Monday, May 01, 2006

The Colbert Moment

from firedoglake:

"Dan Froomkin has a very good column on the Colbert Moment and journalists like Elizabeth Bumiller who have decided just to ignore the entire thing.  He also points to Special Ed, who found the whole event tasteless:

There were two problems with Colbert’s act. The first is that it wasn’t funny, and the second was that it didn’t keep with the spirit of the evening. The Correspondents Dinner prides itself on making the evening a safe venue for all, and the humor is supposed to stay self-deprecating. Attacking one’s opponents in this forum is considered bad manners. Colbert has no grasp of his audience or the event, and he paid the price for it. And that price was painful indeed.

Two things.  Number one, I talked to John A. at C&L who says he’s had something like half a million hits on that clip.  "Paid the price?"  Well I guess if having the guts to provoke a historic moment in a crowd you know full well is grinding their teeth in humorless, pinched-ass hatred of every word you utter, and you stand up unflinchingly and have the courage to do it anyway, and millions of people across the blogosphere who are starving for some kind of truth are cheering you on, then I guess Ed is right.  Price paid.

But the second thing, and I don’t often mention this but now seems an appropriate time:   when liberals like TBogg or Gavin M. or SZ or Roy Edroso or any other of the wits of the liberal blogosphere sit down behind their keyboards and start tapping out daggers, slicing up the right with eviscerating humor that cuts to the bone, they know full well they are going into battle with unarmed opponents.  I don’t know what it is about the right that they completely lack any ability to appreciate humor, but they sure as shit can’t write it either.  I would never mess with the General for fear of what he’d come back at me with.  Digby?  Oh lord.  Atrios, Wolcott, John Rogers … and I personally send Roger Ailes a fruit basket once a month just to stay on his good side. . ."

I'd say there are some pretty good wordsmiths over at FDL, too.

No comments: