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Colbert New Comic-in-Chief
scottzak writes "Hail to the Chief! Stephen Colbert addressed the White House Correspondents Dinner Saturday (attended by the President, the elite of Washington politics, and the White House Press Corps) and told the truth. Jaws dropped. Eyes popped. The live audience gasped. Scalia laughed his ass off. You want to see a brilliant comic display some real courage? Look no further. Enjoy the reaction shots, and Colbert's audition for Press Secretary job." The BBC covers the act just prior to Mr. Colbert's, where the President and a look-alike took turns making fun of his speaking skills.
What's sad is, once he does say it how it is, he loses the room...
Funnypics
I gotta give him credit. He stood up there and pointed out failures not just with the administration, but with the Media as a whole.
Well done.
Ain't it funny how Colbert is being ignored? This happened on Saturday. It was a biting, harsh criticism of Bush, to his face, in front of the nation's journalism establishment. Did it make the major news sites? Type "Colbert" into google news and see what pops up first thing.
Bush violates the law and constitution. OH SNAP! I'm a "Bush Basher".
Ignore the fact that Bush violates the law and constitution.
Kill the messenger, ignore the message. I'm sure those are tomorrows talking points.
The best part about this is that the funnier and more incisive he gets, the quieter and quietier and quieter the laughter gets.
Too bad that nobody will hear about this except the people who read Slashdot, the people who watch Comedy Central, and the people who watch C-SPAN on saturday night. In other words, the exact people who are most likely to already agree with what Colbert is saying. Everybody else, well, everybody else will just hear about that part the BBC covered-- you know, the bit where Bush demonstrated what a down-to-earth, wouldn't-you-just-love-to-have-a-beer-with-me kind of guy he was by getting up on stage with a body double and deliberately mispronouncing words.
Which means Colbert's little song and dance here doesn't really matter. All right, so somebody criticized the president to his face for the first time in four years. (No, Kerry at the 2004 debates doesn't particularly count.) Okay, so what? The 32% who still approve of Bush's job-- who are, after all, the only people who matter-- won't hear about this, and if they hear about it, they won't listen. The 2006 elections still will go to the Republicans, because even if everyone gets pissed off at Mr. Bush, they still won't like the incompetent, spineless democrats any better.
The Republicans will continue to hold congress after 2006; nobody will ever investigate any of the laws Bush has broken; Bush will quietly leave office in 2008, Iraq will someday eventually get electricity and running water, and talk show hosts and revisionists will nostalgically talk about what a great leader Bush was until nobody remembers him as anything other than a second Reagan. (And how well do you remember the Reagan administration? Yup, that's what I thought.) Nobody will remember that freakish, depressing third half of the Bush presidency where major american cities were destroyed and the President was admitting to impeachable offenses on national television and nobody did anything about it. Everyone will just remember that first, inspiring part of the Bush presidency after september 11, when Bush said that God told him how to lead the country, and everyone believed him.
If you don't like the politics on Slashdot, then why not use the freaking built-in filters to keep political stories from showing up?
Colbert skewered the press pretty strongly too. I'm thinking the news blackout has more to do with the mainstream media's own shame than any courtesy to the President.
I take it you really don't understand what you saw...? The lack of response in the audience is the important part - it isn't indicative of him "bombing" in this case.
This wasn't about being funny - it was about being, uh, truthinessful.
He made some brilliant remarks up there - and he held no punches. The "Scott McClellan can say nothing like nobody else" was terrific.
I hope this inspires more people to have the balls to say what they feel and know about the tyranny that has strangled this nation.
I could give or take the humor, but the fact that it was a solid HALF HOUR of sticking it to the preseident's face in that manner was unprecedented. The humour depends on your politics; the balls to carry out an aggressive 30 minute assault on the president to his face is admirable. Make no mistake, this was not done out of comic pursuit; this was a statement. Not what he said, but the context in which it was delivered and for how freakin' long!
