Why didn't they laugh?

[TahitiNut]

As usual, dozens of thread and hundreds of posts ... and we shoot right past the obvious. Sprinkled among the plethora of typical 'me, too' posts that allow us to wallow in the comfortable illusion (sometimes traumatically punctured in threads about immigration and feminism) of like-mindedness we see the oft-observed critique of the White House Correspondent's Dinner attendees as humorless and uncomfortable.

Indeed, the workaday stenographers of our corporate media has breathlessly weighed in on the pulp and vacuum of the ether and dismissed Colbert's performance, infusing that judgment with the legitimacy of a jury verdict - where the jury was the very same Stenographer's Club that Colbert was lampooning ... or harpooning?

C-czar Disgustsus, the Naked Emperor, was not the target of Colbert's irony, no matter how much that's claimed. Colbert, it must be again pointed out, parodied every unclothed imperial courtier in the room. The Emperor's nakedness is but the raison d'etre for their daily parade of mottled and pock-marked skin in front of a public deludedly applauding the echo of faux erudition and designer fashion.

Assembled in that audience were the least self-effacing people of this nation - people who, even in (purportedly) reporting hundreds or thousands of deaths and the suffering of millions, exploit that death and suffering to aggrandize themselves.

There is no more humorless creature on the planet than those who regard their own visages and by-lines as the ends served by the means of human misery and corruption, without which their 15 minutes of daily fame evaporates into nothing more than the odor of flatulence.

You see, they were the targets, not the audience. :evilgrin:



On edit: I cautiously commend Joe Gandelman's blog-screed regarding the night-at-the-power-trough and Colbert's performance at http://www.themoderatevoice.com/posts/1146380087.shtml It's a treatment that may stimulate some productive head-scratching, imho.

[Canuckistanian]

1. Bravo! Well said.

"Imperial Courtier" is the best description yet of the lapdog press in America.

We'll have to see what happens in the next week or so, but this will reverberate for months.

[Nitrogenica]

2. What those in that room have become is NOT FUNNY!

And those in that know it, even the NeoCons deep down know how they have gained political power through con men like Rove and his ilk conning the American people. Colbert pointed out their flaws and lack of actions and flaunted it in their faces. It was a thing of beauty to see for me, because the press corps in Washington is literally starved of truth, and to see them take the truth from both barrels was sweet.

[Sydnie]

3. I just expressed the same sentiment in another thread

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=364&topic_id=1065754&mesg_id=1065838

They had a political "Dorian Gray" moment ... what they do with the horror that splashed across their face ... only time will tell.

[TahitiNut]

6. Yes. They were witnessing their own naked reflections.

Irony, as a comedic device, is based in shared assumptions. It's only with a KSOTO that we know the 'assumption' is Chimp-centered - something that's clear in the heart-of-hearts of even the marginally sane people in that room. But these are people - mere organ-grinders' monkeys - who have all but abandoned any semblance of intellectual integrity as they exploit the very abomination sitting at the head table for their own advancement and the untold billions in profits of their corporate masters.

If they laughed at all, it was merely a vestigial gag reflex in swallowing the pork sword of their own presstitute priapism.

[knowbody0]

4. i saw shame in their faces

they squirmed at their own reflections

[TahitiNut]

8. Ubetcha.

:thumbsup: That was Colbert's courage - not in facing the mindless Chimperor, but in facing the potential savagery of the corrupt imperial courtiers potentially denied their faux fig leaves, if for even a few moments.

[Lin]

5. yep-to see dimson for what he is they must see themselves far too

clearly, therefore - never _truly_ happen, or at least, never will it be commonly & OPENLY discussed. I laughed alot last night, but I won't truly enjoy until the lapdog media ARE NO LONGER the barometer of public opinion....can it happen? when? wasn't their foul display of impotence during the run-up to Iraq enough to discredit them?

Sorry for rant- I'm SO SICK & tired of BEING sick and tired!

[TahitiNut]

17. One of my more difficult lessons in life has been ...

"You cannot see something in another without seeing it in yourself. That can be 'good news' or 'bad news' - it's your choice. What do you see?"

