whose letter appears in these pages, still doesn't get it. Colbert's character is a send off of all the sycophants in the media who worship their own egos and fawning over officialdom more than they value the truth. Bill O'Reilly is included there. To criticize Colbert for his egoistic run over to his seated guests on his TV show is to entirely miss his point; it's the egotistical behavior that he is satirizing, and satire must exaggerate to be funny. Don't confuse Colbert with the persona he is spoofing.

A good satirist never breaks character, and Colbert never broke character on Saturday night, either. One person asked him afterwards if he had been too tough on the president. "Not at all," he replied.

Wake up, brother bob. Your story isn't worth the paper it's rotten on. (Quip stolen from Dorothy Parker.)

Colbert is my new hero. This is almost v for vendetta quality critique. His directness in method was so ballsy, so inescapable, and his critique so true. That the media is not reporting on this is a measure of, I think, their shame... Not having made issue and failing in tacit complicity makes it hard to stomach actually promoting your critic and his message.

And the obverse, that you are willing, is a measure of journalistic integrity, and an inspiration.

Truth is a bitter pill, but Colbert has us smiling as it goes down. Veritas vos liberabit: The truth shall set you free.

Here is my thank you that I posted to the www.thankyoustephencolbert.com website:

I have not even seen the video yet, nor read the transcript. But from the many snippets of jokes I've read, and all the testimonials I've seen so far, I just had to say thank you as well.

I am a Canadian who followed the 2004 election voraciously, even to the point of feeling a low-grade depression for the week following the Naked Emperor's re-election. Having seen the ineptitudes (too weak a word) that are Abu Ghraib, Hurricane Katrina, each fallen soldier in Iraq ... I am now bursting out of my seams with pride that someone dared to tell it like it is with delicious, stupendously clever, biting humour, the bite-marks of which will not erase off the Washington press and Naked Emperor's admin. (NEA) so easily.

I have a lump in my throat as I type this because it's about damn time. Colbert did not do this out of a sense of wanting to be viciously clever and the funniest guy around. No, he had a moral message to send, and he sent it. He wanted to put those journalists to shame ... not to merely put them down and puff himself up. Nothing so facile and egotistical as that (which is what we the public come to expect from our entertainers and politicians alike, sadly). No, he did it for the good of the public, and for the still beating (though very faintly) beating heart of America. For humanity, really. People may scoff and roll their eyes at all this adulation, but the fact is, TRUTH is very much lacking nowadays. Bullshit is everywhere, great steaming piles of it. It is a very rare man who sacrifices everything (and I mean everything ... who knows what will happen in the next few days to his career, or to him? Hopefully nothing but an upward trajectory, but at this point I would put nothing past the right-wing bastards and NEA) for the virtues of truth and accountability, and the good of the public at large. I hope full videos and transcripts will be available widely for many weeks to come.

Thank you, thank you, thank you Stephen. God Bless You.

I sat stunned watching Colbert humiliate the President and his poodle press on Saturday. When it was over I began rehearsing the arguments I would make on Monday defending his right to speak out against all those who would say he insulted the dignity of the office.

Afterall, this was going to be the talk of the news media all day Sunday and Monday. Whether you agreed or disagreed with Colber (and I agreed), he had clearly crossed a line with his brutal skewering of the President while standing only three feet away.

Instead, the poodles managed to once again find the coward's way out and have completely ignored it.

I guess I shouldn't have been surprised.

Jesus may have come back as a political and cultural satirist.

Please forgive me for stepping out of line and doing to Colbear what Colbear attempts to do to those he selectively targets for scorn, but only rarely performing satiric vivisection. Apparently the great washed masses have been hypnotized beyond recognizing their own cult status. Any time you see this many people blindly following anyone - from Jesus Christ to Mark Twain - always ask yourself, Why does the justifiable adulation turn into hero worship? Who said, "Pity the society who needs a hero"?

OK, he's funny. No one here says he isn't. But is he the equivalent of, say, Lenny Bruce, Richard Pryor, or Mort Saul? Don't bet on it; his core sensibility is far more flimsy, though, granted, his brazen exterior is highly attractive in these comedically barren times. He's more like a canteen in the desert as opposed to an actual oasis. And yet, like the Beatles at Shea, adoring fans are screaming until they're blue in the fingers. It's sad really that so much is made of so little. Put it in a time capsule so archeologists will see how truly desperate modern lives have gotten.

Wow, people say, you really gave it to 'em. Oh yeah? Mocking Scalia is brazen but is more related to being a bully than to a crafty satirist addressing the actual problem - America's turn to the right that allowed the entire court to act right, well, I mean, act wrong in the name of acting right. Where was that joke? Oh, it was easier doing character assassination. Sound familiar? Karl Rove wrote the textbook on that.

Rejoicing in Colbear's barbs signifies a deeply pent up resentment at how things in general, from foreign policy to the abject poverty of traditional media, are going. And that's understandable. Similarly, critics fed up with traditional art and its pretentious guardians embraced Warhol in the 60s, not because splattering paint randomly across the photos of famous people was brilliant but because it was ballsy. And now whatdaya got? Bad art hanging around everywhere you look. In retrospect, maybe Caravaggio wasn't so bad after all. Huh?

Ballsy? Isn't that what got Bush to the top. Is ballsy really the answer? How about profundity? Oh, that's right, that's too stodgy. That might take more than a five-liner to convey. Alright, now I've seen the light Mr. Carpenter - your logic reigns supreme.

Simply because Colbear recited a few minutes of attack jokes, crafted by a crew of 50, and put through focus groups to cull the duds - just like the political system works now - I'm swayed to adore his every move. Let's build him a statue. Grant him the Medal of Honor. And, above all, let's all return to that slick Vitalis look he's got going that many in the 60s felt was greasy and slick. Yeah, that's it, let's worship Slick. We've already voted in a slick administration. Why stop with politics? Why shouldn't our comedic heroes be slick too?