My Two Cents
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I thought the Bush and his twin thing was funny.
I thought Stephen Colbert was funny.
37 Responses to “My Two Cents”
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Cue the idiot right to drone on and on about “respect” and “inappropriateness” and “manners” … Naturally, they can all go fuck themselves. Stephen Colbert is a freaking genius.
The bush twins should have doubled up on their search under tables for the missing WMD. Would have been twice as funny as two years ago.
By the way, Tony Snow’s memo today revealed the strategy of bringing the press and the president closer — exactly the relationship Colbert was attacking, and exactly what was so upsetting to everyone in that room.
“”it makes it harder for the press to rag on the President when they’re in close touch with him, and it’s an opportunity for us to remind people of our message”
Aww, they just want to be friends, so that they can better lube the feeding tube down the journalists’ throat. How sweet. Maybe they can get Judy Miller reinstated.
Like Stewart at the Oscars, Colbert is guilty only of not pandering to his audience…an audience that doesn’t deserve to be pandered to.
Farris is confusing funny with entertaining. It was very much the former, painfully so; a brilliant satirical skewering of the administration’s desperate attempts to look better on paper than they do in real life–worthy of Swift or Voltaire, and more family-friendly than Bill Hicks.
But he failed to entertain the guests. The guests were not “entertained.”
Tough for them.
You could also hear the sound of Colbert’s jokes cutting to the bone. Even the right wingers I know were cackling at the brutal Hindenberg and the backwash lines. Obviously in your case, as a defender of the press acting as a human toilet for the administration, you would be deaf to the humor. Colbert’s speech has been quite valuable for separating out the sheep from the goats, and by that I mean the reality-based moral majority from the dead-end 32 percenters.
Tom, where was that quote from, Colbert or Tony Snow? It would seem, I dunno, kind of unprofessional for the press secretary to use the term “rag on the president”, no?
Cue the right wingers putting down their copies of “Deliver Us from Evil: Defeating Terrorism, Despotism, and Liberalism” to petulantly huff about civility.
Colbert s speech is going to be remembered — over one million downloads on youtube alone before it was taken down yesterday, and who knows how many from other sources. Almost 50 thousand people sending thank you messages to him on that website in four days! And watching the press’s reaction turn from amusement to horror as Colbert turned his attention to the consequences that their special relationship with the president has wrought — on a night when they were supposed to be celebrating that relationship! — that was truly a rare pleasure. But where’s the civility, decorum, and sensitivity that the occasion demands, the rightwingers whine, all the sudden feeling deferential toward the press. Well, all that decorum stuff went up to heaven around the time Bush laughed about not being able to find the WMD’s at the 2004 Press Correspondents Dinner.
I get the feeling that a lot of people in that room don’t know Colbert’s a satirist and is playing them all.
Kind of Andy Kaufman-esque, the joke’s on the inside.
I liked the malomar bit too.
And Helen Thomas is quite a good sport.
Wonder how long before Colbert gets audited by the IRS?
“inappropriateness and manners” has nothing to do with it. Colber(t) simply wasn’t funny. Outside of the “Marshmellow Center” and Scalia bits, you could hear crickets.
“…you could hear crickets.”
I believe that’s because Colbert had opened a can of satiric whoopass on everyone in the building and their puffed up egos couldn’t hack it.
So he didn’t/couldn’t read his auidence? That’s a sure sign of a BAD COMEDIAN! Colber(t)’s job wasn’t to speak truthiness to power, to act as mirror to the press core, to break anyone’s bubble, or to whatever else. His job was to BE FUNNY. And he was a miserable failure.
Duros, it was a supposed internal memo leaked to the Note that I thought was real, but I guess it was fake. Whoops.
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/TheNote/story?id=156238
“This is a battle that can’t really be won — you either got it Saturday night (or Sunday morning, or whenever your life was made a little brighter by viewing Colbert’s performance) or you didn’t. Personally, I’m enjoying watching apologists for the status quo wear themselves out explaining why Colbert wasn’t funny.”
Farris needs a laugh track to decide if something’s funny, apparently. How sad. Who cares if Colbert did the monkey dance he was hired to do — the question is whether he was funny. And the answer is, yes indeed. The sight of Colbert impaling the media, and their reaction of shock and horror, was simply hilarious.
Shorter right-winger—
Colbert skewers Bush: Not Funny.
Imus skewers Bill & Hillary Clinton: Hilarious.
End of discussion.
Whoever had 13 in the “How many comments until the liberal calls someone that disagrees with them stupid”, please claim your prize.
BD, since I can’t say it any better myself…:
(empasis in original)
So, Farris, I take it you talked to Colbert and he’s all crushed inside about how he couldn’t make the crowd laugh?
