NC Review (positive) of Colbert at dinner

[SaveAmerica]

This is an interesting article in today's Charlotte Observer; he has no problem suggesting the main course was Bush en flambe. (Colbert is quoted more than Bush, more than the 3 or 4 paragraphs I'm allowed to re-print here, also an interesting list of the Carolinas connections to DC).

http://www.charlotte.com/mld/observer/news/local/14470145.htm

At press dinner, everyone a comic

President, impersonator share stage; Carolinas well represented WASHINGTON -- President Bush and Dubya impersonator Steve Bridges got the loudest laughs at the 92nd annual Washington Correspondents Dinner Saturday night. Standing side by side behind matching presidential seals, they joked about ... you name it: Bush's malapropisms, first lady Laura Bush's sex appeal, even Vice President Dick Cheney's hunting mishap.
...
Start with Charleston-bred Stephen Colbert, the mock-conservative host of "The Colbert Report" (pronounced Coal-bear Re-pour) on Comedy Central.

As the evening's official entertainment, he drew blood with his satiric jabs at Bush, the White House press corps and Fox News -- home of Sean Hannity and Bill O'Reilly, the right-leaning pundits Colbert apes on his weeknight show.

The fake-news anchor even invoked a Carolinas university in one of his jokes.
...
More, McCain and BJU in the link

[Lisa]

1. and Bush had to portray himself as a hypocrite ...

... just to get people to laugh!

Apparently he spent months of effort (plus flying a professional comedian and a makeup artist across the country), just to do the "comedy bit" he'd planned ... which may have revealed more than he intended, since it proclaimed the "everyday guy" to be two-faced -- literally.



http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/01/washington/01letter.html?ex=1146628800&en=09212a2c6079c359&ei=5087%0A

"Mr. Bush, from the stage in the cavelike Washington Hilton ballroom: "As you know, I always look forward to these dinners."

Mr. Bridges, standing aside the president at an identical lectern: "It's just a bunch of media types, Hollywood liberals, Democrats like Joe Biden there. How come I can't have dinner with the 36 percent of the people who like me?""

[SaveAmerica]

2. Now we know why they were so P.O.'d at Colbert and why Colbert

was right on target; he totally smacked down their attempts to help his approval ratings and upped the ante by a brazillian dollars. So we know Bush doesn't like to be seen in anything but a positive light, it had to have been painful to take part in his stupid skit to mock himself and then Colbert turns around and dumps a bucket of the rotten stinking fish that is Bush's administration right on top of his head.

"With his approval ratings in the mid-30's and a White House beset by troubles, there is some evidence that Mr. Bush worked harder on his performance this year than in the past. At the very least, he started focusing on his stand-up as long ago as January, when he asked Dan Bartlett, the White House counselor, to contact Mr. Bridges and Landon Parvin, a longtime speechwriter."

[Lisa]

3. what else must have been painful -- hearing people laugh

Bush is so sensitive that any positive signs from the audience, no matter how quiet, during Stephen Colbert's speech would have been like jabs to the heart. Having to sit there while Valerie Plame, Joe Wilson, and Helen Thomas were beaming would have been uncomfortable enough. But enduring nervous giggles and suppressed tittering from people whom Bush thought he'd co-opted or frightened into submission -- let alone some of his supposed supporters -- would have given him a restless night, I'm sure!

There is a wonderful anecdote about a Canadian feminist who did a ruthlessly-accurate impression of a political foe ... he secretly attended one of her performances incognito, and was enraged to see his cronies there, laughing and applauding her send-up of him. It stayed with him to the end of his days!