My life was made a little brighter last week when I witnessed a video capture of Stephen Colbert's speech at the White House Correspondents' Association Dinner a couple weeks ago. For those of you who are unaware, he is the star of the Colbert Report, a Comedy Central program where he parodies the political pundits on cable. And apparently he was to be the entertainment this night.
I certainly thought he was entertaining. However, many people didn't quite think so, as he delivered a blistering ironic "tribute" to President Bush, lampooning his policy, his decisions, his persona and everything else, it seems -- when the man himself was sitting not twenty feet away. Understandably, he played to a shocked and somewhat quiet audience, apparently several Bush aides walked out before he finished, and Bush himself had no smiles for Colbert when he was done. But he has since become the next Internet phenomenon, complete with C-SPAN demanding the removal of the video from YouTube and iFilm and a thank you site with tens of thousands of posts.
If you haven't seen it, I highly recommend it. Although you may not
- appreciate the style of his humor (it's pretty deadpan and very satirical),
- share his political beliefs, or
- believe that he said anything that everybody else hadn't already,
maybe you can just appreciate the guts the man had to lambast the president from twenty feet away.