|
The bitchslapping that Colbert did to Bush and the Press was quite a sight to behold, and oh so shockingly wasn't picked up much at all by that "darn librul media". Good article on it is here:
| quote: | 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. 01, 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." |
Okay, let's stop for a moment. Can someone in the remaining 32-33% public opinion crowd (or 68% Republican crowd) who somehow still supports Bush tell me how that little twinge of irony doesn't hit home just a teensy bit?
The problem with this little ****** running our country is smack right in the eyes with that slam - this presidency is run on image, period. And it is exactly what happens when you run your presidency based solely on winning elections, and forgetting that the remaining 6 years has something to do with policy decisions. And the bitch of it all to Bush is, these decisions actually have to have some fucking substance behind them.
| quote: | | 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." |
Jesus. I mean, that's just flat out fucking funny. The best comedy out there always has deeper connotations of truth, which is exactly why these slams hit home, hard.
| quote: | 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. |
Which to me was the most potent and direct slam of them all. Oh sure, anyone can attack Bush and even hold some direct truthiness behind those attacks. Hell, if I recall correctly Bush attacked himself by looking under the table for WMDs in the past. Perhaps Colbert's attacks may not have zinged so hard if his sole target was Bush himself, though of course Assrocket and the other nutsacks on the wingnut blogs would be crying foul regardless. Actually, they already are. Jesus, now good old faithful Drudge is on trying to scrape something up on Colbert:
| quote: | FLASH: Colbert averaging just over one million viewers a night (1,077,000], year to date on COMEDY CENTRAL, which is less than FOXNEWS's 6-11pm line-up...
www.drudgereport.com |
I mean, Jesus, is that all our boy Drudge can come up with here? How fucking pathetic is it to see this wingnut twit who's the bastion of the Right Wing news try and come up with some dirt on Colbert? And furthermore, this is somehow suppose to put things into perspective on Colbert? That he has a show on the fucking Comedy channel, a vastly smaller network vs. Faux News, and has fewer viewers than Faux does?
Shocking, really shocking Matt. Keep 'em comin.
But back to Colbert. The real kicker is the fact that Colbert didn't just take to Bush, Cheney, and his Administration - he took it right down the throat of the media who've sat idly by and forgot what the fuck it means to do investigative journalism. These lazy fucks have over the years settled down and have become content in the he said/she said bullshit talking points of either side, rather than actually pursue any truthiness behind those talking points in the first place.
Editor and Publisher has it right:
| quote: | 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, "You should spend more time with your families, write that novel you’ve always wanted to write. You know, the one about the fearless reporter who stands up to the administration. You know– fiction."
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/e...t_id=1002425363 |
And now we see why this was vastly ignored by that darn librul media. Bummer.
Back to Salon:
| quote: | 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.
-- By Michael Scherer
http://www.salon.com/opinion/featur.../05/01/colbert/ |
I doubt he will  .
And now we see that Bush was a wee bit ticked off:
| quote: | 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/a...01/1whwatch.htm |
As John Aravosis said about our little crybaby:
| quote: | That's nice. I mean, we wouldn't want Bush to blow a gasket over the fact that he lied to the American people, totally blew the war in Iraq, keeps his top aide on staff even though he's a traitor and a known security risk, lost an entire American city while he was on vacation, blew the Clinton budget surplus, has destroyed America's image in the world, was asleep at the switch on September 11, has yet to catch Osama, was ready to sell our ports to the United Arab Emirates, gutted mining safety right before those miners died, and oh so much more.
No, what apparently wakes Bush up from his stupor is a comedian making fun of him. |
Sorry Bush, but the truthiness hurts.....
___________________
Whence September dusk grows crisper still,
with leaves all crimson conquered,
I yearn to shout,
and dance about,
and stick pickles in my honker...
|
f***in moron. let your imagination soar...and stfu
