Media Credibililty and Colbert's Roasting of Bush

Wise kings used to have jesters in their courts to remind them of their fallibility. One of the wisest jesters is the one in King Lear who kept trying to rekindle the conscience and good sense of the king. The jester in King Lear had the help of half the king's court. Lear did not live in a bubble like our president currently does.

One of the embarrassments of this age is that the mainstream media has too often cooperated in maintaining the special, self-delusional bubble around Bush. So, it was a breath of fresh air to hear someone poking the president hard enough to get through. Here's an article in the Chicago Sun-Times by Doug Elfman that talks more about the media's role in ignoring Colbert and the enormous attention Colbert's routine has received elsewhere:

A "blogstorm" is thundering across liberal Web sites. Many liberals are furious at the White House press corps for virtually ignoring Stephen Colbert's keynote speech at the press corp's own White House Correspondents' Dinner last Saturday. To non-liberals, this may seem like an isolated complaint. To liberals, it further justifies their belief that the media, particularly TV news, is a big stinking cabal of conservatives.

The truth is many in the media wrote about Bush's stand-up routine at the dinner as if they had just watched the coming of a comic genius, but they didn't report much on Colbert's funnier, harsher jokes. This may have been a case of the press corps following a standard motto: to the winner goes the spoils, and Bush got more laughs (out of copy written for him) than Colbert did.

How did Bush tickle reporters? He made fun of the fact that he can barely speak English (he is quite simply the worst communicator of all U.S. presidents), that our vice president is a heartless face-shooter, and that Bush is basically an idiot.

Ha ha, our "war president" knows he's a village idiot? To members of the White House press corps, that's some real funny stuff. To non-insiders, this looked like another example of good old boys and gals slapping each other on the back.