Rummy: east, west, south and north somewhat

The Daily Show star and pundit Jon Stewart yesterday took on Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s latest contradictions. Funny and informative, as is frequently the case with Stewart’s stuff. View it here.

At least Stewart is guaranteed an audience via his show. One of the most cutting bits of political satire seen in a long while, delivered within 20 feet of the president of the United States, might well go unheard of if not for the blogosphere.

All of North America ought to have tuned into C-SPAN (somewhat akin to Canada’s under-watched CPAC channel) last month to witness political satirist Stephen Colbert at his best, speaking at the dais of the annual White House Correspondents Association dinner. To say that he savaged President Bush would be an understatement as Colbert left no holds barred when he attacked both the Bush administration and the behaviour of traditional media.

Thanks to the magic of the Internet, you can still tune in. Google video has the full performance here. Deciding what to quote was difficult. Serious, or humorous-serious?

You write “Oh, they are just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titantic.” First of all, that is a terrible metaphor. This administration is not sinking, this administration is soaring! If anything, they are rearranging the deck chairs on the Hindenburg! Stephen Colbert, April 29 2006

As you can imagine in a room full of media people, many of which make their living through bland, uncritical and uninformed reporting of the Bush (or any) administration, laughter was not always guaranteed and certainly was not widespread in the room. Uncomfortable silence and stoney faces were not restricted to embarrassed media – those connected to Bush through government or more personal relationships were squirming. How dare someone break the ‘code of conduct’ and actually joke about the truth? As we can see, the Bush twins were not pleased. Apparently Mr. and Mrs. Bush were not amused either – they left immediately after Colbert’s piece.

Bringing this story back home, we ought to wonder why there was virtually no coverage of the Colbert bit here in Canada? We’re rabid consumers of this stuff. It was truthful, deep, dark, ironic humour – just the sort of thing for our palettes.

The Tyee has a transcript of Colbert’s monologue available here.