2006-05-05
Why So Defensive?
I continue to mull why the mainstream press -- and more specifically, the elites within it -- reacted so negatively to satirist Stephen Colbert's performance at Saturday's White House Correspondents' Association dinner.
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6 comments:
Don't H8 Stepehn Colbert
I don't understand any anger. I was no ruder than Don Imus' roast of Clinton about Monica Lewinski. Colbert's humor assumes that the audience subscribes to liberal concepts, so I can understand why people with an opposing view didn't laugh at "history has a liberal bias."
Stewart angered the Oscar crowd by roasting them. But then, you'd only think those jokes were funny if you agree with the comedy's persective, which is that the holliwood crowd constitutes empty-headed, self-satisfied nitwits who produce almost-always awful "product", etc.; and I do!
Paul, I don't think you're getting his "reality has a liberal bias" barb. It's a sendup of the Fox News, Sixstring, etc. idea that the "mainstream media has a liberal bias." I've read the transcript, and the barbs are pretty funny. Given Bush's open disdain for reading, it's pretty funny, is it not, when Colbert says:
"We're not so different, he [GWB] and I. We get it. We're not brainiacs on the nerd patrol. We're not members of the factinista. We go straight from the gut, right sir? That's where the truth lies, right down here in the gut. Do you know you have more nerve endings in your gut than you have in your head? You can look it up. I know some of you are going to say "I did look it up, and that's not true." That's 'cause you looked it up in a book."
Tom: I understand his joke about liberal bias in reality, and its basis in the claim by people like me that the corporate media has a strong leftist bias. I also understand comedy, and how it relies on truth. Colbert's truth is that reality is biased towards the left; the people who agree with that view will find his joke funny. The rest of us will not.
The controversy, as I understand it, is that Colbert was especially harsh in his humor on the guest of honor. Don Imus got the same rap when he roasted Clinton soon after the Monica Lewinski controversy. People who believe that Clinton was a philanderer would have found Imus' jokes funny, though many thought he was also much to harsh, with Clinton and Hillary sitting a few chairs away, facing the audience on the stage.
Bush is the president and a public figure. He should be subjected to public ridicule just like Tom Cruise, Isaac Hayes and the creators of South Park are subjected to public ridicule.
Bush is the only president to set up "free speech zones" to protect him from hearing/seeing his detractors. This is an outrage! The entire country is a free speech zone, especially when we are discussing public policy.
I am not familiar with Imus' criticism of Clinton, but his stupidity during the Lewinsky scandal warrants such criticism. And if he is willing too sit a few feet away from a comedian, he should prepare himself to be roasted, whether his supporters felt the jokes were funny or not.
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