Colbert

I finally got around to watching Stephen Colbert's performance at the White House Correspondents' Association dinner (if you haven't seen it yet, you can watch it here). It was great -- he didn't go far enough, in my opinion, but it was a good start -- and it apparently infuriated Bush to no end.

It certainly infuriated Bush's apologists, like Richard Cohen, who had this to say:

Colbert was not just a failure as a comedian but rude. Rude is not the same as brash. It is not the same as brassy. It is not the same as gutsy or thinking outside the box. Rudeness means taking advantage of the other person's sense of decorum or tradition or civility that keeps that other person from striking back or, worse, rising in a huff and leaving. The other night, that person was George W. Bush.

Colbert made jokes about Bush's approval rating, which hovers in the middle 30s. He made jokes about Bush's intelligence, mockingly comparing it to his own. "We're not some brainiacs on nerd patrol," he said. Boy, that's funny.

Colbert took a swipe at Bush's Iraq policy, at domestic eavesdropping, and he took a shot at the news corps for purportedly being nothing more than stenographers recording what the Bush White House said. He referred to the recent staff changes at the White House, chiding the media for supposedly repeating the cliche "rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic" when he would have put it differently: "This administration is not sinking. This administration is soaring. If anything, they are rearranging the deck chairs on the Hindenburg." A mixed metaphor, and lame as can be.

Why are you wasting my time with Colbert, I hear you ask. Because he is representative of what too often passes for political courage, not to mention wit, in this country. His defenders -- and they are all over the blogosphere -- will tell you he spoke truth to power. This is a tired phrase, as we all know, but when it was fresh and meaningful it suggested repercussions, consequences -- maybe even death in some countries. When you spoke truth to power you took the distinct chance that power would smite you, toss you into a dungeon or -- if you're at work -- take away your office.

But in this country, anyone can insult the president of the United States. Colbert just did it, and he will not suffer any consequence at all. He knew that going in. He also knew that Bush would have to sit there and pretend to laugh at Colbert's lame and insulting jokes. Bush himself plays off his reputation as a dunce and his penchant for mangling English. Self-mockery can be funny. Mockery that is insulting is not. The sort of stuff that would get you punched in a bar can be said on a dais with impunity. This is why Colbert was more than rude. He was a bully.

As I was reading the above-quoted shit from Cohen's column -- and let me just take the time now to state the obvious and call Richard Cohen a f#@king idiot -- I couldn't help but think about why Bush is the worst president in American history, and it has to do with the fact that he is so isolated from the real world that he doesn't even read newspapers -- geesus, he's proud of the fact that he doesn't read the papers -- and he rarely if ever speaks in front of an audience that isn't full of hand-picked Bush lovers.

Indeed, Colbert may have been the first person in five years who has been able to speak to Bush in this fashion. Cohen apparently has a problem with that. My problem is that it didn't happen sooner.

And by the way, Richard -- Colbert's Hindenburg joke kicked ass. You're just too stupid to realize it.

But my favorite part of Cohen's article is this part: "But in this country, anyone can insult the president of the United States. Colbert just did it, and he will not suffer any consequence at all." Maybe Colbert won't suffer any consequences -- after all, Bush is incredibly unpopular these days -- but there is a long list of folks out there who have suffered consequences, not because they insulted Bush, but because they had the gall to merely speak the truth. Don't forget that members of the current administration actually committed treason by outing a CIA operative merely to retaliate against that agent's husband for speaking the truth about Iraq.

And speaking of truth (or lack thereof), Rumsfeld got torn to pieces today by a former CIA employee during a speech in Georgia:

QUESTION: So I would like to ask you to be up front with the American people, why did you lie to get us into a war that was not necessary, that has caused these kinds of casualties? Why?

RUMSFELD: Well, first of all, I haven’t lied. I did not lie then. Colin Powell didn’t lie. He spent weeks and weeks with the Central Intelligence Agency people and prepared a presentation that I know he believed was accurate, and he presented that to the United Nations. the president spent weeks and weeks with the central intelligence people and he went to the american people and made a presentation. i’m not in the intelligence business. they gave the world their honest opinion. it appears that there were not weapons of mass destruction there.

QUESTION: You said you knew where they were.

RUMSFELD: I did not. I said I knew where suspect sites were and –

QUESTION: You said you knew where they were Tikrit, Baghdad, northeast, south, west of there. Those are your words.

RUMSFELD: My words — my words were that — no, no, wait a minute, wait a minute. Let him stay one second. Just a second.

QUESTION: This is America.

RUMSFELD: You’re getting plenty of play, sir.

QUESTION: I’d just like an honest answer.

RUMSFELD: I’m giving it to you.

QUESTION: Well we’re talking about lies and your allegation there was bulletproof evidence of ties between al Qaeda and Iraq.

RUMSFELD: Zarqawi was in Baghdad during the prewar period. That is a fact.

QUESTION: Zarqawi? He was in the north of Iraq in a place where Saddam Hussein had no rule. That’s also…

RUMSFELD: He was also in Baghdad.

QUESTION: Yes, when he needed to go to the hospital.

Come on, these people aren’t idiots. They know the story.

We do indeed. And by the way, those were Rumsfeld's exact words:

STEPHANOPOULOS: And is it curious to you that given how much control U.S. and coalition forces now have in the country, they haven’t found any weapons of mass destruction?

SEC. RUMSFELD: …We know where they are. They’re in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat.

I can certainly understand why there are a lot of former CIA employees out there who are hopping mad at the Bush Regime. It's one thing to have your hard work ignored, but BushCo didn't merely ignore the CIA -- BushCo ignore the CIA and then blamed it for the Iraq Fiasco. I think we'll be seeing a lot more of this in the future.