Stephen Colbert certainly did cross the line...the very big line. There is now a moment in American history (modern history, anyway) that has become so revered that is is only mentioned in exhaulted term...whether you love George Bush or hate him. George Bush captured a moment that has stolen Dallas from JFK (even with Jackie's frantic dash across the trunk of the limo to grab back that piece of her husband). That moment was George Bush's (eventual) appearence at the wreckage of the World Trade Center with his bullhorn.

Saturday night Stephen Colbert in a casual, off the cuff way stole that moment back. He used that moment as one of the examples of Bush's cynical, calculated phoniness. And that, my friends, WAS crossing a very big line. No one has yet called Bush on that smarmy act publically yet.

The conservative shills, Republicans, media lapdogs and terrified Democrats can pile on Colbert all they want, but he crossed the line and there's no corssing back...and he crossed the line right in Bush's horrified face.

Stephen Colbert, Saturday night, became a hero to more people than these media and political insiders can ever guess.

The MSM basically establish the view of reality in our country. When they followed blindly along after the Bush administration, the nation thought war in Iraq was a dandy idea. Once the press got disillusioned by war, and Katrina, and the dizzying pace of scandal, corruption, and incompetence, it finally starting talking to the public in a way that allowed them to understand how they were being driven off a cliff.

If the MSM has decided that Colbert didn't matter, then he didn't matter. For all the astute (and correct) Salon and blogosphere commentary about Colbert's courage in calling the emperor naked, the country will not realize that has happened. The country won't get to reinterpret Bush's, and the press corps', gross failings through the faux-chumminess of Colbert's persona--because the press itself has decided to promote folksy-Bush again, instead.

Sigh. The right wing has such a great message machine, with Fox News and all Republican commentators in lockstep. If this were their satirist (oxymoronic, I know), they might all point out, "Well, *I* wasn't the one who said it," but they'd manage to embrace the message. (Think Swift Boat.) When it comes from the left, the supposedly liberal media and the Democrats themselves race to kill the messenger. That's why we'll never win.

fuck'em if they can't take a joke.

Goes double for idiots from Texas.