:evilgrin:

[meowfire]

62. Incredible quote

Thank you. I am saving that. I had never thought about that.

[TahitiNut]

64. You're certainly welcome. I appreciate folks introspective enough ...

... that such an idea finds resonance. It was sure a wake-up call for me. One of many. (I'm a slow learner, sometimes.)

[BrklynLiberal]

7. It was an "Emperor's New Clothes" moment

Colbert was the little kid shouting, "BUT THE EMPEROR IS NAKED!"
Everyone sitting there had to admit to themselves that they had been lying to themselves and to everyone else around them as well.

[TahitiNut]

10. No. It was a "Media's New Clothes" moment.

It's the White House Press who've shed their clothing in exploiting the mythology - getting a "piece of the action" - riding the imaginary coat-tails of a perverted regime.

Colbert made them look at their own nakedness - and they didn't like what they saw! (Who can blame them?)

[BrklynLiberal]

13. True. I just posted that in another thread.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=364&topic_id=1065916&mesg_id=1066071

[KittyWampus]

9. WTF are you talking about? THEY LAUGHED. It wasn't miked

but you could still hear them laughing in the background.

This is the epitome of revisionist bullshit history. And what is really bizarre is THE VIDEO IS FRESH. Anyone can click on a link and watch and listen and HEAR THEM LAUGHING.

There were points where people didn't respond, and at those same points I didn't either... as the balloon over my head said "oh man, he didn't just say that?!"

[TahitiNut]

11. Some did. Joe Wilson, for sure. Most didn't.

Hell, I laugh uncomfortably when I look in the mirror while naked, too. :shrug:

[emulatorloo]

16. Scalia laughed, the "non retired" general laughed

some of the press laughed, some had OMG did he really say that shit wow! faces. Fox news didn't laugh. Others did.

[PegDAC]

65. "Joe Wilson's wife"

laughed, too!

[ecstatic]

29. The crickets after his remark about generals ordering soldiers into battle

from a bank of computers were deafening! LOL

[mdmc]

12. fifth R

thanks for the post.

[TahitiNut]

15. Thank you, sir.

Even as one who pays little attention to the "K&R" stuff, I'm very appreciative.

[mdmc]

19. you have a very nice way with words TahitiNut

I'm not sure when I started reading your OP's, but you have a nice way of putting thoughts down into print.

I want to be a writer some day, so I practice, and read. And I read you, along with many other DU'ers.

Peace and low stress,
mdmc

[jus_the_facts]

14. Indeed....

:hi:

[Marr]

18. They were there to talk about what a great job they're doing, and to poke

a bit of (respectable) fun at the president. Comedians always mock the president at this function- but in a "we caught you on that one!" kind of way. It's about feeding their journalistic fantasies; convincing themselves that they are both bulldog, no-nonsense journalists *AND* insiders.

You're right- Colbert wasn't mocking the president. He was mocking the press for lining up to be his stooges. That's not something I've ever seen at that dinner, and they didn't seem to like it much.

[LuckyLib]

24. And because the usual focus is on the Prez, the discomfort

was in the savage and bold truth being told, "embarrassing" the Chimp in Chief. Poor fools, very few of them got that, indeed, they were the target.

[papau]

20. Colbert used the audience as a prop to show the truth of his routine, and

the audience did indeed prove his point by holding the laughter down to nervous twitters - Colbert got laughs from the CSPAN audience and will be in replay for the next 20 years.

Critics might want to contrast Colbert's ability to produce great humor to our Bush laugh producing humor from yesteryear:

Said the first "lady" last year: "But I'm proud of George. He's learned a lot about ranching since that first year when he tried to milk the horse. What's worse, it was a male horse"

:toast:

[glitch]

31. This is what I think too - he played them perfectly. Absolutely perfectly.

He played them like a Stradivarius. It was the performance of a lifetime.

[Southsideirish]

21. It was too "close to home" for most of them, but for the rest of us it was

wonderful.

[robbedvoter]

22. The laughs volume was turned down minutes into the speech

C-Span did exctly what Colbert demonstrated in his audition tape, They stopped showing audience shots and LOWERED the volume of FULL LAUGHTER.
Once Colbert turned on the press - they did stop laughing.

