The Colbert Transcript: For Posterity

Editor and Publisher has the Colbert transcript and many other places have the full video. I'm linking to the transcript simply to honor posterity. Here's the introduction to the Editor and Publisher:

NEW YORK Four days after the event, the controversy over Stephen Colbert's routine at the White House Correspondents Dinner on Saturday night -- and the media's reaction to it -- continues to build, with followup stories in The New York Times, Los Angeles, and dozens of other places, including MTV.com.

E&P published the first account of the affair on Saturday night, and has presented numerous stories -- and dozens of letters to the editor -- since. But you be the judge. Here is a transcript of his speech, delivered in his usual faux-Bill O'Reilly voice. It closed with a video segment, not transcribed here.

When I was a kid in Southern California, the reporter in Los Angeles for Channel 5 was George Putnam, the original very serious anti-communist reporter with the deep baritone voice. I'm afraid my friends and I took him seriously for a year or two before high school but then we began to think he was pretty funny as we began to learn a little about the world. I don't doubt that Putnam meant well but he became the model for all the ridiculous and pompous reporters we've seen on TV sitcoms and movie comedies (every comedian and script writer in Hollywood had only to turn to channel 5 to get a tip or an idea or a new angle).

Here's today 20-point bonus question: when did this country start taking seriously the George Putnams and Bill O'Reillys of the world? Future generations puzzling over the history, madness and absurdity of this era will want to know.