Report: Colbert
(L-R) Uncomfortable silence; unflinching courage
Regarding Saturday night's White House Correspondent's Dinner and Stephen Colbert's monologue.
It’s the fact that Bush is sitting right there, about 10 feet away. The proximity gave the performance enormous power. So many are appalled by the man. Angry at the man. But to tell him off to his face, without flinching, without wavering, blowing only one line, but backing up to get it right, because this part isn’t throwaway, it’s throw it in your face. Mr. President, sir. “Pay no attention to the people that say the glass is half full. 32% means the glass -- it's important to set up your jokes properly, sir. Sir, pay no attention to the people who say the glass is half empty, because 32% means it's 2/3 empty.”
Got that, sir? At long last, do you get it?
It’s the proximity of the attack, and it’s the fact that the truth of what Colbert said, the truth that the mainstream, everyday, workaday world ignores, is an attack, an affront to the Neocons. Or, as Colbert said, reality has a well-known liberal bias.
Due to the proximity of the boy emperor, it was the equivalent of a pie in the face. Here’s someone who has been insulated from the effect of his actions his entire life, until finally a lowly cable-circuit comedian breaks through and creams him, leaves him dripping, embarrassed, and, in the best case scenario, human. In this case, not so much.
It was shocking because it happened in a normally safe cultural context – an official function, televised, even if only on C-SPAN.
It was powerful because the target was more than one buffoon, it was the assembled gatekeepers of publicly disseminated information, the press, the enablers of the atrocity that is the Bush Administration. The monologue indicted the entire room for collusion in government via “powerfully staged photo-ops.”
The truth hurts. And Colbert definitely drew blood. The pie analogy is much too soft, actually. The Rocky analogy Colbert used was about right. But it wasn’t so much Colbert delivering the blows, as it was his pointing out that the Bush Administration has created a bloody mess, and is itself a horrifying sight. The performance said, "Allow me to draw back the curtain, people, because you need to see this."
And now we have Neil Young’s new album, Living with War, with the let’s-not-mince-words call to impeach the president (although that song, Let’s Impeach the President, features a children’s sing-song melody that is so inappropriate to my ears that it creeps me out somehow).
Over the past three or four years I’ve wondered why we haven’t seen much cultural response to our abysmal government. Shocked into silence after 9/11. Afraid to criticize. Whatever. Out here on the Web, we've been laboring, pushing, pulling, trying to make it happen. Amusing ourselves if nothing else. Now, in the culture at large, it seems it’s finally starting to happen. Thank you, Stephen Colbert.
(L-R) Uncomfortable silence; unflinching courage
Regarding Saturday night's White House Correspondent's Dinner and Stephen Colbert's monologue.
It’s the fact that Bush is sitting right there, about 10 feet away. The proximity gave the performance enormous power. So many are appalled by the man. Angry at the man. But to tell him off to his face, without flinching, without wavering, blowing only one line, but backing up to get it right, because this part isn’t throwaway, it’s throw it in your face. Mr. President, sir. “Pay no attention to the people that say the glass is half full. 32% means the glass -- it's important to set up your jokes properly, sir. Sir, pay no attention to the people who say the glass is half empty, because 32% means it's 2/3 empty.”
Got that, sir? At long last, do you get it?
It’s the proximity of the attack, and it’s the fact that the truth of what Colbert said, the truth that the mainstream, everyday, workaday world ignores, is an attack, an affront to the Neocons. Or, as Colbert said, reality has a well-known liberal bias.
Due to the proximity of the boy emperor, it was the equivalent of a pie in the face. Here’s someone who has been insulated from the effect of his actions his entire life, until finally a lowly cable-circuit comedian breaks through and creams him, leaves him dripping, embarrassed, and, in the best case scenario, human. In this case, not so much.
It was shocking because it happened in a normally safe cultural context – an official function, televised, even if only on C-SPAN.
It was powerful because the target was more than one buffoon, it was the assembled gatekeepers of publicly disseminated information, the press, the enablers of the atrocity that is the Bush Administration. The monologue indicted the entire room for collusion in government via “powerfully staged photo-ops.”
The truth hurts. And Colbert definitely drew blood. The pie analogy is much too soft, actually. The Rocky analogy Colbert used was about right. But it wasn’t so much Colbert delivering the blows, as it was his pointing out that the Bush Administration has created a bloody mess, and is itself a horrifying sight. The performance said, "Allow me to draw back the curtain, people, because you need to see this."
And now we have Neil Young’s new album, Living with War, with the let’s-not-mince-words call to impeach the president (although that song, Let’s Impeach the President, features a children’s sing-song melody that is so inappropriate to my ears that it creeps me out somehow).
Over the past three or four years I’ve wondered why we haven’t seen much cultural response to our abysmal government. Shocked into silence after 9/11. Afraid to criticize. Whatever. Out here on the Web, we've been laboring, pushing, pulling, trying to make it happen. Amusing ourselves if nothing else. Now, in the culture at large, it seems it’s finally starting to happen. Thank you, Stephen Colbert.