[Marie26]

23. Yep.

Colbert reminded me of the old court jester, who was the only one who could tell the truth.

[Name removed]

25. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[TahitiNut]

26. I think they were 'dodging' not 'cringing'

And implying that New Orleans is an 'Oreo' city isn't offensive? (Hmmm...)

Quite frankly, I think anyone who'd 'cringe' at Colbert's performance is trying to preserve some kind of fiction. :shrug:

[Name removed]

27. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[TahitiNut]

32. "an appropriate forum"? (Hmmm...) Gee... I hear that a lot these days.

I remember Wellstone's Memorial Service. I saw a service that celebrated his life: his values, his accomplishments, and his goals. Then the surgery began - and the only anesthetic seemed to be between the ears of the surgeons. All the faux wannabe Emily Posts weighed in about it being "an appropriate forum" - absolutely none of whom apparently shared or contributed to Paul's values, accomplishments, or goals.

I remember a week-long media orgy of political necrophilia following the long-awaited final demise of the brain-donor President: Ronnie the Vacuous. All the wannabe Emily Posts were remarkably forgiving of the hideous political exploitation of a man materially conquered by Alzheimer's since (Orwell's) 1984.

So, here we are at the White House Correspondents' Dinner and Colbert adroitly engineers a performance that's specifically-designed to be comprehended by that audience. Not "appropriate"? Only under the contorted ethics of passive-aggressives, I suppose. Personally, I think folks who want to blow sunshine up their skirts should do it in private. When "etiquette" becomes synonymous with "hypocrisy" then double-speak is truly all-pervasive.

:eyes: :eyes: :eyes: :eyes:

[Name removed]

47. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[TahitiNut]

50. "The job of the newspaper is to comfort the afflicted ..."

"The job of the newspaper is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable." - Finley Peter Dunne

This is no less true today for journalism than it was 100 years ago. Colbert was one of the few in that room of "journalists" who was doing his job. If "that made some in the audience uncomfortable," then that's a credit to him, not a basis for criticism. I don't think Helen Thomas was in the least discomfited. Not at all.

:shrug:

[Name removed]

53. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[TahitiNut]

55. Do you have some reputable references for 'appropriateness'?

Something by Emily Post? Something by Amy Vanderbilt? (I'm really not interested in any Dale Carnegie stuff - since Colbert wasn't there to "Win Friends" by kissing ass.)

I find it fascinating that anyone would characterize Helen Thomas as having some implied agenda other than asking a question that has never been honestly answered. I call that good journalism - asking the questions the public wants answered. If someone made a "point" it'd be Junior in repeatedly spinning and evading any honest answer.

[Name removed]

67. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Name removed]

68. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[troubleinwinter]

28. It's hard to laugh when you're being REAMED.

[politrix]

30. Why didn't they laugh? - They're On Payroll

Didn't you know?


You can't laugh at your boss or tell him the ugly truth.


Just think of that Jack In The Box commercial when one employee tells him he has a freakishly large head...

[Gregorian]

33. Those who were not laughing, were stunned.

How dare anyone mention their "crimes".

Colbert's talk was a coup de gras. An all encompassing journey around the world of America's problems, in front of those who created them. If he were 90 years old, I would say it was a fitting end to a great carreer. It ain't over. Everything from flipping off Scalia, to spending a great amount of time with Helen Thomas, doing that mini-movie, to the quick glance at Bush while leaving to podium juxtaposed the the heartfelt kiss to Helen, it was all a huge slap in the face to those who deserved it.

It was a cornicopia of jabs. He didn't miss a thing.

The audience couldn't go wild. To reinforce his barrage would have been overkill. There was a brief shot of the president behind his table decoration of flowers where he was truely pained. I saw it. He was in agony. Only for a second. That crowd was, in a sense, being polite. Part of the crowd, that is. The other half were like stunned animals. They knew what they had just seen. Shock and applause.

