I just sent the NYT the following email. Let's flood the media with our disappointment.

Was Ms. Bumiller at the dinner? If so, was there no space in her article to mention the keynote speaker? Wake up NYT and get some real reporters, not your Judith Millers, Jason Blairs, or Elisabeth Bumillers. Hey, I’ve got an interesting prospect; you could always hire this guy named Stephen Colbert, I’ve heard that he doesn’t mind reporting truthiness. Sincerely, Elizabeth Clemmons, Paint Rock, AL

Michael Sherer is exactly right about Colbert's performance. The fact that so many Washington reporters didn't think he was funny merely reflects how complict they are in the disastrous Washington Merry-Go-Round. Among New York reporters the comedian was a smash.

Charles Kaiser

Jon Stewart got it right--that the Washington Press Corps is stuck in its loveless marriage with the White House! We all know that it is difficult to have humor, or even a good spirit, about the person to whom one is ambivalently, but legally, attached! I think all the "corporate" reporters need to discover "truthiness" for themselves, and to reevaluate their corporate marriages and, more importantly, their bought-off souls! As it is, I have no respect for the political reporters from our "most respectable" papers--the Washington Post and NY Times. How sad that they cannot see and hear a performance showing that the emperor truly has no clothes. They should be cheering!!!!

Kate Madison

Depoe Bay, Oregon

Colbert played the court jester to King George and his court. Bush, the pompous imperialist next to his queen on the throne surrounded by simpering toadies whose sole goal in life is to be seen in his majesties company. If Dubya had openly laughed at anything funny (and believe me Colbert did deliver some damm funny lines) you can bet the rest of the fawning lackies would have followed suit. What do you expect from a crowd so far removed from reality as this current administration and it's pathetic hangers on. The TRUTH HURTS, and from the pained expression on King George's face, he either didn't get what was happening (highly likely) or he was contemplating some plan to behead the Jester. At any rate, it was a fearless performance by Colbert, one that had us commoners laughing our asses off.

I was stunned at seeing someone with the intestinal fortitude to speak the truth to the president and to those that are complicit with him in the disaster that this administration is. Yes it was at times painful to watch and to vicariously be a part of this great event where the president was handed his head.

What made his appearance significant isn't that he was castigating the president because of he disagreed with his ideas and/or policies, but rather because everyone in the audience knew was he was speaking the truth. They were nervous; nervous because someone had the gall to call a spade a spade, and not too many in the crowd have been willing to do that. And what we all realize is that the president has surrounded himself with people that have not been willing to speak the truth.

I don't think that Colberts presentation could really be truly funny because in the end, it wasn't supposed to be funny. The truth here is too painfull.

Some of us are just sick of what has happened in the last 8 years, not so much because there are philosophical differences, which there will always be, but because the policies and actions of this administration and this government have become so destructive to the country. Colbert spoke for all of us that recognize what is going on for what it is.

I wish that things wouldn't have gotten so bad in this country that it takes a presentation like Colberts to make us feel better... to make us feel proud. But things have.

A few weeks ago I was stunned to view Jon Stewart's performance when he was a guest on Crossfire show a few years ago. I was stunned and impressed as he called a spade a spade, right to the hosts face. He had to the intestinal fortitude to not only say that they were wrong he did it directly.

I think Mr. Colbert apprenticeship with Jon Stewart is now complete and he graduated Summa Cum Laude. Colbert said what many of us are thinking right to the mans face. It's about time the president and those complicit with him started realizing how much pain they are causing.

Thank You Mr. Colbert. Wish there were more people with the intestinal fortitude to tell the truth.

Excellent. What strikes me is that all the author's principal points are points of rhetorical technique that should be part of any freshman English course. (I was lucky. My Bonehead English instructor went to Cambridge.) If this were still taught - even in high school - what a wonderful world it would be.

The enterprising student could just look up a few words in the Oxford English Dictionary: satire, parody, sarcasm, irony, burlesque, pastiche.

Confucius had it right, as Ezra Pound realized. Rotten language gives rise to rotten relationships, from the family to the highest reaches of the state.

-Old Parr

If you’re going to criticize me, JWR, why don’t you at least give me the impression that you actually read what I wrote.

I didn’t criticize Colbert or accuse him of a nihilistic tearing down of hardworking journalists. Those were your words put in my mouth. In fact, if you read what I wrote, I said that Colbert was “dead-on in his remarks.” And I recognize that when Colbert criticizes the press corps, he’s doing it as a satirist, not as a journalist writing for Salon.

No, my main criticisms were aimed at Michael Scherer, the writer of the piece, the fawning masses who lap this piece up, and whomever came up with that ridiculous sub-heading about the “clueless DC press corps.” In fact, the headline of my letter was not a reference to Colbert, but to one of the main thrusts of the article. And I did note that in Colbert’s skit he praised Helen Thomas. And the reason I noted it was because it was at odds with that ridiculous sub-headline.

So my problems lie not with Colbert, but with the zealousness with which far too many people take half-truths like that headline to be gospel. In their haste to simplify everything, they do great damage to what is actually true.

And unlike Colbert, who actually praised a member of the press corps, far too many of the letter writers here launch wild accusations that have no basis in fact. The notion that the entire press corps is clueless becomes their mantra. But I guess I should be used to that by now. People can’t honestly figure out who to blame so they blame everyone. One day it’s all the fault of the press corps. The next day it’s all the fault of the Democrats. The next day it’s all the fault of the Republicans The next day it’s all the fault of the people.

And perhaps there’s a ring of truth in that last one, because there are far too many people who simply don’t want to think. They don’t want complexity. They just want to lash out no matter what the facts dictate. And in this case, the facts dictate that there are many, many hardworking journalists in Washington, and all over the country, who don’t deserve the scorn heaped upon them by a writer like Scherer.

And I think you know that, JWR. Scherer probably knows it, too. But that’s not sexy. Complexity is not sexy. Thinking is not sexy. And the headline and thrust of Scherer’s piece screams that uncomfortable truth all too loudly.

As John Kenneth Galbraith once wrote, and this could apply to many letter writers here and Scherer in some sense, too: It is a far, far better thing to have a firm anchor in nonsense than to put out on the troubled seas of thought.

My thoughts exactly.