Colbert riles political establishment — Day Four

May 2, 2006

I find it hard to believe [tag]Stephen Colbert[/tag]’s stand-up routine at the White House Correspondents’ Association [tag]Dinner[/tag] over the weekend is still making headlines, but apparently, the president’s aides are still letting reporters know how unhappy they are.

Comedy Central star Stephen Colbert’s biting routine at the White House Correspondents Association dinner won a rare silent protest from Bush aides and supporters Saturday when several independently left before he finished.

“Colbert crossed the line,” said one top [tag]Bush[/tag] aide, who rushed out of the hotel as soon as Colbert finished. Another said that the president was visibly angered by the sharp lines that kept coming.

“I’ve been there before, and I can see that he is [angry],” said a former top aide. “He’s got that look that he’s ready to blow.”

Dan Froomkin, meanwhile, offers an account of all the reporters who have suddenly become comedy critics. Just as importantly, the poor guy who organized the event is getting a lot of phone calls.

Outgoing WHCA president Mark Smith responded to critics who said Colbert was too unfunny, or too biting, saying his job at the end of the evening is the hardest to do.

“There will always be people who love the comedian or hate the comedian, who love what the president did or hate what the president did,” he told E&P Tuesday. “I’ve gotten a few e-mails from people who thought I hired Colbert to do a hit job on the president, and that is not the case.”

Jon Stewart is defending Colbert, and Colbert is joking about the reaction, and the political establishment which took itself too seriously on Saturday night is taking itself too seriously again by talking about Saturday night several days later.

It was a funny stand-up routine accompanied by a clever little video with Helen Thomas. Given the ongoing reaction, you’d think he got drunk and hit on the First Lady. You suppose Colbert touched a nerve?

The truthiness hurts.

  • it was the

    white house correspondents association

    dinner.

    what else would you expect of those reporters?

    any reporter who dared say a word in defense of or in appreciation of colbert.

    would be disciplined by the white house immediately.

    when it comes to professionals — journalists, scientists, diplomats, federal bureaucrats, politicians, etc.–

    intimidation is the fundamental communications technique this administration uses.

  • “Outgoing WHCA President” No shit. If you’re gonna burn bridges, might as well use napalm.

    “said a former top aide” Andy Card, anyone?

    At this point in time, who gives a fuck about the chattering classes anymore?

  • Colbert would be laughing if the act weren’t so deadpan. That was Lenny Bruce at its best – the discomfort in the room was palpable. How do you define irony (one of my favorite questions)? I think an example might be the hostility directed at Colbert rather than at the president – what exactly did Colbert say that was untrue? That was the brilliance of it – everyone knew exactly what he was talking about. Crossed the line? What a joke. Crossing the line was Mission Accomplished 3 years ago (insert additional line-crossings here________).

  • “Comedy Central star Stephen Colbert’s biting routine at the White House Correspondents Association dinner won a rare silent protest from Bush aides and supporters Saturday when several independently left before he finished.

    “Colbert crossed the line,” said one top Bush aide, who rushed out of the hotel as soon as Colbert finished. Another said that the president was visibly angered by the sharp lines that kept coming.”

    As I said, CB, I think you’re missing the significance of this event. This was “a rare silent protest” because these guys have never had anyone but hand picked audiences, sycophants, and spineless Congressmen to deal with. They have never had anyone begin to DARE to tell them the unvarnished truth about how they have f*ked up this country. Of course, therefore, Colbert “crossed the line”–the line where it’s impolite to mention what catastrophe they have wrought.

    Too damn bad. They certainly can’t talk about the SUBSTANCE of what he said –so they are talking about how he (and, by implication, the rest of us) has no right to say it. And that attitude, the attitude of entitlement to live in a tuxedoed dream world where you don’t bring Dear Leader any bad news, is what the SCLM like the NY Times should be talking about now. Yes, days and weeks after his speech, for as long as this hapless, murderous and corrupt regime continues down its insulated and ruinous path.

    Sure Dear Leader’s about to blow. All his targets had their lovely evening wear stripped off for all to see that night. Look out Stephen Colbert, look out Iran.

  • Colbert indeed touched a nerve on Machete Night in DC. His primary target was the lazy, stenographic MSM, and he made it howl.

    Colbert supplied the missing bookend to Bush’s previous skit in which he pretended to search for WMD in his office. (THAT was bad taste!) Between them is a press that still has no morals and no courage.

  • “…the president’s aides are still letting reporters know how unhappy they are.”

    Somehow, I can survive their misery. And knowing that the President nearly blew a gasket gives me just the most tingly feeling.

    Really, Colbert has done the whole country a great service, but exposing all the sycophants who think they have some right to critize an American for telling the President that he is an incompetent idiot to his face.