The difference between this and traditional presidential roasts (and I've seen more than a few - CSAN nerd here) is that this did not lampoon one or two or ten aspects of the Bush administration, but mocked it's very existence and legitimacy. To his face. In front of the Washington elite. For 30 solid uniterrupted minutes. Think about it: it's the difference between "Slick Willy got a BJ! Ha ha!" and "Monica knows the Clinton administration as well as everybody else - it leaves a bad taste in your mouth!"
You shouldn't respect power, rather, you should respect the virtue of one's actions.
God Bless George W. Bush. God Bless America.
Hey, fuckwit, who are YOU to tell God what to do? DEMANDING of God something? The PROPER phrase is, "MAY God bless XXX".
That is key. Anyone who demands things of God is a shithead. Whenever you see someone saying "God bless" without the proper qualification... well, you can safely discard anything else they have to say, for they are truly spiritually retarded, and are probably nothing more than a drone.
Mod down people who tell people how to mod in their sigs
I watched the video and this comment cracked me up: "I mean, nothing satisfies you. Everybody asks for personel changes. SO, the White house has personel changes. And then you write "oh, they're just re-arranging deck chairs on the titanic." First of all, that's a terrible metaphor. This administration is not sinking. This administration is soaring. if anything, they are re-arranging deck chairs on the Hindenburg"
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
Normally I like Colbert's stuff. Most of the time he's witty, intelligent, and makes me giggle like a schoolgirl.
medioc
I watched the bit live on TV after I got sick of listening to the draft coverage. I don't blame most of the dignitaries for not paying much attention. His whole presentation must have gone on for 20 minutes or more, with 6-7 minutes of it being about that crazy (and fugly) White House reporter that always asks really stupid questions. Well this bit had him running across the entire Eastern seaboard just to get away from her questions about Iraq. Ok... I can understand turning that into a 30-60 second clip, since there were a few funny parts, but the remaining 5:50 was just him running and screaming. It was very underwhelming. There was actually almost a minute of him fumbling with his keys, trying to get it unlocked and started, just for the punchline of realizing he had remote keyless entry (funny, but not worth 60 seconds of leadup).
As for the rest of his jokes, there were a few good ones, but they came after listening to a handful of poor ones. I actually wondered outloud to my wife that his normal writers must have been unavailable.
Keep in mind when you watch the video that 99% of the guests at the press dinner were press, meaning they probably agreed with most of the things he said. However, there was audible laughing only a handful of times during the whole presentation. It was really a poor comedy routine to say the least, even if it did "stick it to the Administration".
You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life. --Winston Churchill
>It was a GWB bash-o-thon disguised as humor. Even if it was Bill Clinton, I still wouldn't have found it funny.
Right on man. If he had lampooned Clinton for screwing up the war in Iraq, having a low approval rating, or generally being incompetent, no one would have found it funny. It's such a total double standard that it doesn't apply the other way around.
Seriously though, you don't need to *disguise* a GWB bash-o-thon as humor. It *is* humor.
The President broke the law. AT&T gave customer data on millions of people to the feds and allowed them to tap all their pipes to data mine Americans' private phone calls. EFF sued them for violating FISA, the 4th Amendment, and for the AT&T customers whose private data was handed.
One witness, one expert, and a few internal documents filed, and Bush asserts a State Secrets Privilege; the lawsuit cannot continue. What did he not want us to know?
I don't know how to connect the dots any more obviously. If you don't smell a rat, I suggest you update your BS detector.
http://www.eff.org/legal/cases/att/
Q: What did the comedian say to the crowd?
A: If I knew, this joke would be funny.
Yah, because the audience is *really* likely to laugh a Valerie Plame joke with Karl Rove (who could very well be indicted by the end of the month) sitting right there.
No, they didn't laugh at what Colbert said because a lot of it cuts pretty close to home for those sitting in attendance. Case and point - when Colbert thanked the press for all the hard work they did during Bush's first term ignoring all his lies and misdeeds.