[TahitiNut]

39. I'll bet the Faux Snooze table was so silent ...

... it was like a black hole for sound. :evilgrin:

[KoKo]

34. And.......THAT is why they were "SILENT."

I think "Take Back the Media"'s Symbolman was on the same beam as what you and some of us saw.

Still...there are so many questions about last night's performance.

l. Who planned Bushies "Evil Alter Ego" to do the schtick that would get the MSM's attention as the "Lede" Story?

2. Who hired Colbert given that "Little Steve" (the most reviled C-Span Host) was the VP of the "White House Correspondence Assn." Now "Little Steve" turns out to be the PRESIDENT!

3. Why did "Little Steve" put together the clips and snips of Clinton, Bush I, Reagan, Ford and Johnson and Kennedy's" dealing with the press and the "Correspondence Associations Dinners" from THE PAST...to give us a "retrospective."

4. Why did ABC Network have Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame at their Table..and which NETWORK owns the Comedy Central that hired STEPHEN COLBERT who was HIRED TO TRASH BUSH back to the YING/YANG? Which corporate entity owns BOTH or is it separate.

Edited: Can't spell worth shit and don't use "spell check." DEAFENING...well I can spell but not when me fingers click faster than me brain......:-(

5. The SILENCE WAS DEAFENING!!! It kind of said it all when Colbert hit on EVERY DAMNED THING WE PROGRESSIVE DEMS have been talking about since we knew "Election(?)/Selection 2000" was a STOLEN ONE.

I'm sure there is more but my brain kind of conked out...here.....

[TahitiNut]

36. Those are terrific questions, Koko-oh-one.

The posturing and positioning of the DC presstitutes seems to be truly Byzantine. Just watching the body language, both before and after as the camera just peeked at the folks milling about, was fascincating. It was like visiting the zoo. :silly:

:hi: :thumbsup:

[KoKo]

46. I wonder if anyone knows if ABC owns the "Comedy Channel" where Colbert

has his show? If it's ABC and they not only had Plame/Wilson "invited" to sit at the ABC Table...and ABC also owns Comedy Central...then it would be "VERY INTERESTING" wondering how Colbert was allowed to do what he did putting all our "LEFTY WING TALKING POINTS" out against the "Emperor," wouldn't it. :shrug:

Those and my questions about C-Span's involvement through "Little Steve" who is now the President of the White House Correspondents Assn.

I've wondered if Brian has been pushed out by "Steve" who says he's the l4 in line of 16 children in his family with FIVE SETS OF TWINS? He introduced his Mom for the Association...and she's still alive after that!

"Little Steve" also introduced his WIFE AND THREE CHILDREN! Figure that...

He's always seemed to be the most Right Wing of C-Span's Hosts...and he doesn't wear a wedding ring...that this DU'er has glimpsed, anyway....

I guess he wanted to seem neutral....as he smirks and smiles as he cuts off the Dem Callers and kisses up to the RW-ingers. That's why I wondered what he was "up to" last night. I actually thought he clipls he picked of former Presidents was fair..... Maybe I misjudged him? :shrug:

[Sydnie]

48. Wasn't he the host for the hour during the 25th anniversary when

Randi and Janet were on? Didn't he say that he thought "it wouldn't be the last time" Randi appeared on C-SPAN? I agree, that he does seem to be the most right wing (next to Brian that is), and thought a good deal of his speech was out of place last night. Maybe it's just me but I don't get the guy at all.

[TahitiNut]

49. Disney owns ABC; Viacom owns half of Comedy Central (with HBO)

HBO, in turn, is owned by AOL/Time-Warner who also own CNN.

http://www.mediachannel.org/ownership/granville.shtml

[KoKo]

54. Does this mean that...

ABC, Viacom, Disney..have turned on the Empire? They had to know what Colbert was going to do..one would think. Somebody had to know because the Bushies are the most controlling Administration we've ever had.

I hope we see some news on who hired Colbert and what went on behind the scenes this week....It should be very interesting....

:hi:

[Just Me]

35. No one laughs at their own shame. No one;

They deserved it, being humbled to what they have and are,...but, they haven't the strength to cope with that.

:applause:

"They" are no where near as important as they believe: the freakin' home-grown narcissists.

