Sunday, May 07, 2006

Cobert Lampoons Press and Pres. Reactions

Stephen Colbert at the 2006 White House Correspondents' Association Dinner

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Stephen Colbert at the 2006 White House Correspondents' Dinner
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Stephen Colbert at the 2006 White House Correspondents' Dinner

On April 30, 2006, Stephen Colbert was the featured entertainer for the 2006 White House Correspondents' Association Dinner, delivering a 20-minute speech and video presentation which was broadcast on C-SPAN and MSNBC. As his conservative character from The Colbert Report, Colbert satirized the Bush administration and the White House press corps. Several of Bush's aides and supporters walked out during Colbert's speech, and one former aide said that the President had "that look that he's ready to blow."[1]

Reaction to the event became an Internet and media sensation.[2][3] Time magazine concluded that "Days after Stephen Colbert performed at the White House Correspondents' Dinner, this has become the political-cultural touchstone issue of 2006 -- like whether you drive a hybrid or use the term 'freedom fries.'"[4]


Contents

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Audio & Video

Video of Colbert's speech is available at the following places:

A video of President Bush's reaction to Colbert's pre-recorded "audition tape" is at YouTube (video)

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Quotes

Some of Colbert's remarks[6] included:

  • "I've got a theory about how to handle these retired generals causing all this trouble: don't let them retire! Come on, we've got a stop-loss program; let's use it on these guys. I've seen Zinni and that crowd on Wolf Blitzer. If you're strong enough to go on one of those pundit shows, you're strong enough to stand on a bank of computers and order men into battle. Come on."
  • "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."
  • "I give people the truth, unfiltered by rational argument. I call it the 'No Fact Zone'. Fox News, I hold a copyright on that term."
  • "I believe the government that governs best is the government that governs least. And by these standards, we have set up a fabulous government in Iraq."
  • "I know there are 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."
  • "Sir, pay no attention to the people who say the glass is half empty, because 32% means it's 2/3 empty. There's still some liquid in that glass is my point, but I wouldn't drink it. The last third is usually backwash."
  • "It's like boxing a glacier. Enjoy that metaphor, by the way, because your grandchildren will have no idea what a glacier is."
  • After denying that the administration was rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic, "this administration is not sinking, this administration is soaring! If anything, they are rearranging the deck chairs on the Hindenburg!"
  • "The greatest thing about this man is he's steady. You know where he stands. He believes the same thing Wednesday that he believed on Monday -- no matter what happened Tuesday."
  • "By the way, Mr. President, thank you for agreeing to be on my show. I was just as shocked as everyone here is, I promise you. How's Tuesday for you? I've got Frank Rich, but we can bump him. And I mean bump him. I know a guy. Say the word."
  • "And though I am a committed Christian, I believe everyone has the right to their own religion - be you Hindu, Jewish, or Muslim, I believe there are infinite paths to accepting Jesus Christ as your personal savior."
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Internet sensation

According to CNET's News.com site, Colbert became "one of the Internet's hottest acts" after video of his performance spread across the Internet.[7] Within three days of the event, clips of the speech had climbed to the #1, #2, and #3 spots atop YouTube's "Most Viewed" video list. The popular blog Crooks and Liars was the first place where the video became available, and although their downloadable file [8] only covers part of Colbert's speech, they drew over half a million hits in one day, their busiest day on record.

Google Current reported that, after Colbert's comic routine, one of the top gaining searches at Google was for "C-SPAN," the station that first broadcast video of Colbert's "tribute" to Bush. In the days following the roast, "C-SPAN" was searched for more than twice as much as "Jennifer Aniston". Google also saw a surge in searches for items such as "Colbert", "Stephen Colbert", "Colbert Bush", and "Colbert dinner".[9]

The trade journal Editor and Publisher was the first news outlet to report in detail on Colbert's performance.[10] After publishing the article, they reported that their web site drew "possibly its highest one-day traffic total ever."[11] Salon, which posted several articles on Colbert's performance, reported that they hit traffic heights surpassed only by their election and Abu Ghraib coverage.[12]

For a week afterward, the top search term at Technorati was either "Colbert" or "Stephen Colbert". All week, the Internet continued to buzz about the speech; 70,000 articles were posted about Colbert's roast of Bush on the following Thursday, the most of any topic.[13]

A website called Thank You Stephen Colbert, created by Salon writer Michael Scherer,[14] logged over 50,000 "Thank You's" within the first five days after the dinner.