  • I think what shocked people the most is that many in the room thought they were so clever, that nobody had figured out their strategies. Colbert made it crystal clear that we know exactly what they do and why they do it, and it just flummoxed everybody to hear it spoken out loud so casually.

    Plus those who really thought that the White House spin on everything was simply the gospel truth got a real quick dose of “crash and burn” internally. Probably for the first time in their lives.

    Stephen Colbert – National Hero!

  • Quote:

    Noam Scheiber writes in the New Republic: “My sense is that the blogosphere response is more evidence of a new Stalinist aesthetic on the left — until recently more common on the right — wherein the political content of a performance or work of art is actually more important than its entertainment value.”

    Yeah, all the neo-Stalinists at TheNewRepublican, starting with that semi-literate drooler Peter Beinart on down, should well know how to run such an operation, since it’s what they’ve been trying to do to the Democratic Party ever since they all joined thePNAC. Witness their war-blogging for the past three years till they suddenly discovered being for the war was cutting their subscriptions and circulation.

    When I think of “the pinstriped pimps of Versailles-on-the-Potomac,” guys like Beinart, Scheiber and the rest there are on top of the list.

    God I would love to see everyone stop quoting this fifth-rate factory of tenth-rate toilet-paper-substitute and let those otherwise-unemployables have to go actually work for a living.

    But Scheiber is good for one thing: his existence proves that the idea that “all Jews are geniuses” is a crude anti-Semitic canard.

    I’m personally of the belief it took these chowderheads as long as it did to respond to Colbert because it’s damn hard to write (or do anything else) when you have a ten-foot spear jacked up the old back door so far it pops out of your mouth.

  • An additional comment —

    I like the “Daily Show.” It’s an excellent comedy production. But I find it ironic and a little disturbing that so many people — young people in particular — rely on the show for news. When Americans give more credibility to a TV comedy show than traditional journalism, we’re in trouble.

  • While Colbert has balls made out of depleted uranium, anyone else get the impression that, about halfway through, he thought, “So far, no .9mm round from a secret service agent … ”

    Honestly — there’s no way the guy didn’t have some fear in doing what he did.

    And, quite frankly, I laugh what little ass I have off every single time I read the transcript. And I did stand up comedy for a year, so I know funny …

  • Alibubba,

    We’re not in trouble because young people get their news from the Daily Show. The trouble is that people have to find truth in a comedy show because there is so little of it available from the actual news.

    Comedy has always been an approach to tweaking the powerful. The news used to also hold them accountable. Since the big-business news organizations have become wholly-owned and operated by the establishment, all we have left are the comedians.

  • We’re in trouble when comedians are asking the difficult questions that journalists are ignoring.

  • What’s so ironic about the reaction is that Colbert was playing a neo-con’s neo-con. His whole act was trying to spin the bright side of all these presidential catastrophes so the President doesn’t look bad. I can see why many thought his speech was “unfunny”–neo-con screed usually is.

    So not only does Bush have no sense of humor, he’s an ingrate to boot.

  • Well Done Steven Colbert! The best part of the whole schtick is that he adopts the posture of a Bushie media type who falls all over themselves to spin the President’s suck. He stuck it to everybody. He was right on. Everyone in the room knew it and thus they are all pissed.

    Who owns Comedy Central? Isn’t it the Scientologists? I wonder how long before the FCC and the IRS start investigating Comedy Central?

    At least there one person in America who will speak truth to power.

  • “I’ve been there before, and I can see that he is [angry],” said a former top aide. “He’s got that look that he’s ready to blow.”

    Watching the dinner, I had a sense of fear in the room similar to what happens in high school when a prankster brought out inappropriate laughter in school assembly, and the principal’s eyes dart around the room.

    Nobody wants to lose access to those exclusive interviews with White House staffers, so at the moment Colbert was calling out the media journalists for being lapdogs, they demonstrated how to cower, piddle, and yip.

  • If these were normal times, and we had a normal,
    mediocre president, I’d say Stephen Colbert
    stepped over the line. But then, he’d never have
    ripped the media and administration apart, either.
    No doubt in my mind that Colbert had no intention
    of being just another comic at a good old boys
    get together. He’s not going to admit it, but he
    went out to skewer the establishment, and did
    he ever succeed. It was a brilliant, scathing
    indictment of what’s wrong with America, and
    for that, he’s earned my everlasting respect
    and admiration.

    Stephen Colbert is a brilliant comedian, but
    this was political satire at its finest. It wasn’t
    comedy, even though it was uproariously
    funny.

    Finally, at long last, someone had the guts to
    do what had to be done. A shame it didn’t
    wake anybody up.

  • Query: Can we start a draft movement and get Colbert on the national ticket in ’08? It would be nice to have a President who can “tell it like it is.” Think of all the spinmeister-positions in government that could be eliminated. Daily broadcasts could be hosted live on John Stewart’s show…with Stewart replacing the entire White House “spin machine.” We could save millions of dollars in nonessential paychecks to a mortally-bloated bureaucracy. FOX would wither and die on the vine. Robertson, Falwell, Parsley, Angley, and all the other brimstone-spewers would lose their audiences. Jesus would finally make that second coming that everyone’s always blathering about. He’d look at the people, and say something like “My Dad says you mortals finally got it right for a change….”

    Oh, yeah…Colbert in ’08!

  • “If these were normal times, and we had a normal, mediocre president, I’d say Stephen Colbert stepped over the line.” – hark

    That would not be possible, because Colbert only spoke the truth about what the President has done. A less incompetent president would mean a less stinging rebuke, but it would still be fair.

  • What none of the punditocracy seems to grasp – among many other things – is that true comics, from Aristophanes to Jon Stewart, have specialized in skewering the pompously powerful. Hogarth, Voltaire, Mark Twain, Lenny Bruce, Stephen Colbert … rare talent and courage. Remember, the court jester was expected to tell the Royals that which they didn’t want to hear. It’s only in our time that we expect even “comics” to be nothing more groveling stooges for the rich and powerful.

    Colbert did to that lazy, witless bunch of self-satisfied assholes what Stewart did to “Crossfire”, and I applaud him for it. I’m sure it’ll stand as the cultural event of the year, if not the decade.

  • Scathing is indeed the correct word. As Colbert (or perhaps his old “Daily Show” cohort, Ed Helms) would say, “That took muchos huevos grande.”

    Colbert’s routine was an indictment of everyone in the room, and I am not surprised the Comfy Club did not laugh. Colbert was not inviting them to laugh. He was forcing them to see themselves as so many of us who do not inhabit the Beltway see them: as jokes – in the most disparaging sense of that word.

    I wish I knew the link to an article that was penned by Sally Quinn during Clinton’s “Lewinsky Problem.” It was a succint explanation of how the denizens of the Beltway Court see themselves. They are a very exclusive bunch, and they do not take kindly to those who do not pay the proper respect to tradition and the hierarchy into which they happily arrange themselves. They are the chosen. We are the governed. Colbert crossed no line that was not invented and enforced by the DC caste system that harms this country more every day. Old Sally explained it all quite clearly and disgustingly unselfconsciously. Those who come to DC and who don’t have the good sense (read: social graces) to know their places, will be shunned, ridiculed, and knocked from the high horses on which they rode in. It does not matter whether those in power govern well or completely without competence. It matters only that they understand and hold to their place (and by extension the places of others) in the caste. Status is what matters to this greedy, (hate to use this word but it seems to fit) elitist crew. Wreck the country and the bumpkins along with it if you must, but don’t mess with my STATUS quo.
    Viva Colbert!

  • TuiMel is exactly right. I remember that Quinn article. It was clear tome after that piece came out that much of the hostility to Clinton, which ran acros the entire ideological spectrum, was not in fact ideological but cultural and social. The Beltway elites of all stripes just couldn’t abide that Bubba hayseed from the sticks.

  • Kevin Drum, who is so good at policy analysis, said yesterday that he couldn’t figure out what all the fuss was about. CB, I think you’re missing the “meta-message” here, too (though it’s clear BushCo got it).

    Yes, Colbert did a “funny stand-up routine” with a “clever little video.” But this isn’t about the performance in and of itself, or whether what was said was actually “funny.” (You could put ten people in a room and tell them a joke, and they could argue until they all dropped dead of old age whether the joke was “funny” or not.)

    Between sixty and seventy percent of the people in this country would love to tell Bush what they think of him — and also Cheney, Rove, Rummy, Scalia, McCain, the Beltway media, the generals who helped get us into war, etc. Well, Colbert did it for us (and more articulately than most of us could hope to, at that).

    Muchos huevos grandes, indeed.

    As Jim Strain posted here yesterday, there’s a lot of anger out there. In our dreams, we’d all love to do what Stephen Colbert did. That’s why we’re so excited. And that’s why BushCo is out for blood.

  • I’m a big fan of Colbert, but I didn’t think his performance was all that funny. It was, however, exciting and satisfying to see him spell out in no uncertain terms just how bad the White House and the press corps are.

  • Love Colbert. It was, to me, very funny. However, I did find myself getting distracted by just how far he was going to laugh sometimes. Also, I think the lack of audible positive crowd response, which is partly because of the mic, made it more difficult to get into.

