Thursday, May 04, 2006

You Can't Hide Balls The Size of Colberts

Okay, I know I don’t usually jump on bandwagons, but desptie the fact that you hav already heard about the performance of Steven Colbert at the Washington Correspondents Dinner a zillionth time, I feel compelled to make it a zillionth and one. Colbert accomplsihed something few true journalists, even of the reputation of Bob Woodward, have the balls to do, which is to criticize George Buish to his face, and in the presence of his wife at that.

More than that, he criticized the mainstream press for not really doing it’s job, for the most part. While you can point to individual examples of exceptions, such as Helen Thomas and David Gregory, in addition to NBC’s Brian Williams first rate coverage of the Hurricanes Katrina and Rita disasters, most of the press seems to have been cowed. Even Chris mattews, once ferocous as any bulldog in his coverage on Hardball of the Scooter Libby/Joseph Wilson/Valerie Plame/Patrick Fitzgerald, et al., controversy, now seems to have been strangely neutered.

One of the most telling moments of the evening came when Colbert advised the press to go home, spend some time with their families, write that book they’ve always wanted to write, about that fearless reporter standing up to the powerful and corrupt politicans. “You know-,” he said in mock encouragment, “fiction”.

Very few people laughed that evening, including Bush and Laura-or most members of the press. Nor should they have.

I have provided a link in the title, courtesy of “Pissed Off Patricia” of the blog “Morning Martini” (a good politically oriented blog, by the way), in which you can write a word of thanks to Mr. Colbert. My note is, if I remember correctly, number 17,006. I have don’t yet know how many other notes have been written since mine, but by all means, please add to the number.

3 comments:

Rufus said...

I enjoyed it quite a bit. Not all of his jokes work really. But, there's this "crazy bastard" factor to it that is hilarious. It's like that kid you knew who tried to ride his bike off of the roof onto a pile of mattresses. You have to be amazed at the sheer stupid guts of it, and that is what makes it so funny. What other crazy bastard would stand there and so clearly bash these idiots to their faces? A lot of press people are saying it "wasn't funny". Well, not to them anyway.

SecondComingOfBast said...

Pretty obvious why they wouldn't think it was funny, as they were the targets of one of the better lines in the routine. Just goes to show the press takes themselves way too seriously. They must be in some kind of denial or something. Colberts criticism of them was bitingly accurrate. Not only were they the punch line of the joke, they are themselves a joke.

autogato said...

Ack. Access to the speech is about near impossible on-line. seems CSPAN is being rather proprietary about it all. Any suggestions on where a gal can access it?

I'm such a political hothead that seeing this is a must.