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Media reaction

According to Dan Froomkin of the Washington Post, a majority of the mainstream media omitted Colbert's performance in their description of the event, choosing to focus upon an earlier bit where Bush was joined on-stage by a Bush impersonator.[15] Froomkin became antagonistic towards the press later in the week, when the media's silence was replaced with criticism of Colbert. Froomkin wrote, "But I think that message was just too much for the self-satisfied upper crust of the media elite to handle when Colbert threw it right in their faces on Saturday night."[16]

The trade journal Editor and Publisher was the first news outlet to report in detail on Colbert's performance, which it called a "blistering comedy 'tribute'" that "left George and Laura Bush unsmiling at its close" and "quite a few sitting near him looked a little uncomfortable at times, perhaps feeling the material was a little too biting — or too much speaking 'truthiness' to power". [17]

L.A. Times TV Critic Paul Brownfield compared the event to "a corporate date" for a comic, with "a stiffened group of business elites, in a ballroom. It can be a minefield, a room full of colleagues watching to see if the CEO deems it OK to laugh." He felt, "Colbert was a comedian in context but out of his element at the correspondent's dinner."[18]

Time magazine TV critic James Poniewozik disagreed and thought critics like Brownfield missed the point. "Colbert wasn't playing to the room, I suspect, but to the wide audience of people who would later watch on the Internet. If anything, he was playing against the room." Poniewozik called the pained, uncomfortable reaction of the attending audience to Colbert's jokes, "the money shots. They were the whole point."[19]

Jon Stewart, on the May 1, 2006, episode of The Daily Show, called Colbert's performance "balls-alicious" and stated that "We've never been prouder of him, but HOLY SHIT"[20][21] In response to criticism that Colbert had stepped out of line, Stewart remarked that "apparently he was under the impression that they'd hired him to do what he does every night on television."

Comedian Harry Shearer's response to Colbert's satirical performance was also positive. "That you can see that footage of Stephen everywhere has served to be sort of a wake-up call," said Shearer. "Wait a minute, we're still a country where it's OK to say these things about the president? Whew! That's a relief."[22]

Richard Cohen found Colbert’s jokes “lame and insulting”.[23] His article in The Washington Post called Colbert “rude” and a “bully”. He said that Colbert took “advantage of the other person's [Bush’s] sense of decorum or tradition or civility that keeps that other person from striking back or, worse, rising in a huff and leaving.”

According to Robert Parry in Colbert & the Courtier Press, "for Washington journalists, who realized their reactions at the dinner were being broadcast on C-SPAN, laughing along with Bush was a win-win -- they could look good with the White House and avoid any career-damaging attacks from the Right -- while laughing at Colbert’s jokes could have been a career lose-lose." Reactions such as Cohen's are "another sign of what's terribly wrong with the U.S. news media: With few exceptions, the Washington press corps has failed to hold Bush and his top advisers accountable..." Which is why "only the likes of Richard Cohen could see George W. Bush as the victim and Stephen Colbert as the bully."

The Fox News program Fox & Friends called Colbert's performance "over the line," and describing it as a "bomb." [24] Tucker Carlson also placed Colbert as his top pick for unfunniest moments of the week, saying that Colbert's "attempts at comedy" were pitiful. Democratic representative and minority whip Steny Hoyer also stated that he believed Colbert "crossed the line". [25] Chris Matthews on his MSNBC show 'Hardball' called the performance "bad."

