Why Colbert's Humor Is So Effective

Steve Soto of The Left Coaster has the right idea about Colbert's Faux News commentator (as does Dan Froomkin and Michael Scherer):

You’ve probably read a good deal today about Stephen Colbert’s bravura performance at the White House Correspondents' Association Dinner over the weekend. Since the media doesn’t like being exposed to their faces as willing tools of the GOP establishment, you heard more today about Bush's sense of humor than you have about Colbert's sarcastic destruction of both the media and its masters, the White House/Fox News sledgehammer. As the Post's Dan Froomkin noted today, Colbert managed to destroy the hero-worship that the Beltway whores planned for their master that night, and made them uncomfortable at the same time.

Unlike other bloggers, I decided not to spend a lot of energy today moaning about this, since I and many others already expected such coverage. Rather, let me share with you Michael Scherer’s analysis over at Salon.com. In a few paragraphs, Scherer tells you exactly why Colbert took down the media and Mighty Wurlitzer so effectively that night, which explains why you haven’t heard much about it from those he skewered, unless it is to complain that he wasn’t funny or too nasty to the poor babies.

The reason Colbert is so deadly funny (and even sobering) is that he's 2.5% further to the right of Bush and 25% more honest. If Bush is Wily E. Coyote, his PR handlers and the media fail to paint in the cliffs and the roadrunner. Colbert provides the background and shows where one inevitably finds himself if he buys into the absurd world of Bush: ten feet from the cliff and a hundred feet above empty air.