[lbo-talk] Colbert on Daily Show yesterday, post-Bush bashing

[Carl Remick]

>From: "Jim Devine" <jdevine03 at gmail.com>
>
>http://www.calendarlive.com/printedition/calendar/cl-et-channel2may02,0,2019302.story
>
>The report on Colbert: no smiles from scribes
>By Scott Collins
>Times Staff Writer
>
>May 2, 2006/L.A. TIMES
>
>... The crowd included many of the same people
>who've built Colbert up into the hottest thing to hit the Beltway
>since Karl Rove. Now he comes and pokes fun of them and most of them
>sat there in their finery looking stone-faced and glum. Did they find
>Colbert's routine as messy as I did? Maybe. But it seems a lot more
>likely that the D.C. journos are proving humor-impaired when anyone
>points out their performance in the run-up to the Iraq war.

Washington Post White House correspondent Dana Milbank, interviewed on Keith 
Olbermann's MSNBC show last night, said he found Colbert's performance not 
funny.  Of course Milbank, the supposed scourge of the Bush White House, 
seems IMO a quintessentially smug Washington insider.  Plus, Milbank's idea 
of boffo comic material is to appear on MSNBC wearing a safety-orange knit 
cap and vest following Cheney's hunting trip shooting spree.  Har, har.  See 
<http://michellemalkin.com/archives/004550.htm>

I think one reason that Colbert's material for the press dinner *reads* 
better than it appears in his taped performance is that the *entire* 
audience -- president and press corps alike -- was so turned off by his 
remarks.  Colbert gave an incredibly gutsy performance.  He really did speak 
truth to power, and that's a lot more important in Washington, ground zero 
of US governmental/media narcissism, than being amusing.

Carl