[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.

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Bush’s new [tag]press secretary[/tag] [tag]Tony Snow[/tag] is aptly named for the job. Snow is a former FOX News commentator and until now, had his own radio show, where he had this to say last week:

People like Jesse Jackson who have committed themselves to a view that blacks are constantly victims, have succeeded in creating in the United States the most dangerous thing that we’ve encountered in our lifetime; which is, an underclass that doesn’t seem to be going anywhere.

Going on to criticize “the idiotic culture of [tag]hip-hop[/tag]”, he said:

You have people glorifying failure. You have a bunch of gold-toothed hot dogs become millionaires by running around and telling everybody else that they oughtta be miserable failures and if they’re really lucky maybe they can get gunned down in a diner sometime, like Eminem’s old running mate.

(Hear Snow for yourself on Democracy Now!)

I wasn’t sure if Bush could find anyone worse than the perpetually obtuse and obfuscating Scott McClellan, but it sounds like he might have succeeded.

It’s beautiful outside. The trails up the escarpment are muddy but passable and the main ones are packed full of joggers and cyclists.

This post is dedicated to the memory of the bonsai pictured above, given by our dear friends Pink and Sue, which tragically burst into flame one day and perished.

I was killing time and flipped on CNN for want of anything better to watch. “Welcome to the Future” said the CNN headline. “Lydia’s wish: escaping traffic”.

“I get up between 4:45 and 5:00 every day,” complained Lydia, “I have to be at work at 7:15 and I often find myself dashing across the parking lot to make it.”

“Time is such a valuable thing,” she continued as backdrops of congested highways flashed behind her. “I spend 3 hours of my life a day in my car and that’s a huge amount of my life wasted.”

Amazing, I thought. CNN was about to examine Raise the Hammer’s favourite issues: urban sprawl, inefficient [tag]public transportation[/tag], and society’s addiction to cars. Cue Miles O’Brien:

It is really painful when you add up all the time we spend in our cars, grinding our teeth as we drive our way through traffic. But what if we could commute through the wild blue yonder, breezing past the gridlock below?

Say what, Miles? Did you say “wild blue yonder”? Yes indeed: CNN’s featured solution to traffic congestion is the Air Scooter, your very own personal helicopter.

“Due to hit the market later this year with a price tag of fifty thousand dollars,” O’brien intones, “[it’s inventor] says the [tag]Air Scooter[/tag] could make rush hours a thing of the past.”

Welcome to the future: where rich people soar above the traffic below, occasionally descending in their noisy craft into specially marked parking spaces whose signage you ignore at the risk of stiff fines or decapitation, only to rise again above the masses like petrol-sucking dragonflies, designer label bags in tow. Someone ought to give this company a subsidy!

You can watch the clip yourself, but don’t blame me for CNN’s appalling website, which is likely to bombard you with popups.