    As others have said, I also believe funny/not funny was the story – he was basically bitchslapping Bushie to his face, saying what a lot of people think. Kanye West saying something political in an entertainment venue gets media – why wouldn’t this?

  • Well the truth does HURT when it bites to the bone…

    he has surrounded himself with yes men and women who do anything to insulate him from the truth.

    such it up punk….

    you had it coming…

    and WAIT…

    there WILL BE MORE

    suck it up…

  • Yes, it was uncomfortable. It was political satire, used as a weapon. The targets ‘got it’.

    Where was the media outrage when Pres. Bush did a skit that made fun of his inability to find WMDs in the White House?

  • The White House press corp is toolbox full of useless tools. When the country needs a set of “good” metric wrenches, the press acts like a bunch of broken drill bits, a T-square, and a worn “mitre saw.” Kudos to Stephen Colbert.

  • i have not seen the vid, but i read the transcript, and maybe the medium makes a big difference but I have to say i cannot see what the fuss was about. i thought it was a great satirical routine. maybe i’ve moved so far left i cant see the line anymore, i dont think Colbert was even close to going over it.

    the topics he hit on were often the same ones the Bush Doubles had joked about (or that Bush joked about at prior dinners). nothing Colbert said was as damning as some of the things Tony Snow has said to an audience of millions — and he gets hired by the White House, not chastised!

    this reminds me of the political theatrics the Rethugs did so well after the Wellstone and Coretta Scott King funerals, and after Cheney’s daughter was mentioned in the debates – the camapgin of ginned-up indignation that was cynical and fake and manipulative. sadly, it has worked every other time. lets hope people now have so little trust in these neo-con-men that it no longer works.

  • I finally just saw the video.

    Ah, the wonder, the joy, the spontaneous attempts to stop from laughing (in the audiance).

    It was great stuff. Look it up on the web and watch it.

  • “you’d think he got drunk and hit on the First Lady”.

    I think he was drunk. Drunk with the truth, and he did hit on Laura, explaining to her what a hypocritical liar that she married..

    As I keep posting, the was No truthiness in his skit. It was all TRUE, and not a play on words.

  • “still making headlines” ?

    You’ve obviously been on the road.

    I talked to my best friend this evening on the phone. He doesn’t read blogs unless I send him links. He reads the NYT every day, listens to NPR, and watches a lot of TV news.

    He had not heard of the Colbert thing at all. While we were talking he found the Froomkin article, and I sent him a bunch of links. The NYT finally breaks down and notes how “unfunny” Colbert was — tomorrow, or Day Five.

    Still? Try “finally.”

    Someone yesterday commented that if it weren’t for C-Span and blogs, we would have never heard anything about this. Some people never will.

  • Truth and humor – the prophets of Israel used it to inform a very small minority of the evils and perils of empire. The truth they utilized was humor, one of only two techniques that will overcome deep seated fear.

    Steven Colbert knows how to put the can opener to the can of worms. What everyone is missing is that worms of the sort that inhabit DC are creepy. It’s essential we focus on high ground to run to. It’s more important now than ever that we need each all to get there.

    Do we get to the high ground by focusing on the slime, or on people like Steven Colbert who have just told us that the truth hurts, and rips the chains off us.

    Next we need to determine what we do now that we are set free.

    What are we going to tell the American public so they will be attracted, now that they are repulsed.

    Otherwise we will see the deck chairs rearranged by the captains of commerce as we sail merrily towards open sea with the ice under the surface of the water.

  • Funny, YouTube has removed all the Colbert links due to “Copyright Infringement”… but you can still watch Bush’s speech at the same event…

  • Here’s something interesting. AOL has a poll today on Colbert’s performance (Wednesday 5/3). 55% thought he was funny, 65% thought it was appropriate for him to do what he did, and of the five jokes they posted (which weren’t even the best ones) for people to rate as a hit or a miss, the ratings were all “hit” and ranged from 73-85% – the 85% was for the one about “I believe that government is best that governs least and by that standard we have great success in Iraq.”

    This is not good news for Bush or the Beltway Banditos. AOL is considered to “skew right” (more Republicans), so this audience is definitely “had it” with both.

  • Maybe, just maybe, you’re wondering how come you’re so privileged as to receive this communiqué. Well, answer is simple, thanks to http://www.google.com and through the search words “blog” and “‘Lenny Bruce'”, I found the u.r.l to your website.

    After perusing your website, I conjectured you’d be interested in my post titled, “sweetest nookie”. In this post, you’ll find some notions about how Lenny, were he around today, might comment about the recent kerfuffle in the Middle East.

    Anyway, you’ll find the hyperlink to the post just below

    toodles

    http://hewhoisknownassefton.blogspot.com/2006/08/sweetest-nookie.html

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