It Was Funny, but Nobody Felt Like Laughing

Stephen Colbert was explosive at Saturday night's White House Correspondents' Association Dinner, though not that you could tell from the reaction of the audience. Or maybe that's exactly how you could tell. This event comes every year, and it usually features a popular comic coming in to make gentle fun of the participants. It's ostensibly supposed to be more cutting than that, but in practice the comic might get in one or two sharp lines and everybody feels good at the end. Not this year, though. The press remained mostly silent--possibly stunned--and the Prez looked annoyed and uncomfortable. Colbert, to borrow a phrase from the Editor & Publisher write-up, was "speaking truthiness to power," and power didn't seem to like it too much.

You can see some video at Crooks and Liars or read the transcript at Daily Kos--it's very funny, and there's little question about what might've made everybody in attendance so uncomfortable. Here are a couple of my favorite lines:

Now, I know there are some polls out there saying this man has a 32% approval rating. But guys like us, we don't pay attention to the polls. We know that polls are just a collection of statistics that reflect what people are thinking in "reality." And reality has a well-known liberal bias.

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I stand by this man. I stand by this man because he stands for things. Not only for things, he stands on things. Things like aircraft carriers and rubble and recently flooded city squares. And that sends a strong message, that no matter what happens to America, she will always rebound -- with the most powerfully staged photo ops in the world.

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But the rest of you, what are you thinking, reporting on NSA wiretapping or secret prisons in eastern Europe? Those things are secret for a very important reason: they're super-depressing. And if that's your goal, well, misery accomplished. Over the last five years you people were so good -- over tax cuts, WMD intelligence, the effect of global warming. We Americans didn't want to know, and you had the courtesy not to try to find out. Those were good times, as far as we knew.

But, listen, let's review the rules. Here's how it works: the president makes decisions. He's the decider. The press secretary announces those decisions, and you people of the press type those decisions down. Make, announce, type. Just put 'em through a spell check and go home. Get to know your family again. Make love to your wife. Write that novel you got kicking around in your head. You know, the one about the intrepid Washington reporter with the courage to stand up to the administration. You know - fiction!

You'd figure something like this would get heavy coverage in the press, wouldn't you? No, you wouldn't. That's why you're reading a blog to get some news, because you know better. Peter Daou was first to point out how the liberal media has maintained its awkward silence over the event, and Christopher Durang followed up. They've each got a number of high-profile media outlets that downplayed or ignored Colbert. One place that didn't ignore him was Dan Froomkin's White House Briefing at The Washington Post:

Colbert was merciless, reserving his most potent zingers for the people in spitting distance: The president who took the nation to war on false pretenses and the press corps that let him do it.

Froomkin also talks about the coverage or non-coverage, as the case may be. He promises to write about his own experiences at the event tomorrow.

One odd note that Editor & Publisher pointed out is that guitarist Jeff "Skunk" Baxter, late of Steely Dan and the Doobie Brothers, attended the evening wearing a kilt. No, I don't know what that means, either.