I doubt the majority will actually be motivated enough to grow from that humility. They are TOO WEAK!!!

[KoKo]

37. the saddest thing to me about America "today," is that we can't Laugh

at our "own shame" and move on and make things better when we recognize how we flubbed up.

One of the "overlooked" parts of last night's "LIVE" C-Span Production of the "WH Correspondent's Whore Fest" was that they really didn't know how to "laugh and move on."

That's what struck me about the Helen Thomas snip in Colbert's Report...

Helen knows that "laughter is the best Medicine."

Those in POWER who take THEMSELVES SO SERIOUSLY will always be open to "downfall." Clinton and Gore saw it...they just didn't know how far down they would have to go ...being penalized for "ruefull laughter" at their cirumstances.

But .....I remember that old expression: "He who laughs LAST...Laughs...Best! And, that might be what comes of what we here on DU saw last night....

[TahitiNut]

38. Until we learn to laugh at ourselves ...

... we don't grow. (Me? I'm HUGH!!1!) :dunce: :silly:

[KoKo]

40. True.....

You've maintained a "light touch ...with sense of humor, here, forever."

"Mo Power To Ya!"

We very serious natured folks here...have to give a "Tip-o-the Hat" to you and those who maintain their sanity with humor.

I should be so lucky! :D Takes me awhile and it's always the "rueful" that gets me over the "hearty, belly laugh."

But, I've learned alot about how to "lighten up" since being here on "DU."

I can now do lots of :rofl: and really get it. :-)'s

[Hubert Flottz]

41. I loved every minute of it!

The point blank dose of total unvarnished truthfulness was anything but funny, to the ones who felt some guilt before they walked into that room. It was perfect! Everything about it was right.(the telling Bushco Off part) The way he handled the generals was amazing. Seeing the asskissing Bushbot generals in shock and awe, was something I'll never forget. Goading the generals into upholding their oath to protect and to defend the Constitution, against ALL enemies? I thought so.

Kind of funny, but sad, to think of the reality we all must face. America is no longer a happy place for fully 2/3 of it's people. I see a bad moon a-rising...I see troubles on the way!

The truth is a very endangered species in America! Last night was almost like watching the last pair of eagles flying around that room.

[lonestarnot]

42. sour ass pusses make me sick

[KoKo]

43. Laura Bush wore "dark blue." Close to black...Funereal wear...She knew..

Remember just last year she was the "Darling" of the Media Whores for saying "GEORGGGGGGGEEEEE tried to milk a MALE HORSE!"

C-Span in the Promo for the "WH Whore Fest" showed the whole segment of Laura's MAGNIFICENT MOMENT from last year's Fest....

It was really funny how she trashed the Chimp....Sad... But she really loves the guy...

[lonestarnot]

45. Guess she can't help the fact that she's a freak. What can I say.

[malaise]

44. Beautifully stated

They were pissed - how dare Colbert strip them of their self serving view that they are actually very important press people.

Someone else posted that it was a collective version of John Stewart's earlier mauling of the bow-tie boy on Cross Fire. Yep - Colbert gave the entire state and their corporate media hacks a serious critique of themselves. What was fall down funny is that while they attack decent and honorable people daily, with no facts to support their 'truthiness', they could not handle the naked truth about themselves.

It was supremely delicious that he made them see 85 year old Helen Thomas is still the only serious member of the WHPC.

[OneBlueSky]

51. in a word . . . "Fear" . . . they know the consequences of . . .

straying off the reservation . . . if Bush weren't there, I'd wager that the response would have been much more enthusiastic . . .

[pitohui]

52. they were afraid

crap, you've never been afraid?

[LaPera]

56. Answering your own question...funny stuff "the workaday stenographers"

"least self-effacing people of this nation"

"There is no more humorless creature on the planet than those who regard their own visages and by-lines as the ends served by the means of human misery and corruption,"

Very funny stuff!

:smoke: :popcorn:

:rofl: :rofl:

[TahitiNut]

57. (grin) Thanks.

