So, Aly
I've been obsessed with the idea that Stephen Colbert may have started a movement on Saturday night. That even Fox is treading carefully around his merciless ironic performance of American political discourse, lest they tip off the unsuspecting public that it IS possible to get 8 feet away from the president and deliver a 20 minute verbal spitball of truth right between the eyes, and to do it live, on C-Span, should be a sign of how potentially powerful this event is--for its potential to be a turning point in history. We can congratulate ourselves that, the first amendment still intact, any one of us has the right to do this, and that someone exercised that right.
But there's more to mourn than to celebrate. The first amendment has been in force for over 200 years; it's been suspended by the corporate media when it suits its purposes, but more recently since the Bush-Gore campaign of 2000. So when on April 29, 2006, with the illegitimate, 2-time-election-stealing President sitting in a room full of journalists, the only person who was willing and able to speak truth to power was the jester, this democracy was removed from life support, and died with the faint, barely polite applause of the establishment who'd just gotten their asses kicked.
It's not that he was hilarious, because he wasn't, and I find his show unwatchable for the same reasons I hated Crossfire and any of the drek on Fox. But the legions of people left, right, and center, who are lining up for the opportunity to (quietly) tell us that he wasn't funny miss the point entirely. He wasn't there to entertain. He was there to tell the President, I believe on behalf of all of us whose career paths and abilities have taken us to different places, that he is a complete moron, that precious few people in the country are fooled any more, that the reality they are living is completely at odds with what he and his Administration are saying, and that the only way he and his cronies can hold on to power will be to continue to manipulate democratic institutions and traditions to the most sinister of ends. And there's nothing fucking funny about that.
The journalistic establishment (which I did not realize had been acronymized to MSM, I guess for mainstream media, though I think that IBCF, for Inside the Beltway Cluster Fuckers, is more appropriate) has a choice now. They can use Colbert's slap in the face to wake themselves up as a profession--kind of like Anderson Cooper used Katrina to wake himself up to the fact that he is a journalist who can cover real news, before CNN appealed to his ambition and gave him his own show where he wouldn't ask any more uncomfortable questions to anyone more powerful than a high school principal. Or they can ignore his and our judgment (er, those of us who have not yet surrendered this faculty, anyhow) on their performance since the 2000 election.
By mocking the impotence of modern journalism-cum-entertainment, Colbert and, to a lesser extent Jon Stewart, have harnessed the power of entertainment-cum-journalism and aimed it squarely at the pretensions of those who abuse power and those who keep them there by failing to expose it. But this is the death rattle of the republic. Comedy Central is not
really sending correspondents to Iraq, don't
really have a White House correspondent, and don't
really have a duty to bring us unspun news. If this does not serve to remind the MSM/IBCF crowd of what journalism can and should be, then Colbert, Stewart, and Comedy Central's use of the first amendment will only be to anesthetize those of us who exist outside of the Beltway and its incestuous circle jerks of power as the democracy we love is cravenly dismantled. Not to the point where it doesn't exist, but where it is small enough to be dragged onto Fox and clubbed to death by Hannity and whatshisname.
Colbert took a mere 20 minutes heaping praise upon President's new clothes, in a way that journalists have been unable or unwilling to do for six years, making everyone in the room acutely aware of their own nakedness without ever once having uttered the word. The MSM got it, I think, though I wish I could have seen who was clapping for Colbert and who was not. Laura Bush certainly got it. She was the most honest person in that room Saturday night. She wouldn't shake Colbert's hand. Her husband may or may not be smart enough to get it, but she is, and she did. One is always tempted to feel a little sorry for her, because his contempt for "books," and those who write most of them, and much of what is said in them has to be humiliating. Sitting through that dinner, watching a deadpan, ad-hominem satire not just of her husband's policies, but of her husband, had to have been humiliating. But hers is a hell of her own making. And ours is a hell of his.
-Misha
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Yes, Misha.
I too had that sense watching Colbert, that what we were witnessing was the end. Of what though, I am not certain. I tend to get overly excited about spectacles (you may recall the night I watched Jesse Jackson's Keep Hope Alive keynote address at the '88 convention, granted I was only 17), and I am not convinced that this wasn't just one of those grand events that lets us all feel good and justified for a few seconds before its anesthitizing effects take over completely. Kind of like when Jon Stewart went on Tucker Carlson's show and made him uncomfortable. It was exciting for about a day and then, poof, Tucker Carlson is still on the air, doing what he does, and W. won the election.
I think what I liked most about Colbert's speech was that it was entirely not funny. Some members of the audience laughed ocassionally (actually did you notice Joe Wilson laugh when Colbert made the crack about him being the most famous husband in Washington), but it was interesting that Colbert never missed a beat. To me, it seemed like he expected no one was going to laugh, he was unphased, and just kept rolling it out. He was clearly not after comedy.
Still, Colbert had some fabulous moments, like offering to have Frank Rich "taken care of." It occured to me in that moment that W. probably doesn't even know who Frank Rich is. Our President, as you implied, is one of the most intellectually uncurious people. My sense is that he see the NY Times in the same light as the majority of New Yorkers: "That big old thing, it weighs about 5 lbs, has all those sections, tiny headlines, really long articles and just not enough pictures!" For me though, the Helen Thomas as the stalker journalist bit was most fabulous. Having been black listed by the White House for asking tough questions, not to mention referred to as an "Old Arab" by White House pitt bull, Ann Coulter, Thomas seemed to delight in being part of Colbert's rant.
But yes, the finger he was pointing seemed to aim more squarely at the press than the politicians. The President and his men, are, after all, politicians, we expect their lies unfortunately. But we don't expect, or at least shouldn't expect the press to eat them up like pablum. I guess Helen Thomas' treatment sent them all a message, don't ask follow ups. The most tense moment to me was when Colbert told the press that their job was to simply write down what ever the White House Press Secretary had to say. A deafening silence followed.
But still will this make a difference. In the midst of the tide turning against W., I stop and wonder: "Is this really a moment for celebration?" The majority now seems to accept that he is an incompetent, that his administration lied and their lies have gotten many killed. But if it took the tragedy of the wasted lives of Iraq to wake people up to that, there is no cause for celebration. Call them lapdogs, and they certainlly can be, but the MSM/IBCF still managed to generate some amount of doubt as to the credibility of W's information before Invading Iraq. There were objections to the Patriot Act within Congress and without almost immediately. There was Press coverage of the Secret Foreign Intelligence Surveilance Courts immediately following 9-11. I guess I just want to say that while we are pointing our fingers at the IBCF, we recognize the weakness of human beings and the deep fearful need to be told that there is Evil in the world and well, we might have to break the rules to go after them.
I'll blame the press, don't get me wrong, but I think that death rattle of the Republic, is the sound of knees knocking as people wake up to the fact that the fear they have had since 9-11, that W. might just be an incompetent liar and really can't do anything to make them safer, is turning out to be true. As the emporer and all of the press corps have their nudity revealed, I think many in the nation are starting to realize they feel a little chilly themselves. 
-aly
