Colbert is brilliant and I devour every snippet of his work that gets posted online (I don't have premium cable or satellite service for home network). But was he funny on Saturday? I wasn't laughing with ha-ha belly laughs, because how could anyone laugh at the severity of his speaking truth to power? He's a hero for showing such terrific balls! But funny? How can we laugh at what is actually painful irony, about painful abuses of power. And how surreal is it that so many of the subjects of recent scandal attended the same event? How weird is Washington? What the fuck is Valerie Plame doing there having dinner in the same room as her mortal enemy?

I'm amazed that Colbert was able to go through his whole routine. It must have been easier to write it and rehearse it than to actually pull off what is essentially guerilla theater aimed at a man who can do anything he wants to you after the fact. And some of that nervousness showed in at least one screwup during the performance. It just makes me admire the guy even more, because it was obviously a hard thing to do, but he felt a duty to carry it through. That is the definition of hero.

Clearly, Colbert's routine was not side-splitting, laugh-out-loud (unless you are Justice Scalia) hilarity. He had the same problem Jon Stewart had at the Oscars--he skewered his audience, and they didn't like it. But those of us watching from home were delighted. Maybe Colbert wasn't on his game, but he called it like it is, and delivered a devastating critique of the administration and the press corps without ever breaking character. For crying out loud, whoever invited him should have known what was coming!

Maybe you thought the routine was funny. Maybe you didn't. But to minimize the event by saying "it wasn't funny," is to show either that you missed the point or that you were one of the targets. He wasn't trying to make them laugh.

I was looking for a copy that wasn't in quicktime, so I checked out YouTube.com...

When you find the video, and click it, you get a message saying that the video has been removed because of copyright infringement.

Huh?

I am getting kinda 1984-esque kinda scared here. I am guessing that someone pressured or hacked YouTube.

Please, Salon.com, make sure this video stays available for the masses. Its just too important to be swept under the carpet.

Whoever hired Colbert for that gig was a moron. As he makes obvious every night at 11:30, he has nothing but contempt for the media in general, and specific members of it in particular (O'Reilly/Fox News). I thought that his bit wasn't his best, and I don't think that it was really his element. It lacked the energy that he normally has, and he didn't seem as in command as he does on his show. If you take the basic assumption that as an entertainer you should respect your audience enought to try to entertain them, then he probably shouldn't have taken the job. However, if he was taking it to so that he could "speak truthiness to power" then I think he made the right decision. Most of the people I know thought it was funny. Then again, I'm not on a first name basis with many national reporters.

All you people excusing the media coverage are missing one thing: That Scalia joke was priceless. Justice Scalia himself lost it.

That joke alone makes Colbert's whole schtick hilarious. If you didn't get why he was giving Scalia the Italian version of flipping the bird...brush up on your news.

Of couse, I watched with a friend who laughed at that part without even getting the reference.

Wow. I never thought that a matter of personal opinion could become fact. Since when was "funny" a universal constant? Some people may have thought Colbert was hilarious, but don't tell me that if I didn't think he was funny that night than I'm a Bush-huggin right-wing nut. You only think he was funny because he was bashing Bush. I personally don't like Bush either, but I still didn't think Colbert was all that funny. You are only having an exaggerated positive response based on your dogmatic hatred for Bush. Don't try to tell people what's funny and what's not; you're not comedians.

We aren't living in Funny Times. He wasn't supposed to be funny.

I think that most people who'd like this whole Colbert thing to go away (ie the Bushies and the mainstream media) probably believe that airily dismissing him as unfunny is more effective than saying he was offensive or out of line--which would then require them to quote what he said, all of which was spot-on and true.

If his delivery wasn't at its peak, it's probably because the crowd was pretty freaking hostile--especially when it became clear he wasn't going to play into their "aren't we the hippest, most knowing people in the world" self-congratulatory shit.

It's hard to be funny in front of a room full of people who are glaring daggers at you. He got very little by way of encouragement from the audience--which only makes it more awesome that he soldiered on and didn't get intimidated.

The fact is, he said things the media haven't been willing to say, even though it's their job and frankly their duty to say these things. And most people don't cuddle up to those who shame them--especially when the shame is 100% justified.

As for the Iraq jokes, apparently the "no WMDs" skits are funny only if you're the guy who sent all those soldiers over there to be slaughtered needlessly.

You bet Colbert's act wasn't funny to the President, who was clenching his jaw so tightly he probably cracked a few molars -- or to the Media who took the skewering along with His Almightiness. OF COURSE they're saying it wasn't funny. Colbert's humor has never for one second been FOR either the politicians or the media.

It is FOR us, the regular people who have to live on the swill created by them and fed to us. WE got it, and we are howling with cathartic laughter and loving Colbert more than ever. No, YOU didn't think it was funny. I hope that the fact that WE thought it was hilarious is cold water in your faces.