Conservative Howls Over Colbert Humor: Truth Hurts
Stephen Colbert is a satirical comedian with a political bent. He's an alumnus of the hallowed Second City troupe, which has nurtured hundreds of top American comedians, including many of Saturday Night Live's top names (John Belushi, Gilda Radner, Mike Myers, Chris Farley, and more recently, Tina Fey, Rachel Dratch and Horatio Sanz). And, of course, Colbert is a protege of Jon Stewart of The Daily Show.
Colbert's entertainment was identical to his schtick on The Colbert Report, which follows Jon Stewart's The Daily Show four week nights. Uhhh....what did dinner planners expect when they invited Colbert?
Here are my thoughts on his performance: it was witty and laugh-out-loud hysterical and I loved it. But I enjoy The Colbert Report, so I'm already a fan. His send-up of Fox News' various celebrity "news" anchors is drop-dead brilliant satire. Colbert's tongue-in-cheek humor is the perfect foil to Jon Stewart's direct, meat-cleaver approach to comedic political comment.
Let's be honest: Conservative pundits are still howling over Colbert's performance at the 2006 White House Correspondents' Association Dinner because Stephen Colbert cut too close to the truth, and they know it, and it hurts. The unvarnished truth about the Bush tenure in the White House hurts badly, especially when you spend your days in denial of reality.
(Even I don't buy the only other remotely plausible explanation as to why Stephen Colbert was invited as the headline speaker: that someone actually thought that Stephen Colbert IS a conservative pundit, and they didn't "get" the whole deadpan joke. No one could be that far removed from reality......could they?)
For your info and amusement, DailyKos blogger Frederick has a fairly good transcript of Colbert's controversial performance on April 30, 2006.
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Related Article - Profile of Jon Stewart, Political Comedian
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Comments
A con’s idea of humor is seeing dead Iraqi children while Rush Limbaugh forces his Guatamalan houskeeper to crack another script for OxyContin.
Regarding this:
(Even I don’t buy the only other remotely plausible explanation as to why Stephen Colbert was invited as the headline speaker: that someone actually thought that Stephen Colbert IS a conservative pundit, and they didn’t “get” the whole deadpan joke. No one could be that far removed from reality……could they?)
This is from a transcript of Keith Olberman’s Countdown yesterday:
Number three, Stephen Colbert. When I was on his show, I told him, You‘re too good. Some conservatives will not realize you‘re destroying them. Like Tom DeLay, it turns out. The DeLay Defense Fund has e-mailed a critique of a new anti-DeLay documentary. It credits Colbert‘s interview with the filmmaker as “cracking the story,” with such questions as, Who hates America more, you or Michael Moore?