Stephen Colbert: Giant Brass Balls

[Cleon]

Or you can rant in ignorance. Your call.

Why change his shtick now?

 

[ImaginalDisc]

Um, not quite the same thing, is it? Colbert beats up on Bush, then goes after the press for not beating up on Bush enough?

He beat them up for not doing their job. If they'd done their job and it turned out the Admistration's claim were all true, well and good. However, journalists are not paid to sit on their hands.

 

[pipelineaudio]

Holy moley that was FUNNY!

 

[BPSCG]

He beat them up for not doing their job. If they'd done their job and it turned out the Admistration's claim were all true, well and good. However, journalists are not paid to sit on their hands.

Gee, you think he might have made some cracks about journalists getting Pulitzers while their government sources are getting fired...?

Nahhh...

 

[zakur]

E&P's report:

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1002425363

 

[headscratcher4]

Um, not quite the same thing, is it? Colbert beats up on Bush, then goes after the press for not beating up on Bush enough?

yes, you are right, it would have been much funnier had he beat up on the press because they'd been doing a good job rather for doing a poor job.

However, eitherway, I fear the President was SOL, because if the Press had been doing their jobs, I fear the President would look even worse.

 

[zakur]

Another report, this time from Fox News:

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,193775,00.html

Sadly for Stephen Colbert, of the Comedy Central show "The Colbert Report," he'd been hired by the Correspondents Association to provide an amusing 15 minutes after the president's comedy routine. In the past the comic entertainers would take shots at both the president and the correspondents — instead this year it was one unflattering jab at the president followed by another. I was a few rows back, so I got a good look at Mr. Bush who was grinning a bit at the start, but when he realized he was nothing but a punching bag, he stopped smiling. Personally, I thought Mr. Colbert had gone over the line of what is appropriate when a sitting president is sitting four feet away. But keep in mind, I'm not an entertainment reviewer, I'm just a guy who put on a tuxedo and went to a dinner with his wife. That's all.

 

[ImaginalDisc]

Gee, you think he might have made some cracks about journalists getting Pulitzers while their government sources are getting fired...?

Nahhh...

That's an excellent criticism of the White House. Thank you, BPSCG. Thank you for pointing out how the White House fires whistleblowers.

 

[Forty-Two]

I read the transcript before I watched the video, and I found the transcript funnier. I think it had a lot to do with how his speech was received; it seemed like the only one who could genuinely laugh at himself was Scalia.

My favorite line was, "Mayor Nagin, I'd like to welcome you to Washington, D.C., the chocolate city with a marshmallow center."

 

[BPSCG]

That's an excellent criticism of the White House. Thank you, BPSCG. Thank you for pointing out how the White House fires whistleblowers.

You need to brush up on who fires who in this town. Mary McCarthy worked for the CIA, and was fired by her superiors at the CIA. But what the hell, make up your own facts if it helps you get through the day.

 

[ImaginalDisc]

You need to brush up on who fires who in this town. Mary McCarthy worked for the CIA, and was fired by her superiors at the CIA. But what the hell, make up your own facts if it helps you get through the day.

...which had nothing to do with pressure from the administration. Niether did the Plame leak. I'm sure.

 

[senorpogo]

Am I the only one who found his routine only mildly amusing and only semi-controversial? Granted, he took some shots at the president, but isn't that typical for that event? And the jokes themselves were standard Daily Show/Colbert fair. If anything, it was harsher towards the media than Dubs. Label me 'unimpressed'.

 

[BPSCG]

...which had nothing to do with pressure from the administration.

And if you had any evidence to support that claim at all, you'd be on the phone to the newspapers yourself, instead of wasting your time here. So I guess we know what value to assign that little bit of speculation.

In ID's strange little world, nobody in the U.S. government farts without Bush's permission.

Meanwhile, in the real world:

Several former senior intelligence officials said yesterday they could not recall a similar sanction being levied against a serving CIA officer in the past several decades, although they said they would have supported such an action if the agency had been able to trace a leak of a similar nature back to its source.

A majority of CIA officers would probably "find the action taken [against McCarthy] correct," said a former senior intelligence official who said he had discussed the matter with former colleagues in the past day. "A small number might support her, but the ethic of the business is not to" leak, and instead to express one's dissenting views through internal grievance channels.

 

[madmonk76]

What exactly were they expecting from Colbert?
I mean, they had to know the kinds of things he was likely to say.

But I have to agree with Forty-Two, what little laughter I did hear seemed to result from discomfort, more than anything else.

 

[ImaginalDisc]

And if you had any evidence to support that claim at all, you'd be on the phone to the newspapers yourself, instead of wasting your time here. So I guess we know what value to assign that little bit of speculation.

In ID's strange little world, nobody in the U.S. government farts without Bush's permission.