When I read or watch these self-important 'pundits' and 'journalists' I can't escape thinking about the candidate for "Miss(ing) America" who, when asked what she wants most, breathlessly answers "World Peace" with breasts heaving and eyelashes fluttering moistly. The vacuous hypocrisy is just stunning.

I try to compare most of the faux journalists (Hume, Snow, Rivera, Couric, Blitzer, Noonan, et. al.) to Bill Moyers or Walter Cronkite and it comes off like trying to compare Clarence Thomas to Thurgood Marshall, Jerry Falwell to Mother Teresa, Ken Lay to Peter Drucker, or Bill Frist to Albert Schweitzer. It's crazy-making.

Occasionally, like yesterday afternoon, my mental planets align in some Aquarian flow of metaphors and allusions that somehow relieve the cranial pressure. If I can't clutch at some expression of humor, I can't return to my (marginal) sanity.

[Jankyn]

58. Kick...

...and totally agree.

[Laura PourMeADrink]

59. They didn't laugh because it was embarassingly uncomfortable

that's all. These people didn't have the protection of their own private den to watch it. They were sitting there right in front of B**. Colbert was scathing and went far beyond the usual roast banter. He hit straight to the heart of everything wrong. I am sure this made people uncomfortable, from a manners perspective. Colbert was brilliantly on the money but he was also rude.

[bluerum]

60. 100 % right - the sycophantic press bows at the feet of *. They

disgust me.

Today I was forced to turn off Neil Conan on NPR. His biggoted racist show on illegal immigrants made me sick. How can NPR let this crap air. This report was clearly slanted and giving voice to some of the nations crudest racist hate groups. Far beyond Conan's normal RW bias.

Hey Neil, if you're out there. You are only one tiny reason why I stopped supporting NPR so don't let it go to your fat award winning head.

[Jose Diablo]

61. Mockingbird indeed

Implanted assets is what they are.

I am reminded of an article by Scott London-How the Media Frames Political Issues

EPISODIC VS. THEMATIC FRAMING

In his book Is Anyone Responsible? (1991), Shanto Iyengar evaluates the framing effects of television news on political issues. Through a series of laboratory experiments (reports of which constitute the core of the book), he finds that the framing of issues by television news shapes the way the public understands the causes of and the solutions to central political problems.

Since electoral accountability is the foundation of representative democracy, the public must be able to establish who is responsible for social problems, Iyengar argues. Yet the news media systematically filter the issues and deflect blame from the establishment by framing the news as "only a passing parade of specific events, a `context of no context.'"<4>

Television news is routinely reported in the form of specific events or particular cases - Iyengar calls this "episodic" news framing - which is counterpoised to "thematic" coverage which places political issues and events in some general context. "Episodic framing depicts concrete events that illustrate issues, while thematic framing presents collective or general evidence."<5> Iyengar found that subjects shown episodic reports were less likely to consider society responsible for the event, and subjects shown thematic reports were less likely to consider individuals responsible. In one of the clearest demonstrations of this phenomenon, subjects who viewed stories about poverty that featured homeless or unemployed people (episodic framing) were much more likely to blame poverty on individual failings, such as laziness or low education, than were those who instead watched stories about high national rates of unemployment or poverty (thematic framing). Viewers of the thematic frames were more likely to attribute the causes and solutions to governmental policies and other factors beyond the victim's control.

The preponderance of episodic frames in television news coverage provides a distorted portrayal of "recurring issues as unrelated events," according to Iyengar. This "prevents the public from cumulating the evidence toward any logical, ultimate consequence."<6> Moreover, this practice simplifies "complex issues to the level of anecdotal evidence" and "encourages reasoning by resemblance - people settle upon causes and treatments that `fit' the observed problems."<7>

All in all, I'd say we are under attack by assets of the government using "yellow journalism" to cover failures by the agents of government to solve social problems. Instead shifting the blame to those that are injured by the agents of the government.

Anyway, Scott London is a pretty good journalist, IMO. The article is a good read.

Edit:BTW Don, your spot-on, Colbert was blasting the Max Headrooms in the media. Good call.

