Why Mr. Colbert, I Do Believe You Hit A Nerve.

"Hi, I'm Stephen Colbert. I'd love to show you my balls tonight."

Despite the media's near-blackout of mentions of the Stephen Colbert keynote in their coverage of the Correspondents Dinner, right-wing outrage at his acerbic comedy routine has yet to fade. I mentioned some of the early comments in my writeup of the event on Sunday morning. The general consensus on the right is that he 'bombed' or was 'rude' to the President. Ignore that the reaction (outside the press corp) to the routine was extremely positive and that videos of it are spreading virally around the web (it's an instant classic, ala when Jon Stewart took down 'Crossfire')... no, Colbert supposedly disrespected the President and was therefore awful. They are not likely to forgive Mr. Colbert for daring to insult his majesty on his special night. In the world of the cultists, "not only disrespect towards the President, but also mere criticism of him [is] somehow inappropriate, even unpatriotic", as Glenn Greenwald notes.

I knew this backlash was real when I saw this on the Drudge Report-

FLASH: Colbert averaging just over one million viewers a night (1,077,000], year to date on COMEDY CENTRAL, which is less than FOXNEWS's 6-11pm line-up...

These news "flashes" are a very common tactic on Drudge's site (ie. FLASH: [Insert miscellaneous project of liberal media figure] is STRUGGLING, according to incredibly faulty data I have gathered. Liberalism is therefore NOW OVER). You would think he'd have learned his lesson after he tried to paint the new book 'Crashing The Gate' as a flop and promptly was schooled by numerous bloggers. Regarding the Colbert 'flash', there are several things that are wrong with it. First, he mentions Fox's 6-11 slot. Colbert is on at 11:30. Second, is he really comparing Fox News to Comedy Central? The latter is supposed to be comedy, but the former makes me chuckle too (Hannity = comedy gold). That is actually a fantastic rating for the network and time slot (and for a relatively new program). Colbert's show is a smash. Then, of course, there is the inherent ridiculousness of the Drudges reacting to a comedy routine with the same "We gotta attack!!" attitude they would have if Howard Dean called the President a criminal.

The press corp also hated it, if only because Colbert ripped into their timidity as well.

To quote Han Solo, "I must've hit it pretty close to the mark to get her all riled up like that, huh kid?"

Jon Stewart defended Colbert on Monday night's program and praised the performance, calling it "ballsilicious". He also hit the nail on the head by sarcastically noting "Apparently [Stephen] was under the impression that they'd hired him to do what he does every night on television". Well that just proves that no one in the White House had ever seen the show before inviting him.

It wasn't just his supporters who were mad... The President himself was ready to pop!-

"Colbert crossed the line," said one top Bush aide, who rushed out of the hotel as soon as Colbert finished. Another said that the president was visibly angered by the sharp lines that kept coming.

"I've been there before, and I can see that he is [angry]," said a former top aide. "He's got that look that he's ready to blow."

BUSH SMASH!

Yes, our Commander-In-Chief, our big tough WAR PRESIDENT, couldn't handle a comedian using irony to burst the bubble that has surrounded him for the past five years. We should thank our lucky stars. If Stephen had gone for a few minutes more, the President would've flipped out and ordered a nuclear strike on Iran that very night.

Why oh why couldn't Mr. Colbert do something nice like the President and his impersonator doing their "ain't it funny how dumb I am?" routine? Or, for something even funnier, why not flash back to the 2004 Dinner in which President Bush aired a taped skit of himself desperately searching all the over the White House for nonexistent weapons of mass destruction. The audience certainly enjoyed that (we're talking bellowing laughter). Editor & Publisher's Greg Mitchell refreshes our memory-

Where was the outrage when President Bush made fun of not finding those pesky WMDs at a very similar media dinner—in the same ballroom--two years ago? It represents a shameful episode for the American media, and presidency, yet is rarely mentioned today...

...According to the transcript this was greeted with “laughter and applause” from the audience...

...The reporters covering the gala were apparently as swept away with laughter as the guests. One of the few attendees to criticize the president's gag, David Corn of The Nation, said he heard not a single complaint from his colleagues at the after-party. Corn wondered if they would have laughed if President Reagan, following the truck bombing of our Marines barracks in Beirut, which killed 241, had said at a similar dinner: “Guess we forgot to put in a stop light.”

I know there's nothing more hilarious to me than a deadly war based on false intelligence.

You can see a remixed video of that skit- here. Joe Lieberman loved it.

Digby also notes that the press loved Don Imus' biting (and vulgar) address in 1996.

Of course, as I noted above, the reaction among most people (pretty much everyone outside of Bush's core base and outside the DC press corp) to Colbert's routine was positive. He was funny, he was powerful, he spoke truthiness to power. But mostly, he had balls. Big brass balls. Like Stewart's deconstruction of 'Crossfire', I think people will be buzzing about this for quite some time. Never before in the Bush presidency have we seen such a frank (and public) satirical indictment of the state of our union. As an article on Salon noted, "His imitation of the quintessential GOP talking head -- Bill O'Reilly meets Scott McClellan -- uncovered the inner workings of the ever-cheapening discourse that passes for political debate. He reversed and flattened the meaning of the words he spoke... What Colbert did was expose the whole official, patriotic, right-wing, press-bashing discourse as a sham, as more 'truthiness' than truth."

The DC world exists in its own reality. Colbert brought them back to ours.

That's why we love him.

[PS- I've been reading Eric Boehlert's new book 'Lapdogs'. Highest recommendations.]