Meanwhile, in the real world:

Oh, the Washington Post. So impartial. Anyhow, are the relentless ad hom amusing you at least?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_McCarthy_(former_CIA_employee)

NBC's Andrea Mitchell commented that the CIA's action may be an attempt to send a message about leaks as well as a broader message about any contact with reporters:

Now they've found someone who was about to retire, and they're sending a very tough message. The bottom line is that no one is going to have the courage or the stupidity or the will to talk to reporters from now on. Very few people will, because they can see from this example, what can happen to you... The purpose is, don't even have lunch with reporters. The purpose is, don't have dinner with reporters. Don't pick up the phone if a reporter calls. It doesn't matter what you say, you're not supposed to have a contact with reporters without telling the higher-ups.

No one in a previous administration has been fired so close to retirement for divulging information so crucial to the public interest.

There's nothing politically modivated about her dismissal at all.

In 1998, McCarthy opposed the bombing of al-Shifa pharmaceutical factory suspected of manufacturing chemical weapons.[9] Immediately after the bombing the government of Sudan claimed the factory only made pharmaceuticals and demanded an apology from the U.S. Neither the Clinton or Bush Administrations have apologized for the attack. The 9/11 Commission Report shows that in April, 2000, the National Security staff reviewed the intelligence and agreed that al-Shifa was used in chemical weapons development. The memo to Sandy Berger was signed by Richard Clarke and Mary McCarthy, showing that McCarthy had changed her view to support the bombing of the plant (see footnote 50 on page 482 of the report).

In 2003, she testified before the 9/11 Commission about warning systems.[10]
[edit]

Campaign contributions

In the wake of her dismissal, The New York Times reported McCarthy had donated $2,000[11] to the John Kerry campaign.[12] According to public records, McCarthy also contributed $5,000 to the Ohio Democratic Party and $500 to the Democratic National Committee in October 2004, and $200 to the Steve Andreasen[13] campaign in November 2002.[14] According to The Washington Post, the White House has "recently barraged the agency with questions about the political affiliations of some of its senior intelligence officers."[15]

 

[UserGoogol]

It should probably be noted that several of the jokes he gave were taken verbatim from the Colbert Report. He was playing Stephen Colbert of The Colbert Report, and frankly, if he had done more jokes on the media, he simply would not have been in character. The in-character thing for Report Stephen to do would be to suck up to Bush, and of course the way Report Stephen works, that really means making fun of Bush.

One might argue that he didn't have to play Report Stephen. But he kinda did. There is so much comic potential in having Report Stephen talk at the White House Correspondents' Dinner, that it would be a crime to not do it just because "it's not appropriate for the event." Having Report Stephen speak at the White House Correspondants' Dinner is just a perfect incarnation of his character. You don't give up a chance for comedy like that just because it's impolite.

I admit that the jokes themselves weren't terrific, (although they were funny) but the situation itself was very funny, and sometimes that's all that matters.

 

[Renfield]

He even went after the press a bit. I daresay that takes even bigger balls then going after the Prez.

 

[Regnad Kcin]

Colbert was also featured on the April 30th "60 Minutes."

When you're hot, you're hot.

 

[BPSCG]

Oh, the Washington Post. So impartial.

Okay, try reading something now and then other than the back of a Cracker Jack box (jump in here if you like, Regnad). The Post is the paper that broke the story about the overseas prisons. If there's any story the administration would want kept secret, that was it, and The Washington Post was the paper that broke it.

And you're sitting there complaining that it's not an impartial enough source for you. Would you prefer I cite The Daily Worker?

No one in a previous administration has been fired so close to retirement for divulging informtion so crucial to the public interest national security.

Edited for accuracy.

 

[zakur]

A Comedian's Perspective on Stephen Colbert

What Stephen Colbert did the other night is a textbook example of "playing to the back of the room." It's all the more courageous because there actually wasn't a back of the room there; they were all at home, a few of them watching on C-SPAN, others finding the Quicktime later ... I remember Joel Hodgson of "Mystery Science Theater 3000" fame (who I had the pleasure of meeting recently) once say "We don't wonder 'will people get this,' we say 'The right people will get this.'"

I'm not surprised that the right side of the blogosphere has come out and said "Colbert wasn't funny," and used the reaction of the crowd as proof. Everybody on the planet thinks they have a sense of humor and good taste in clothes. It's mathematically impossible that everyone does. I can say from experience that some of my best shows have been the ones that could rightly be described as bombing. Almost always after one of those shows someone comes up and says "I thought you were awesome." Certainly that is not the state of comedy today. Today's "anything for a laugh" comedy of Dane Cook and others has at its core a belief that failure is not an option. Colbert understood that failure is not failure.

That was the edgiest, bravest set I've seen since the death of Bill Hicks. The only quibble Hicks would have had with it was that he did it in the first place. "Those sh!theels don't deserve to have that much truth thrown in their face," I could imagine him saying. But it was entirely necessary, in my view. There are two different kinds of satire, Horatian and Juvenalian. Juvenalian satire attacks folly in very direct terms. Horatian satire presents folly for what it is, and is generally seen as more gentle. But it's not in the hands of a master satirist. Colbert is a Horatian satirist, taking on the persona of the right-wing blowhard in order to expose its lunacy from within. It's one thing to tell an anti-Bush joke, it's another thing to espouse a pro-Bush line of reasoning and have that be the joke itself; the former is just a joke, while the latter attacks an entire worldview and crushes it.