Angry Left Angrier Than Ever About Colbert

The Wall Street Journal has a nice rundown of shrieks and gibberings and moans from the Angry Left that the White House Press Dinner guests weren't ecstatically applauding Steve Colbert's snarky put-downs of GWB:

You'll never believe what the Angry Left is angry about now. It seems the biased right-wing media are trying to cover up . . . a comedy routine! Editor & Publisher, the trade magazine for Bush-hating newspapermen, tells the story:

A blistering comedy "tribute" to President Bush by Comedy Central's faux talk-show host Stephen Colbert at the White House Correspondent Dinner Saturday night left George and Laura Bush unsmiling at its close. . . .

[E&P's Joe] Strupp, in the crowd during the Colbert routine, had observed that quite a few sitting near him looked a little uncomfortable at times, perhaps feeling the material was a little too biting--or too much speaking "truthiness" (Colbert's made-up word) to power.

Over on the Puffington Host, Peter Daou, who worked on the 2004 John Kerry* campaign, describes the performance in this way:

The White House Correspondents' Association Dinner was televised on C-Span Saturday evening. Featured entertainer Stephen Colbert delivered a biting rebuke of George W. Bush and the lily-livered press corps. He did it to Bush's face, unflinching and unbowed by the audience's muted, humorless response.

He then quotes the enthusiastic reactions at DemocraticUnderground and the Daily Kos and faults the mainstream press for not seeing it the Angry Left's way:

The AP's first stab at it and pieces from Reuters and the Chicago Tribune tell us everything we need to know: 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.

Daou's sentiments are echoed by fellow Puffingtonians Jesse Kornbluth and Chris Durang.

The trouble is, Colbert bombed. Both E&P and Daou acknowledge this in roundabout ways ("[the audience] looked a little uncomfortable at times, perhaps feeling the material was a little too biting"; "the audience's muted, humorless response"). If you'd like to evaluate it for yourself, you can download the video here, have it streamed in three parts (uno, dos, tres), or watch a series of clips of Bush and Colbert. There's also a transcript.

Our review: We've seen Colbert's Comedy Central show a few times and thought it was pretty good, but here much of his material wasn't funny, and even the stuff that was good, he managed to deliver badly. Here's an example, the line we thought funniest:

Mayor Nagin! Mayor [Ray] Nagin is here from New Orleans, the chocolate city! Yeah, give it up. Mayor Nagin, I'd like to welcome you to Washington, D.C., the chocolate city with a marshmallow center.

This drew a hearty laugh from the audience--and anyone who's familiar with the demographics of Washington can see why. But Colbert then lost control of his metaphor:

And a graham cracker crust of corruption. It's a Mallomar, I guess is what I'm describing, a seasonal cookie.

A graham cracker crust of corruption? Huh? As for the Mallomar, it's not only a seasonal cookie (not made during the summer, when it would melt) but a regional one. According to the Bergen, N.J., Record, 70% of all Mallomars are sold in New York and New Jersey. Did Colbert's Washington audience even know what he was talking about?

Here's an example of the anti-Bush humor, in which Colbert adopts the persona of a Bush supporter:

Now, I know there are some polls out there saying this man has a 32% approval rating. But guys like us, we don't pay attention to the polls. We know that polls are just a collection of statistics that reflect what people are thinking in "reality." And reality has a well-known liberal bias.

Or maybe this joke is at the expense not of Bush but of the Angry Left, for their whole "reality-based community" conceit and their professed devotion to opinion polls. Who knows? But if you're left scratching your head trying to figure out what a joke means, chances are you aren't laughing.

National Review's Jonah Goldberg raises an intriguing question:

It is enduringly fascinating how deeply invested many liberals are in comedians (and to a lesser extent, movie stars). There's of course Al Franken and Jeneane Garofalo (a recovering somewhat funny person), but even Jon Stewart is increasingly becoming a Big Thinker according to some liberals. . . . What does it say about the "real" spokespeople of the left--journalists, politicians, activists et al.--that the most appealing figures are ones who get to hide behind clown make-up whenever the kitchen gets too hot?

It may show that they are envious of conservatives, who have had great success at mocking liberals, who can neither dish it out nor take it. This is because liberals take themselves way too seriously--which ensures both that they are easy targets for mockery and that they do not do mockery well. For an example, check out the blog of Duncan "Atrios" Black. It is almost totally devoted to mockery, and it is totally devoid of wit.

Colbert has considerable wit, though plainly it is not enough--or not yet well enough honed--for what he tried to do Saturday night.

* "Do you think he's a flip-flopper, or more of a straddler?"

Next Year They Won't Serve Fondue
"Bush Skewers Self at Correspondents' Dinner"--headline, Reuters, April 30