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
Colbert's routine reminded me a lot of Jon Stewart's performance at the Oscars (one of the only times I've ever even watched). What I saw that night was a decent and funny performance delivered to a crowd that was so full of itself that it could not emit a laugh. They were present for awards sans comedy.
In Colbert's case, though, the crowd was most certainly attending for comedy. However, I think their blank stares were the result of hearing something they'd rather not. The dinner is always a roast and fun is always "poked." But... I think perhaps this went to a new level.
I see one of two possibilities. One is that Colbert misjudged his audience and that's why his routine did not do well. Or, Colbert recognized that he was given a rare opportunity to speak directly to the President, in a public setting, and in a place where the President could not simply leave. *If* that is the case, then yes, it did take balls. Huge balls.
Of course, unless Colbert actually comes out at some point in the future and makes known what his intentions were that night, we may never really know.
I have to wonder what I might do in such a situation. Like many Americans, I do hold a certain respect for the office of the President, or for any elected office, I suppose. It's that respect which keeps most (though it seems less so lately) political discourse civil. But surely there comes a time when transgressions like Bush's reach a point where you need to take a stand, respectable office or no.
Maybe this dinner was one of those times.
Elrond, Duke of URL
"This is the most fun I've had without being drenched in the blood of my enemies!"-Sam&Max
In addition to the president he took on the sycophantic press. It was a refreshing change from the news coverage you get these days.
Somtimes the truth gets to be so rare that you are shocked and praised for speaking it at a public forum. Sad but true.
evil is as evil does
Surprisingly enough, the article, which appears on the font of the NY Times website, doesn't even mention Colbert's name or make any reference to his performance. Instead it rambles about the Bush impersonator bit for the entire article.
The Times can hardly be called a part of the great right wing conspiracy - so one must conclude that Colbert has pissed off the media establishment, rather than the conservative political establishment. Wait, I mean "as well as" the conservative political establishment.
When you think about it, he's the only guy other than John Kerry who's had the opportunity to stand (effectively) face to face with Bush and tell him what he really thinks of 6 years of lousy policies. And he did a much better job than Kerry.
Read Pynchon.
Who care if the Republican are voted in again. Your answer seems to be the Democrats.
c /49.htm
Political Parties are not where it's at. It never was and never will be. And by "it", I mean answers for the future.
In his farewell address as President, the other George (Washington), warned us against political parties. And since then, we promptly split into party lines:
http://usinfo.state.gov/usa/infousa/facts/democra
Have political parties ever spearheaded any worthwhile movement? Woman's suffrage? Civil Liberties? Hell, even Slavery? Not, if it cost them votes or it became the "right thing to do" with the public, meaning they got so late into the game as not to make a difference any longer. Look what parties make of issue these days to see the lack of courage in Washington to take any definitive action.
Have political parties caused you to stop looking at who you are voting for, and instead make you vote down the party line? Congratulations, you played into their hands. Are all Republicans really that bad, as to be always worse than their Democratic counterparts? Or the other way around?
Will it matter if the Democrats come in? Other than unions, won't they get funded by the same corporations as long as they follow corporate interests? And they will.
Hell, Jesse Ventura was one of the better Governors that there was in a long time. I wouldn't have believed it if I haven't seen it, but he was. And he was independent and not a career politician.
Why can't we vote more people like him in?
Think Independent. And Vote Independent. The parties won't fix jack shit. They have all their fingers smeared by the same pie and are beholden to the same interests.
Yes, it is brave and courageous to do what our troops are doing, but that is because their jobs require that of them. They signed on for this.
It is the lies and deceit of our current administration that has put them in harms way. Which has forced our military into a situation where we can't simply pull out, because it would make matters worse then BEFORE we went into Iraq? Duhbyah's father KNEW this. He even wrote a paper or two on it. One of which was published in Time Magazine.
