Sunday, April 30, 2006
 
C-SPAN Actually IS Good For Some Things

Ok, be honest, The Colbert Report is really not that great of a show. It's not quite as clever or as funny as The Daily Show and more often than not the show has moments of brilliance bogged down by about 26 minutes of other stuff you have to wait through.

But it seems that Colbert might have just given the performance of his lifetime, or at least one of the interesting performances of the week. The White House Correspondent's Dinner was a few nights ago.

The Dinner attracts lots of celebrities, lots of politicians, and lots of white house correspondents. Most of the night consists of a series of jokes and monologues given by everyone from Dick Cheney to Helen Thomas. It's tradition for the President to be there and make a funny speech and it's tradition for everyone to make fun of the President and the press corps. Everyone's laughing at each other and it's all ok.

Case in point: Dubya appeared on stage next to a remarkably good Dubya impersonator who was providing running commentary and giving alternate versions of what the President was saying. For example, Bush makes a fairly drab comment about cheney shooting a guy, and the impersonator next to him reveals that Cheney was "drunk as a skunk." Pretty funny I have to admit.

But Stephen Colbert's monologue didn't go over quite as well, and Crooks and Liars has the video. It's really really really funny.

Editor and Publisher has a nice rundown of his comments. Some of my favorite bits:

"Colbert urged Bush to ignore his low approval ratings, saying they were based on reality, 'and reality has a well-known liberal bias.'”

"[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.'”

When Colbert walked off stage evidently the President, who had stopped laughing about halfway through, gave him a perfunctory handshake and then left really soon afterward.

Expect Comedy Central's license to be withdrawn any day now...

Oh, and this guy has set up a site where you can go and leave an encouraging note to Colbert. The goal is to get a million, and then...do something with them.


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