i actually don't give a damn about decorum. what's unforgivable is being a comedian, and not being funny. jsut because his target was someone you hate doesn't mean he was clever. just the opposite, he was heavy-handed, obvious, and as i said, sounded like glynch or batman at 3am monday after a weekend bender.
It does seem like the spectacle of comedian lambasting the president - to his face - would garner at least some degree of media coverage. Of course, the news media in attendance (and in general) were also taken to task - and that's probably why it's not bigger news.
I don't know. He was effectively telling a Supreme Court Justice **** You while at the same time calling BS on Scalia's cover story that the gesture he used was not obscene. And Colbert did it 3-4 times with emphasis. I guess one could come to the conclusion that because people didn't laugh that he bombed or didn't understand his audience. But Colbert is not a comedian that needs laughs... the guy's whole reason for living is making people uncomfortable... and he definitely made a good number of the folks there very uncomfortable. It was humor and satire and outrage all rolled into one, with the humor and satire being the vehicle for the delivery of outrage. Dare I say it... it was almost Twainian. "Misery Accomplished."
I know it's bad form to quote yourself, but as soon as I finished that, I thought of another comedian who excelled at making people uncomfortable... Andy Kaufman. I think Colbert and Kaufman have some similarities.
Exhibit A If this is the height of conservative humor, you guys should just stick to stealing elections and shredding the Constitution.
Beauty is in the eye of the beer holder i guess. day by day has it's good and bad days, but on the whole it's a lot better than doonesbury has been since about, oh, 1976.
He got laughs for subjects that didn't make the crowd uncomfortable. A skinny guy telling fat jokes at a Weight Watchers conference is gonna make most comedians bomb.
It's funny when you exaggerate or polarize something of folk fare. Good humor is like self sex. keep it up.
Well no wonder its not getting mainstream play! Colbert speaks the truth to power AND THE PRESS. Salon: How Colbert unsettled Washington's press corps RAW STORY Published: Monday May 1, 2006 Print This | Email This Salon.com's Michael Scheer explores how Stephen Colbert -- star of Comedy Central's Colbert report -- captured the attention of America while stabbing the White House correspondents' pool in the back. Excerpts; full restricted story here. # Then turned to the president of the United States, who sat tight-lipped just a few feet away. "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." It was Colbert's crowning moment. His imitation of the quintessential GOP talking head -- Bill O'Reilly meets Scott McClellan -- uncovered the inner workings of the ever-cheapening discourse that passes for political debate. He reversed and flattened the meaning of the words he spoke. It's a tactic that the cultural critic Greil Marcus once called the "critical negation that would make it self-evident to everyone that the world is not as it seems." Colbert's jokes attacked not just Bush's policies, but the whole drama and language of American politics, the phony demonstration of strength, unity and vision. "The greatest thing about this man is he's steady," Colbert continued, in a nod to George W. Bush. "You know where he stands. He believes the same thing Wednesday that he believed on Monday, no matter what happened Tuesday." Political Washington is accustomed to more direct attacks that follow the rules. We tend to like the bland buffoonery of Jay Leno or insider jokes that drop lots of names and enforce everyone's clubby self-satisfaction. ....So it's no wonder that those journalists at the dinner seemed so uneasy in their seats. They had put on their tuxes to rub shoulders with the president. They were looking forward to spotting Valerie Plame and "American Idol's" Ace Young at the Bloomberg party. They invited Colbert to speak for levity, not because they wanted to be criticized. As a tribe, we journalists are all, at heart, creatures of this silly conversation. We trade in talking points and consultant speak. We too often depend on empty language for our daily bread, and -- worse -- we sometimes mistake it for reality. Colbert was attacking us as well. READ MORE ON SALON http://www.rawstory.com/news/2006/Salon_How_Colbert_unsettled_Washingtons_press_0501.html
The full Salon article The truthiness hurts Stephen Colbert's brilliant performance unplugged the Bush myth machine -- and left the clueless D.C. press corps gaping. By Michael Scherer May 1, 2006 | Make no mistake, Stephen Colbert is a dangerous man -- a bomb thrower, an assassin, a terrorist with boring hair and rimless glasses. It's a wonder the Secret Service let him so close to the president of the United States. But there he was Saturday night, keynoting the year's most fawning celebration of the self-importance of the D.C. press corps, the White House Correspondents' Association dinner. Before he took the podium, the master of ceremonies ominously announced, "Tonight, no one is safe." Colbert is not just another comedian with barbed punch lines and a racy vocabulary. He is a guerrilla fighter, a master of the old-world art of irony. For Colbert, the punch line is just the addendum. The joke is in the setup. The meat of his act is not in his barbs but his character -- the dry idiot, "Stephen Colbert," God-fearing pitchman, patriotic American, red-blooded pundit and champion of "truthiness." "I'm a simple man with a simple mind," the deadpan Colbert announced at the dinner. "I hold a simple set of beliefs that I live by. Number one, I believe in America. I believe it exists. My gut tells me I live there." Then he turned to the president of the United States, who sat tight-lipped just a few feet away. "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." It was Colbert's crowning moment. His imitation of the quintessential GOP talking head -- Bill O'Reilly meets Scott McClellan -- uncovered the inner workings of the ever-cheapening discourse that passes for political debate. He reversed and flattened the meaning of the words he spoke. It's a tactic that cultural critic Greil Marcus once called the "critical negation that would make it self-evident to everyone that