It ALSO takes bravery and courage to speak out in the current climate of this country and government. To point out the lies and deceit of this current administration spurn hatred and argument. If this continues and the laws that continue to be put forth (some pass) which deny civil liberties it is only a matter of time before speaking out WILL be a crime.
I think lines have been drawn and at this point and no one wants to concede. The facts point out everything, but a vast section of this country doesn't want to admit they are wrong.
"When Cronkite read the number of soldiers killed in Vietnam he was lionized for telling the truth"
... it is likely the forged letter was essentially accurate, the commanding officers secretary said its content was quite plausible. Its just most of the incriminating evidence in his record was most probably purged by Bush operatives, something that was especiallay easy to do when Bush was governor of Texas and commander in chief of the Texas national guard. Rather was of course driven out of the CBS anchor chair and the producer was fired.
In fact the country had already largely turned on the Vietnam war by the time he acted. It would have been a bit braver if he had exposed Vietnam as a failed policy a few years earlier. Cronkite did help take down LBJ but the war continued on for another 5 years before it was lost, so he didn't really make much of a difference.
In some respects it feels kind of like Iraq where the media didn't let out a whimper when the foundation was laid for the bloody and expensive disaster, they waited until it was obviously a bloody mistake and now they are piling on against it now that its too late to do anything about it (i.e. the two options now being stay the course or withdraw and watch Iraq explode in civil war).
"When Edward R. Murrow brought down McCarthy he was lionized."
On Murrow you are totally misrepresenting reality. Murrow, Friendly, "See it Now" and others at CBS paid a dear price for what they did.
Don Hollenbeck, was another CBS news anchor who lauded Murrow's attack on McCarthy on air. He was eviscerated by right wing editorials for the next 3 months and branded as a communist. He then committed suicide in a gas oven.
Murrow and Friendly continued attacking sacred cows in that 1954-1955 season, including an expose on a Texas land scandal that infuriated their main sponsor, Alcoa, which pulled their funding and put the nail in the coffin for "See it Now".
Many of the people involved in the McCarthy expose were laid off.
Walter Pally and CBS corporate felt Murrow and Friendly overstepped their bounds on McCarthy and throughout their controversial 1954-1955 season and that they were making news rather than reporting it. They pulled See It Now from their prime time slot and stuck them on Sunday afternoon in a form of putting them out to pasture as they ran out their contract.
Murrow eventually became completely disillusioned with TV news, precisely because of the pressures to make it entertaining, profitable, to avoid controversy and to avoid alienating corprate sponsors.
What Murrow and Friendly did was brave beyond belief but the retaliation that followed created a precedent that served to discourage journalists and networks from attacking the power that be, especially when it involved their sponsors.
In a more recent CBS precedent there is Dan Rather's recent attempt to expose George W's borderline criminal National Guard record. Unfortunately they relied on a forged letter to support their story which was wrong. But
"they will hire some real reporters and we will receive some real news"
It would run completely counter to how news networks work today. They are competing for audience with 50 other TV channels, games, internet, etc. The only successful news shows are going to be the most sensationalist ones, pandering to what their audience wants to see, and most of their audience wants to see celebrity scandals. Most audience also have a massive case of cognitive dissonance, they want their news to reinforce their world view not disrupt it. Thats why Fox is the #1 cable network, lots of people watch Fox because Fox says what they want to hear, America #1 in particular.
Journalists can only attack Presidents when their poll numbers are in the toilet because then they know the majority of their audience wants them to attack the President then. When a President's poll numbers are riding high they generally dont touch them. Journalists are at the head of the like supportinh going to war as long as their is a patriotic fervor whipped up for it, and then journalists can turn against the war when it turns long, bloody and costly and the public has already started to turn on it, like Cronkite did.
@de_machina
Done away with? We'd have to have one first. The US is a Republic, which is a "representative democracy" - which in turn is an oxymoron.
There has never been a true democracy. Even in Athens only male, racially privileged land-owners were permitted to vote.
How would we actually know if the people could handle that kind of power or not? No people in recorded history have ever had it.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"