Stephen Colbert's address to the docile press corps was truly remarkable - not only did I howl with laughter at his speech broadcast on C-Span - but it was made all the more funny at the complete blank stares of the audience.....if you ask me, Colbert has ressurected the power of IRONY. I thought that the Bush Administration had laid waste to that weapon of mass administrative destruction.....but no the Messiah of Irony has trumpeted his message, I wait for the walls to fall down. (in the meantime, I understand that Bush is a vicious little snit, I trust that Mr. Colbert has his taxes all in order).

the funny vs. not funny debate is completely irrelevant. the core question is truth or falsehood? good comedy is dangerous in that exposes the truths that we consciously and/or subconsciously tend to avoid. Colbert's performance was brilliant in that it was first and foremost a declaration of unapologetic truth. stimulating laughs is secondary to this task. for those that don't like the truth it follows that they aren't likely to laugh at it. we all must continue to work to puncture the bubble of the arrogantly ignorant embedded in the administration and the MSM.

He wasn't funny per se--he was scathingly ironic, shockingly truthful, and quite direct. Not only with Bush in the room, but feet away from him, and looking him the eye.

So the MSM isn't talking about Colbert because he "wasn't funny"...So why aren't they talking about the fact that he handed GWB and the press their asses?

If the MSM thinks he wasn't funny...Then why aren't they talking about what he WAS?

Salon.com: Great job covering this story and making the video clip available to everyone. Steven did a very brave thing. I agree with what someone said today that "steven had vented the pubic rage". I think Steven did vent some of the public rage over the last five years that has been building. Steven was amazing and the fact that he could keep his composure was amazing.

Brad

Hi:

Colbert's routine was a comedic masterwork. (hyperbole, yes, but at least I didn't fee the need to comment on the size of his testes ;-)

Some comments on criticisms from the article, the media, previous posts etc.

1. He shouldn't have stayed in character the whole time:

-The genius was that he was able to stay solidly in chararcter, unwavering despite the quiet reaction. To emerge out of character to, for example, acknowledge the tense room, would have been death to his routine. And he didn't appear even remotely nervous to me.

2. He wasn't entertaining to the people there.

- We can never know what was in people's heads, but I suspect that a lot of people in the audience liked it, but were concious of their surroundings (felllow guests, CSPAN cameras). Most people you see in the audience appear to be stuck in a frozen half-smile-limbo, somewhere between laughing hard and showing visible anger. Giving in and doing either of those things would be bad career-wise for most of the people in attendance. Scalia laughed because a)he has a job for life and b)because Colbert's poke at him reinforced his tough guy image.

3. We can't judge how entertaining it was because we weren't there.

- HUH? I guess then entertainment should never be televised.

3. He should have criticized the president and the press equally.

- DUH!

The media's response is predictable--the harder they work to marginalize the message the more we all know they realize how effective it was and why they chose not to talk about it in the first place.

Watching it, I was reminded of both Jonathan Swift's A Modest Proposal and Mark Twain's War Prayer.

In both of these, the speaker, taking on the voice of a patriotic, rational, and above all, normal person presents a viewpoint in which the horrific is treated as the only sensible thing to do.

What do you think about Colbert's performance? Forty or fifty years from now, or even one hundred, will it be a footnote or will it be considered an astutely outrageous cry for humanity's best values in a situation that exposes the worst?

As I mentioned in the other thread, one of the few journalists I still respect is Helen Thomas, and her pairing with Colbert was priceless.

She's called out Bush Jr., many times - I believe so far as to call him the worst president ever. That woman deserves more exposure in the mainstream media. The fact that so many people of my generation don't even know who she is saddens the hell out of me. But heck, maybe after this craziness a few more will.

As for the "funniness"?

a) It shouldn't matter. There is quite obviously a tremendous reaction to it - report on that, for chrissakes. That is news. Why did he have such a big effect if "oh, it wasn't funny"? AGH.

b) I thought it was hilarious as well as awe-inspiring (damn, when the man says he's got balls...), but then again, that's my type of humor. I can't force a laugh at a Jay Leno or Carlos Mencia routine, or Everybody Loves Raymond (I'm still struggling to figure out why that show was so damn popular) to save my life, but even when I'm watching the rerun at 1:30 AM and the roommates are asleep, I can't not laugh while watching the Colbert Report.

I'm happy to see you're covering this story so well. I keep thinking about Colbert's speech and even printed it out so I can forever have a hard copy. I want to save all of these articles for posterity. I think it will be fascinating to pull them out and read them years from now...by candlelite or something...

Also I'm reminded of a show I saw months ago on the Hilter-Channel (History channel) about- you guest it - Hitler and Stalin. The narrator said that the people in Stalin's government were so afraid of him that whenever he appeared in public or to make a speach, etc. they would clap and clap forever because no one wanted to be the first person to stop clapping. I think something like this happened at the Whitehouse Correspondence Dinner the other night. Bunch of wussies, ball-less cocksucking assholes run our so-called government. I'm not voting for any of them, I'm not buying or reading or watching any network news or mailstream garbage papers and I'm not giving a DIME to the democratic party. In fact, I plan on writing to each and everyone of them to tell them how I feel.

rotten bastards, all!