the world is not as it seems." Colbert's jokes attacked not just Bush's policies, but the whole drama and language of American politics, the phony demonstration of strength, unity and vision. "The greatest thing about this man is he's steady," Colbert continued, in a nod to George W. Bush. "You know where he stands. He believes the same thing Wednesday that he believed on Monday, no matter what happened Tuesday." It's not just that Colbert's jokes were hitting their mark. We already know that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, that the generals hate Rumsfeld or that Fox News lists to the right. Those cracks are old and boring. What Colbert did was expose the whole official, patriotic, right-wing, press-bashing discourse as a sham, as more "truthiness" than truth. Obviously, Colbert is not the first ironic warrior to train his sights on the powerful. What the insurgent culture jammers at Adbusters did for Madison Avenue, and the Barbie Liberation Organization did for children's toys, and Seinfeld did for the sitcom, and the Onion did for the small-town newspaper, Jon Stewart discovered he could do for television news. Now Colbert, Stewart's spawn, has taken on the right-wing message machine. In the late 1960s, the Situationists in France called such ironic mockery "détournement," a word that roughly translates to "abduction" or "embezzlement." It was considered a revolutionary act, helping to channel the frustration of the Paris student riots of 1968. They co-opted and altered famous paintings, newspapers, books and documentary films, seeking subversive ideas in the found objects of popular culture. "Plagiarism is necessary," wrote Guy Debord, the famed Situationist, referring to his strategy of mockery and semiotic inversion. "Progress demands it. Staying close to an author's phrasing, plagiarism exploits his expressions, erases false ideas, replaces them with correct ideas." But nearly half a century later, the ideas of the French, as evidenced by our "freedom fries," have not found a welcome reception in Washington. The city is still not ready for Colbert. The depth of his attack caused bewilderment on the face of the president and some of the press, who, like myopic fish, are used to ignoring the water that sustains them. Laura Bush did not shake his hand. Political Washington is accustomed to more direct attacks that follow the rules. We tend to like the bland buffoonery of Jay Leno or insider jokes that drop lots of names and enforce everyone's clubby self-satisfaction. (Did you hear the one about John Boehner at the tanning salon or Duke Cunningham playing poker at the Watergate?) Similarly, White House spinmeisters are used to frontal assaults on their policies, which can be rebutted with a similar set of talking points. But there is no easy answer for the ironist. "Irony, entertaining as it is, serves an almost exclusively negative function," wrote David Foster Wallace, in his seminal 1993 essay "E Unibus Pluram." "It's critical and destructive, a ground clearing." So it's no wonder that those journalists at the dinner seemed so uneasy in their seats. They had put on their tuxes to rub shoulders with the president. They were looking forward to spotting Valerie Plame and "American Idol's" Ace Young at the Bloomberg party. They invited Colbert to speak for levity, not because they wanted to be criticized. As a tribe, we journalists are all, at heart, creatures of this silly conversation. We trade in talking points and consultant-speak. We too often depend on empty language for our daily bread, and -- worse -- we sometimes mistake it for reality. Colbert was attacking us as well. A day after he exploded his bomb at the correspondents dinner, Colbert appeared on CBS's "60 Minutes," this time as himself, an actor, a suburban dad, a man without a red and blue tie. The real Colbert admitted that he does not let his children watch his Comedy Central show. "Kids can't understand irony or sarcasm, and I don't want them to perceive me as insincere," Colbert explained. "Because one night, I'll be putting them to bed and I'll say ... 'I love you, honey.' And they'll say, 'I get it. Very dry, Dad. That's good stuff.'" His point was spot-on. Irony is dangerous and must be handled with care. But America can rest assured that for the moment its powers are in good hands. Stephen Colbert, the current grandmaster of the art, knows exactly what he was doing. Just don't expect him to be invited back to the correspondents dinner. http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2006/05/01/colbert/
The material was in there, but definitely spread out too much. He should have tossed about 25% of the monologue, and delivered the rest with better timing (faster), it would have been hilarious. The video would have been hilarious too if it were about half the length. I'm guessing he was given a time stipend that was too long and he just couldn't keep that kind of brutal attack going for an extended period of time. All in all, I was still very amused. The man has cojones. This was more of a time bomb set to explode in articles to be written later. I mean, who really cares if the White House press corp is bored? It is about reading a few of the jokes 3 days later in the paper or hearing about it on Leno this week.
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2006/04/29.html#a8104 There are 2 links off this site that point to a video of it all. apparently CNN is going to reair it soon.
If you do a search for "2006 White House Correspondents Dinner with Stephen Colbert and Pres. Bush (TVRip.SoS)", there is a torrent of the whole dinner. Very good quality, looks great on DVD. Bush does his bit at 40 min and Colbert starts at 54 min.
Skewering comedy skit angers Bush and aides Comedy Central star Stephen Colbert's biting routine at the White House Correspondents Association dinner won a rare silent protest from Bush aides and supporters Saturday when several independently left before he finished. "Colbert crossed the line," said one top Bush aide, who rushed out of the hotel as soon as Colbert finished. Another said that the president was visibly angered by the sharp lines that kept coming. "I've been there before, and I can see that he is [angry]," said a former top aide. "He's got that look that he's ready to blow." http://www.usnews.com/usnews/news/articles/060501/1whwatch.htm
