange thing to me — because that’s why I cherish every moment more. Because it’s not going to last forever. And who wants to live forever, really. Fuck all. Terrible. Terrible idea.

Lastly: We live in such a nostalgic, reunion culture. And yet you’ve really never gone back and revisited these shows. They’ve had really well-defined lives and no matter how popular or influential they’ve become, you’ve probably resisted millions for another “Office” special. Why not show us where David Brent is now?

Because they’re important to me. They’re really important to me. And I’ve seen people let me down in the past by doing a series too often, one too many times. I think they should survive in their own world, and that’s it really. And also, it begs the credibility a little bit if a fake documentary team is still hanging around Slough for 10 years. I think one of the reasons for the success of “The Office” was the realism. I think that’s what resonated. Because nothing comes close to real life. It’s like how art tries to emulate the beauty of nature, and sometimes it nearly, nearly gets close. Well, sometimes comedy and drama create the excitement of real life, and the closer you can get to it, the better you’ve done. You can have the greatest movie of all time – you can be watching “The Godfather” at home – and if there’s a screech of tires and a shout of the neighbors you’re at the window, because real life wins.

Matthews’ unhinged passion and needy insecurity, of course, is what makes him subject to satire in the first place. Good Chris is the former Tip O’Neill aide with a strong sense of right and wrong. Bad Chris is the blowhard relentlessly pushing his book — you know, the one he wrote all by himself. But in a devastating exchange with Steve Schmidt, who ran John McCain’s 2008 presidential bid, Matthews cut through the pious baloney in Mitt Romney’s victory speech — the meaningless but endlessly repeated red meat about European socialism and Democratic envy of rich people — with a wicked acuity.

“I just want to ask a question of Steve Schmidt. I’m trying to put all this together, the rhetoric and the position of the candidate,” Matthews said, according to the MSNBC transcript. “He used phrases tonight like politics of envy against the Democrats. And I assume against some of his own party people there, like Newt Gingrich, the resentment of success. Is this why he won’t release his tax returns?

Schmidt, stuck in the role of Alan Colmes, demurred that he didn’t have an answer for that. “You do know why,” Matthews charged, and Schmidt finally agreed that he did, only to have Matthews steamroll on in such a way that Rachel Maddow had to jump in and remind him that they were colleagues, that Schmidt was not on the show representing Romney.

Matthews just got angrier. Here’s the transcript:

MATTHEWS: What about a European welfare state? What do you make of that phrase tonight? That seemed pretty over the top for a guy who didn’t support a public option, didn’t go with the Canadian style health care plan, simply went with the Heritage Foundation health care plan. Is that a European style welfare proposal, the Heritage Foundation? Are they in league together, those two, Obama and the Heritage Foundation and people like, well, Richard Nixon, who was for an employer mandate? Which is the closest to the European model?

SCHMIDT: I think this is rhetoric that works well in the Republican primary. When you look at the Republican vote –

MATTHEWS: So it’s not true.

Exactly. It’s not true. What a different place cable news would be if only people said that more often.

Matthews — whose outrage over the Romney Super PAC ads in Iowa was so over-the-top that he compared them, repeatedly, to the firebombing of Dresden during World War II — finally channeled his anger and smarts into a direct hit, and injected some energy into a chummy MSNBC set where, on most nights, the only fun comes from imagining how much everyone else despises Ed Schultz. (It doesn’t tax the imagination.)

Still, it didn’t take long for the cringeworthy hack to reemerge. And it sure is uncomfortable TV when the pundits sit around praising, yes, each other. “Anyway, thank you, Jonathan Alter, great guy, great historian, as well as a great journalist. And Eugene Robinson, I don’t have to brag, son of the South, overcame that and became a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist — one of the best ever.”

The shock on Alter’s face was priceless — someone give that late-night cable-news director a raise — as even a longtime “Hardball” regular rolled his eyes at the return of this sad spectacle of shtick.