Media Matters and Editor & Publisher responded to Cohen and other press critics who felt that Colbert went over the line.[26][27] They contrasted the critical reaction to Colbert to the praise that the US press had for a controversial routine that President Bush performed at a similar media dinner in 2004, where Bush was shown looking for WMD’s and joking, "Those weapons of mass destruction must be somewhere!" and "Nope, no weapons over there!"[28].

Joan Walsh was harshly critical of the mainstream media in her article at Salon. "The only thing worse than the mainstream media's ignoring Stephen Colbert's astonishing sendup of the Bush administration and its media courtiers Saturday night," she wrote, "is what happened when they started to pay attention to it." Because "Colbert refused to play his dutiful, toothless part in the White House correspondents dinner," Walsh felt the press turned on Colbert and "he [Colbert] had to be marginalized."[29]

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Allegations of a Blackout

Following the initial wave of coverage of the White House event, several sources criticized the mainstream American press for failing to mention Colbert's performance, despite his featured entertainer status. The New York Times[26], Reuters[27] , and the Chicago Tribune[28] all published articles on the dinner that did not mention Colbert's name. Videos on the web sites of CNN and Fox News also had clips of the Presidentital comic routine, but omitted footage of Colbert's satirical performance.[30]

Media Matters for America contrasted the "blackout" to the extensive coverage of Don Imus's controversial roasting of Bill Clinton in 1996[31]. In his Post column, Dan Froomkin further suggested that the media went from ignoring the incident to declaring Colbert's performance unfunny in response to allegations of a blackout because they were also targets of Colbert's comedic barbs.[32] Others argued that it was the politcal content of his satire, rather than the comedic value, that deterred press coverage. Columbia School of Journalism professor Todd Gitlin remarked on the alleged blackout of Colbert's performance, "It's too hot to handle. [Colbert] was scathing toward Bush and it was absolutely devastating. They [the mainstream media] don't know how to handle such a pointed and aggressive criticism."[33]

Four days after the event, the New York Times published an article on the blog reaction to Colbert's performance, acknowledging that some had "chided the so-called mainstream media, including The New York Times, which ignored Mr. Colbert's remarks while writing about the opening act".[34] The Times quoted several passages of Colbert's more substantial criticism of the president, and covered various reactions to the event, including from within the Bush administration, such as Mary Matalin labeling Colbert's performance "predictable, Bush-bashing kind of humor", and Scott McClellan saying "We'll let others be the entertainment critics... I know better than to insert myself into that one." Though Al Franken called the performance "admirable" in the article, the Times did not cite anyone who had positive things to say about his performance.

The New York Times also published a letter on Colbert's performance at the dinner in its May 3rd edition, and four more letters on Colbert's performance at the dinner in its May 4 edition — all of which were strongly supportive of Colbert, and some of which were critical of The Times for its unbalanced coverage by reporting only critical reactions. [35][36]

Attorney and author Glenn Greenwald compared the press's criticism of Colbert's performance to an admission by reporter Elisabeth Bumiller of the New York Times that the press "were very deferential... it's very intense, it's frightening to stand up there... asking the president of the United States a question when the country's about to go to war... no one wanted to get into an argument with the president at this very serious time." Greenwald concluded that:

...most national journalists were petrified of aggressively challenging the Commander-in-Chief during this 'time of war'... they know they failed miserably in their journalistic function. Despite that -- really, because of that -- they hate Stephen Colbert for doing what they were supposed to do but were so blatantly unwilling and afraid to do, and so they have to smear his act of courage by tossing up their noses and characterizing it as some very offensive breach of etiquette, even depicting his criticism of the President as being cowardly.

Contrasting Colbert's criticisms voiced directly to the President, with Bumiller's fear-driven posture of being 'very deferential' to the President because it's so very 'frightening' to question the Leader, is there really any doubt as to which approach is more consistent with what the Founders intended when they guaranteed a free press in order to ensure an adversarial watchdog over the Government?

— Glen Greenwald

posted by Mike at 8:32 AM

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