He knew exactly what he was doing when he got up there. He didn’t care about getting a laugh from the president, or making sure the press corps got home feeling all warm and snuggly. He cared about the opportunity to say–right in the President’s face–what he’s been saying from behind TV screens for years.
Colbert knew his audience and he skewered them, because he couldn’t be bothered to do lame Friars Club half-jokes. The ignorant people were those who somehow didn’t see it coming, and those complaining after the fact. He didn’t wrestle the microphone from somebody and start ranting: he was INVITED. What does that tell you about the party planners?
Again, Cue idiots right wingers (and dumbass so-called moderates) to whine about decorum: “It isn’t nice to bite the hand that feeds you.” Really? Have any of these people have never ever seen Letterman savage GE? Please.
Farris’s argument that comedians’ only job is to be funny is the same as Glenn Reynolds’s. Unsurprising, since they’re both idiots.
Basically, they’re both saying that Aristophanes should have stuck to the dick jokes, Shakespeare should have kept his observations on love to himself, and Kubrick should have concentrated more on pie fights than on montages of nuclear bombs going off. Just another example of conservatives’ complete lack of understanding of the western heritage they purport to defend. Luckily, 68% of the country sees you for the angry nerds you are.
Colbert said the exact same things he says on his show any other night. The Correspondents’ association wasn’t paying him to do anything different. If they don’t like his act or his point of view, that’s their fault for hiring him. Period. I’m glad you’ve conceded the point that he was funny. You’re just mad because he didn’t make the *press* laugh. Why do you care so much about the MSM’s feelings all of a sudden? Is it because you’re a spineless dittohead who blows whatever way the conservative wind tells him to? MSM: hero one day, villain the next?
“Colbert said the exact same things he says on his show any other night.”
Exaclty. Anyone who has ever seen Colbert’s show would know that. But even more importantly, they should have known that Colbert was never going to roll over and play nice. Not because he is particularly courageous but because of the very brand of humor that he plies. His primary target is the hypocrisy of journalist, politicians and others in power. Colbert would have lost huge credibility with his core audience if he had got up on stage and made jokes about Bush’s “famous love of cashews” (to borrow a line from The Simpsons).
Moliere was an ungrateful bastard!
“Just another example of conservatives complete lack of understanding of the western heritage they purport to defend.”
A very good point.
Just found this. I thought I’d share it:
So Not Funny
I love the sound of right-whiners in the morning. It sounds like VICTORY.
Desperate to convince us that Mr. Colbert was somehow unworthy, unpatriotic, or worse, not funny-ha-ha “Look, I’m a trained monkey,” these self-righteous fools keep trying to tell us that what we were doing rolling on the floor was not “laughing,” and that when we jumped up and high-fived the room in emulation of Mr. Colbert’s pre-interview routine, we were not enjoying ourselves. They would like us to think that the 50-1 ratio of positive to negative reactions on the 20,000 or so blogs that have commented on Colbert is an abberation.
Is there anything that could possibly be more enjoyable than seeing Mr. Bush and his toadies cornered, and having to listen to what the surveys tell us 68% of the American public want them to hear?
I’m thinking, I’m thinking.
Nope. There isn’t.
Colbert held a mirror up to that entire room. Nothing is less funny to someone than the giant zit on their nose, it is just funny to the rest of us when it happens to the primping stuck up bitch.
Yes, making fun of people is hysterical — for a sadist bully…
TomY: Enemy of Strawmen everywhere.
Shorter Farris: “Your job is to be funny, Jonathan Swift! Eating children is NOT FUNNY! It’s sadistic and bullying! AND SHRRRRIIIIILLLLLL!!!!”
“Nope, no WMDs under the desk.” – Now that’s funny.
Tomy, so now Colber(t) is one of the great satirists this earth has ever seen and will be remembered 400 years from now? Colber(t)’s gig won’t be remembered 400 days from now.
I’m sure they said the same things about Voltaire and Swift, Farris. At least, those being skewered.
“Colber(t) s gig won t be remembered 400 days from now.”
And yet dozens of pundits have suddenly emerged to attack and deride this supposedly forgettable performance. I wonder why that is?
BD, are you seriously comparing Colbert to Voltaire and Swift?
That is funny!
had the balls to say some of those lines
Did you ever hear the saying, “More balls than brains”?
It doesn’t take balls to criticize Bush — what color is the sun on your home planet?
Bill Maher’s been making a hefty salary on HBO for years, doing exactly that. I don’t see him packing for the Gulag.
Colbert was funny, but he was playing to the wrong audience, most of them. The video did show a few reactions from people who were amazed anyone had the balls to say some of those lines. Exactly who selected Colbert for that gathering anyway?