[Joe Chi Minh]

63. I wouldn't defer to many people, if indeed anyone, as regards

the degree of my contempt for journalists as a breed, particularly in the fields of politics and finance; - though some investigative journalists are absolute heroes of our world. Others just try to make a living without completely selling their soul; and I think most of us can identify with that.

But I suspect the explanation for the relatively humorless-seeming audience may be different from the one propounded in the thread header by TahitNut, though based on a combination of a few factors. Some of them are simply instinctive, and seem curiously absolute and inappropriate in the context of what the Bushes have been responsible for.

I have known two people whose sense of humor was of a particularly bitter nature; so much so, indeed, that one of them, my uncle actually got upset if you laughed at his jokes. In this case, at least ostensibly, I think the situation may be the reverse: Colbert tried to make us laugh, but for many of us - quite irrationally really - it was a very uncomfortable laughter. The subject matter was not, as in the case of the legendary Onion article, what seemed at the time to be a most enjoyably hyperbolical series of prognostications, it was a satire on truths that would and did exceed the most virulent satire in what, even now, seems their impossible exorbitance, running completely off any scale one might have been able to imagine. That article of The Onion, after all, barely scratched the surface of the reality that was to follow.

So the truths were both too dire and too true to bear a humorous take of any significance. It was a very bitter derision, wholly fitting, but not funny. What we laughed at, many of us uncomfortably for reasons I want to address next, was the fact that Bush was having his fortune told to him publicly, and in no uncertain manner; both schadenfreud-inspired laughter, and a laughter borne of incredulity. Bush's inordinate behavior was finally being matched by a comparable truthfulness. And, of course, that is bound to tickle a people who have been under Bushco's cosh for so long, with an impunity that looks as if it is has only very recently begun to be breached.

So, you have a basic humor and a mixture of relief and exaltation, but not hilarity, to begin with. However, I think there is then another factor of a purely irrational, instinctive nature: a feeling of discomfort most non-Neocons, i.e non-political folk, Democrats (including Colbert himself, of course) and many of the old-school Republicans, would inevitably feel, because of the nature of the setting. It might well have been a latter-day Nuremberg Trial, in which case, that feeling would not have been experienced. But since it was a kind of social occasion, at a deep level, it didn't somehow chime in the same way. I know it's irrational, but I believe it to be the case.

I applaud Colbert for his courage in laying it on the line in that way in such a public forum, when your politicians, subject admittedly to many different constraints, with rare exceptions, failed to do so; and have indeed generally conspired with the corporatists of the right, so that this nightmare national nemesis was always in the pipeline, and drawing closer and closer. However, because I'm such a visceral character, I didn't want to see the whole of the first video clip. My instinct is to favor the underdog against a gang or a pack, and deep down my mind was unable to quieten those kinds of misgivings - inappropriate though they were in the circumstances. Crazy, but there you are. In fact, I was surprised at the mirth the audience of journalists did seem to display, though I also understood it to have been akin to my own, a mixture of relief and exaltation that someone was speaking truth to power, directly, in a way that no-one had done before, or had even approximated. The closest to it had been George Galloway's Senate elephant shoot.

In fact, I felt very bitter today reading the report of the Daily Mirror's Washington correspondent, which made no reference to Colbert's satirical performance, but gibbered about a lookalike, Steve Bridges, concluding, "But the world's most powerful man took it all in good humor, luckily for his impersonator. In fact, at one point, he was beside himself with laughter."!!! The Mirror, once a Socialist paper, the Socialist paper, has long been corporatist "New Labour's" corporate Judas goat; in spite of running with the hare at times, featuring articles by the likes of John Pilger for instance.

[ContraBass Black]

66. They did.

Or did we not watch the same routine?

[TahitiNut]

69. I erred (judging from some responses) in not enclosing the title in quotes

It really should have been "Why didn't they laugh?" I suppose. It's a rhetorical (with a false assumption) question - emblematic of the observation that much/most of the audience in the ballroom itself wasn't rolling on the floor in laughter and, instead, showed the unease of a 12-year-old caught with cookie crumbs around his mouth.

I rather thought that'd be obvious by now. :shrug:

[ContraBass Black]

70. No, not obvious at all.

Or am I the only one who didn't get it?