Stephen Colbert = Swift, Dickens, Twain, Thoreau, Bernard Shaw, Wilde, Voltaire, Huxley, Chaplin, etc..

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Bush = Nero, Caligula, Mussolini, Ceacescu, Pol Pot, Pinochet, Kim Jung Il, Idi Amin, any two-bit tinpot tyrant dictator of a failed banana republic; ...

Washington Post, NY Times, Wall Street Journal, mainstream US media = Mein Kampf, Newspeak, Pravda, ad nauseam;

Richard Cohen, ?? Lehman, Judy (?) Bumiller, most mainstream journalists = Rudyard Kipling, Nietszche, Ezra Pound, Baghdad Ali, Goebbels, Leni Riefenstahl, Larry, Moe, & Curly Joe; not to mention Jerry Springer & his ilk.

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Get it? The rest of us on this planet, do.

I don't think it was meant to be funny. Those kinds of ass-kickings are usually extremely serious affairs. Take another look at Richard Pryor doing some of those classic routines. When comedy reaches this level "funny" is just one collateral option - the purpose and strategy are something else entirely, the punch-line takes on an expanded meaning.

What Colbert gave us was a historical piece of American comedy, which attained the level of the best works of Twain, Bruce, Carlin, and Pryor - and the delight (and confirmation) is that none of us were ready for it. (Apparently not even the Secret Service.)

No, this wasn't about "funny." This was about putting on a nice tux, a big smile, stepping up to the microphone and stomping a Texas-sized mudhole in somebody's ass.

As they say out in West Texas... Mission Accomplished

We should take a lesson from Cassandra--in history and mythology! Remember, when she rejected Apollo he banished her and cursed her that she was doomed to speak the truth--and never be believed. Then, in Greece, Cassandra saw the huge Trojan horse in the square and tried to warn the Greeks. For her trouble, she had her tongue cut out and was thrown in jail! And we know the ending of that story! So, Stephen Colbert has shown he follows in this noble tradition, his symbolic "tongue-cutting" in not being reported, or patronizingly dismissed as "not funny!" Actually, the truth is not usually funny, but Mr. Colbert managed to make it dicey and hilarious!!! Thank you--and keep it going Stephen Colbert!

Kate Madison

Depoe Bay, Oregon

Part of the problem with the performance was the really quite stupid business with the various White House correspondents and Helen Thomas at the end that went on far too long and took a lot of the edge off the entire performance. I think Cobert would have had more impact if he'd been much shorter and dropped the video.

Milton Erickson, the great hypnotherapist, used to point out the many mental states of which hypnosis was just one. The 'confusion technique' was one of his favorite trance inducing methods. People when confused or conflicted actually develop a trancelike state until they figure out what to do to resolve the conflict. Anyone who has ever been in a staff meeting or other meeting when a conflict arises between two people has either experienced this state or observed it. Everyone not involved develops a kind of staring immobility that prevents them from responding or intervening until someone breaks out of the state or the conflict ends.

This applies to the correspondents' dinner, how? The audience was not ready for what happened and did not know how to process the problem nor how to stay out of a trance state. Only those whose sense of humor, sense of irony (the Wilsons), or sense of security (Scalia) were able to laugh. The rest were immobilized and then found explanations for their non-responsiveness post hoc by declaring he was not funny. "He must not have been funny, I did not laugh? Did I?"

To be fair, whenever I have sat next to someone at my computer while gleefully playing Colbert's schtick, they make the same mouth opening, amazed responses seen on many of the audience. They don't usually laugh outright but cheer and guffaw later, repeating and processing Colbert's wonderful ironies. Some of the audience was responding the same way we did when we first saw it. Those who were probably were getting the irony and the joke.

Everyone who has read "Blink" or "The Tipping Point" learned that all people (you and I, as well) have a limited grip on our self-knowledge or the reasons behind our responses. Further, we attribute our negative responses to other circumstances and our positive ones to our own good thinking.

In sum, these people need to practice taking themselves less seriously.

Thank you Joan Walsh for thanking my hero Stephen Colbert for making angry/depressed liberals like myself feel way less shmucky for our beliefs.

MSM and cable and even a jerk like Stephanopolous, who probably remembers what it was like to be a proud Democrat, virtually ignored Colbert, and thus he became the story.

The wingnuts and the smuggies in the Press Corps went blank over Colbert Saturday night because they probably think Bush is doing a heck of a job. That's why they chuckled at that lame performance with the double..the insults from the "twins" came off as absurdity, which is more amusing to the simple minded than irony.

Can't wait till Scarborough and others come out of their comas and realize that Colbert became a huge star Saturday night by simply speaking 'truthiness' to power.

Sheila Fenton

Colbert was funny but Ray McGovern was deadly serious with Rummy today. Notice how he did it just after Paul Pilar hit so hard yesterday? Maybe it was Colbert who started all this?

It appears to me that there is and should be some debate about it. Satire should be ironic, sarcastic and include ridicule in exposing, denouncing, or deriding vice, folly, etc.

Fans who espoused Mr. Colbert's brilliance, stating those who didn't find him brilliant didn't get, don't get it themselves.

I've repeatedly watched the video and read the transcript of Mr. Colbert's presentation. It missed the mark. Where was the irony, sarcasm and ridicule. Waffling back and forth in a sheepish attempt to mock the president's and the press's wafflings simply isn't any of those things.

The presentation didn't rise to the occasion any more than the line about the Hindeberg. Which, in this writer's opinion was not even on par with a good round of the duzzins. And if you don't get that one, shame on you.

Sadly, Mr. Colbert simply didn't know when he'd made his point and rambled. What started out as a brilliant ironic statement:

"I believe the government that governs best is the government that governs least. And by these standards, we have set up a fabulous government in Iraq.", got squandered when Mr. C. then verred off course with, "I believe in pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps. I believe it is possible -- I saw this guy do it once in Cirque du Soleil. It was magical. And though I am a committed Christian, I believe that everyone has the right to their own religion, be it Hindu, Jewish or Muslim. I believe our infinite paths to accepting Jesus Christ as your personal savior."

This happened repeatedly during the entire oration. What we "got" was simply a lack of true committment to the fine art of satire. And that's the word.