Not Your Average Lap Dog

[tag]Stephen Colbert[/tag] was the last speaker at the annual [tag]White House Correspondents Dinner[/tag] on Saturday evening. Colbert is best known for the [tag]Colbert Report[/tag], a comedy show that is supposedly “fake news” but that features some of the toughest interview questioning I’ve ever seen on television.

Colbert’s performance Saturday night is a must-see. With [tag]George Bush[/tag] sitting only a few feet from him, he shocks the crowd with satire so scathing that Bush’s discomfort – and that of most of the guests – is palpable. (Watch it for yourself – Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3 – these open in new windows). If you’re unable to watch these, you can read a transcript.

The speech has become an Internet sensation but has gained little attention in traditional media outlets, as Peter Daou highlights in Ignoring Colbert: A Small Taste of the Media’s Power to Choose the News:

Colbert’s performance is sidestepped and marginalized while Bush is treated as light-hearted, humble, and funny. Expect nothing less from the cowardly American media. The story could just as well have been Bush and Laura’s discomfort and the crowd’s semi-hostile reaction to Colbert’s razor-sharp barbs. In fact, I would guess that from the perspective of newsworthiness and public interest, Bush-the-playful-president is far less compelling than a comedy sketch gone awry, a pissed-off prez, and a shell-shocked audience.

This is the power of the media to choose the news, to decide when and how to shield Bush from negative publicity.

Conservative commenters responded by saying the media has a pronounced liberal bias – hence Colbert’s invitation to the press corps dinner – but that the speech was so rude, tasteless, and not funny that not even the liberal media would touch it.

They’re right about this much: Colbert was rude to Bush, who was a guest at the dinner and was made visibly uncomfortable. This is enough reason for many editors to skip covering it on the grounds of good taste. If there’s anything the “liberal” media are afraid of, it’s being labelled as liberal media, and publishing gleeful descriptions of the president getting roasted is asking for it.

But the real problem is that the media are too close to those in power, regardless of their political positions (Clinton got a free ride too). Colbert makes editors and commentators uncomfortable because he does what they ought to do: he takes those in power to task right to their faces. No one should cringe at making Bush uncomfortable. Would an Iraqi widow have sympathy for him? A veteran amputee?

Political persuasion does equal a willingness to speak truth to power. The Washington Post may be identifiable as a “left-leaning” paper, but they are also very clearly a power-leaning paper, one that is frequently unwilling to challenge the Bush administration. The Post frequently quotes anonymous government sources who remain anonymous not because they need protection from the government, but because they are feeding the government’s version of events to the public.

Colbert is so jarring because his courage is so rare. He forgoes pleasing his audience – hard to do for any public speaker, let alone with the president in the audience – in favour of breaking out of the symbiotic relationship between Washington press and Washington power. It’s a point he makes clear to the press as well as the president:

Here’s how it works: the president makes decisions. He’s the decider. The press secretary announces those decisions, and you people of the press type those decisions down.

Make, announce, type. Just put ’em through a spell check and go home. Get to know your family again. Make love to your wife. Write that novel you got kicking around in your head. You know, the one about the intrepid Washington reporter with the courage to stand up to the administration. You know – fiction!

Colbert reminds us that it is still possible to tell those in power, no matter how likeable they may seem, precisely what they don’t want to hear.