The President thinks that's really frickin' hilarious. We're not talking about a JFK here when it comes to an appreciation of quality humor.
Oh, wondering at what the President was not amused? At this:
[Colbert] attacked those in the press who claim that the shake-up at the White House was merely re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. “This administration is soaring, not sinking,” he said. “If anything, they are re-arranging the deck chairs on the Hindenburg.”
Also lampooning the press, Colbert complained that he was “surrounded by the liberal media who are destroying this country, except for Fox News. Fox believes in presenting both sides of the story — the president’s side and the vice president’s side." He also reflected on the alleged good old days, when the media was still swallowing the WMD story.
Addressing the reporters, he said, "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. Put them 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."
Go, Stephen, go.
Colbert closed his routine with a video fantasy where he gets to be White House Press Secretary, complete with a special “Gannon” button on his podium. By the end, he had to run from Helen Thomas and her questions about why the U.S. really invaded Iraq and killed all those people.
Several veterans of past dinners, who requested anonymity, said the presentation was more directed at attacking the president than in the past. Several said previous hosts, like Jay Leno, equally slammed both the White House and the press corps.
Colbert in 2008!
ETA: What's interesting is that the people who are criticizing Colbert's performance this morning-The Moderate Voice has a sampling-seem to be doing it from the POV of people who don't watch Stephen's show, and don't know what he does. By most accounts that I have read so far, he had the balls to turn the Correspondent's Dinner into an episode of The Colbert Report-which presumably is what they hired him to do.
I have to wonder, though, whether long, stern conversations haven't been held with whoever books that dinner in the hours since ("What, Dennis Miller wasn't avalible?").
ETA, again: Mark Evanier wonders-
I'd also be curious to know what Colbert's goal was...and it may not have just been to entertain the folks out front in the formal wear. If it was, he probably went about it the wrong way. When you hammer the president that much right in front of him, you make an awful lot of people uncomfy...and not just the ones who side with the guy. I thought some of Colbert's lines were brilliant but if I'd been in the room, I might have spent more time looking at the reactions of others (Bush, especially) to some of them than laughing. On the other hand, Colbert's main objective may have been to cultivate a certain image as a performer...or simply to express his views. He could well have succeeded in one or both of those.
To reiterate: What interests me more than the question of Colbert's goal is what was the expectation of whoever offered him the job? I can hardly believe this is true, but...do you suppose someone saw a few episodes of his show and...didn't realize he was being ironic?
ETA, one more time: A blog called enrevanche has more.
A few choice Colbert lines:"Ladies and gentlemen, I believe it's yogurt. But I refuse to believe it's not butter. Most of all I believe in this president. Now, I know there's 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."
"John McCain is here. John McCain. What a maverick. Somebody find out what fork he used on his salad, because I guarantee you wasn't a salad fork. He could have used a spoon. There's no predicting him. So wonderful to see you coming back into the Republican fold. Senator, I have a summer house in South Carolina; look me up when you go to speak at Bob Jones University. So glad you've seen the light... Mayor Nagin is here from New Orleans, the chocolate city. Yeah, give it up. Mayor Nagin, I would like to welcome you to Washington, D.C., the chocolate city with a marshmallow center. And a graham cracker crust of corruption."
Oh, my god...
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