WEDNESDAY'S LETTERS: Colbert Naked or Colbert Truth?

By: E&P Staff Four days later, a constant deluge of letters about Stephen Colbert's White House Correspondents Association dinner speech continues to test our email servers. And Greg Mitchell's column about Bush's 2004 WMD Skit yesterday seemed to pour fuel on what seems to be a raging fire of opinion. Here are a few of the latest, and check back as we will be adding more letters to this column throughout the day.


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The reason so many in attendence at the White House Correspondents Association Dinner thought Stephen Colbert's routine was not funny is not because they didn't get the joke. They are the joke. And the 2400 American servicemen and women killed and nearly 18,000 wounded in Iraq aren't laughing either.

Dennis Jett
Gainesville, Florida


I'm going to save the transcript. It reminds me of Jonathan Swift's A Modest Proposal.

No, Colbert's speech wasn't funny. Wait, I'm sorry, his speech was funny. Funny like when you're with a close family member who is gravely ill with cancer and the only thing you can do is laugh or cry. You pick one or do both at the same time. Satire is a wonderful thing. It's not meant to be funny. It's meant to acknowledge truth and sadness and anger in a facade of funniness.

What is wonderful, though, is that he was able to do this in front of the President. And he's still alive and free. He'll probably be audited tomorrow, but you can't have everything.

Keri Anderson
Clemson, South Carolina


Thanks for your observations on the Washington Press Corpse. I've been fit to be tied over their response (or lack of) to Colbert's damn gutsy and right on performance. I wanted to bitch slap Milbank the other night on Olberman and then work my way up to that twit Tucker. Oh hell, might as well make the rounds of the whole room at the Press Club.

Dwane Powell
Editorial Cartoonist
The News and Observer/Creators Syndicate


The one-sided reporting on this subject is really bugging me. Colbert is a socio-politico comedian, that is his shtick. He does what he does, but there is no hate in what he does. Anywhere else, a President with an 32 percent approval rating and a failed war would get more than just a comedic drubbing. The President is a civil servant, plus he has broken American and international laws, he is lucky that jokes are all that he gets. If the President cannot take barbs, he should stay on the ranch.

Frank Church
San Diego, Calif.



Thank you [Greg Mitchell] for contrasting the evil of Bush?s 2004 WMD skit with the hysterically funny Colbert routine. How far has our nation sunk into moral depravity when Bush?s skit evoked laughter while Colbert?s send-up of current reality evoked ?cricket-chirping? silence?

David Calderwood



The press, with whom I toiled for 8 years in daily newspapers, is a great disappointment these days, and the White House press corps is pathetic. No one wants to hang with a story unless it's a scandal or the vice president shooting someone in the face. Helen Thomas deserves the Medal of Freedom for asking more than one follow-up question. Shame on the press -- electronic and otherwise -- and hooray for Colbert! He gets it.

C.C. Karr
St. Louis, Mo.



Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart's comedy is at the expense of demeaning our administration. With a liberal audience, that goes over well. Watching him the other night, there were very few laughs; thus, the audience found his humor somewhat off base. However, I doubt he got the message. Does anyone ever remember Jack Benny and Bob Hope?

Willa Miller
Huntington Beach, Calif.



I am shaking my head in amazement at many of the letters critical of Stephen Colbert's performance at the Washington Press Corps dinner. Not the ones that simply said, " I didn't find him funny" -- taste is a personal matter. I, for one, do not find Larry the Cable Guy even remotely amusing, yet I know there are large tracts of the country where people guffaw at his every "Git 'er done!" Different strokes for different folks, as they say.

No, what amazes me are the hypocrites who call his routine "too mean," and then contrast Air America or Comedy Central with so-called "mainstream" talk radio. What do they think of Rush Limbaugh calling women "femi-Nazis?" Or of boorish bully Bill O'Reilly shouting at his guests to "Shut up?" Conservative talk-show hosts have a virtual lock on mean and un-funny, for chrissakes!

Bush got exactly what he deserved at Colbert's hands, and it's long overdue.

Richard Schloss
East Northport, N.Y.


You have to wonder if those who found Colbert objectionable have had similar reactions to the steady outpouring of objectionable lies and evasions and knowing misrepresentations that have flowed from the target of his humor. It was painful to watch Mr. Bush sitting there squirming in discomfort. A more self- aware and introspective man would perhaps have realized the risk of attending such a function where the audience was not comprised of hand-picked sycophants. Colbert is a new American hero.

Frank Blaszak



Of course Bush's chosen impersonator character went over better than Stephen Colbert with "this particular crowd," since the reporters in "this particular crowd" thinks they do their job by hobnobbing with their subjects. They don't get it that they have let down the public by sucking up at gatherings like the Correspondents Dinner instead of speaking truth to power.

Will Hunter
Cavendish, Vt.



So now it is a known fact: Stewart and Colbert are just smart asses who are only big fish in small ponds.

Ben Faircloth
Wilmington, N.C.



I couldn?t agree more with [Greg Mitchell's] take on the Colbert performance as compared to Bush?s strange WMD gag. I don?t know what was more bizarre relating to the 2004 dinner ?- the president?s decision to do that bit, the journalists' willingness to laugh, Kerry?s failure to capitalize on that gift, or the fact that only you (and me, I guess) seem to even remember it.

Aside from being totally inappropriate, W?s 2004 routine wasn?t remotely funny. And I know humor is subjective, but in general I think a lot of people go along with the notion that Bush is funny just so they can concede some redeeming quality, despite all evidence to the contrary. His humor is strained, stiff, and also clearly conceived by staffers. So why does everyone think he?s such a cut-up?

I blame people like Chris Matthews for creating or falling for the Bush-as-regular-guy myth and turning both elections into a Prom King contest. And another thing: Dana Milbank should avoid commenting on Colbert?s star trajectory. If he thinks the Comedy Central ratings are remotely affected by what happens at the correspondents? dinner, he?s just proving every stereotype about the MSM as being deluded, self-important and out of touch. I seem to recall Milbank appearing on Olberman?s show in an orange hunting cap after the Cheney hunting incident. Ha ha. Funny like a clown.

Jim Hoy
Denver, Colo.



Once again, E&P scoops other publications. Thank you [Greg Mitchell] for your salutory reminded of a shameful episode in the Presidency and in the media. I was dumbfounded and disgusted by the joking about WMD in 2004, and felt it marked a new low in the relationship between the White House and the press covering it. The lack of outrage was extremely disturbing.

Lev Raphael



Thank you [Greg Mitchell], I found too found Bush?s film of him looking for WMD?s appalling. I also love the fact the Stephen Colbert was brave enough to expose the shameless cowardice of the "Liberal Media." For far to long this administration has gotten a pass from the "Liberal Media." I think it is high time someone stuck a finger in the eye of the self satisfied stenographers. Thank you for pointing out how disgusting Bush's little parody was and how Mr. Colbert was only stating the obvious.

Gerald Lillpop



Spot on, as they say. I wonder if there would be any coverage of these issues at all if E&P wasn't doing such thorough reporting on the media every day. Thanks.

Jackie Burns
Hastings on Hudson, New York


Political slime is nothing new. In fact, one could say that Democrats have used the same smear and distort reality "play book", since FDR so successfully falsely smeared Herbert Hoover as "heartless" in the presidential election of 1932.

It's important to consider that if Colbert and his left winged contemporaries are allowed to perpetuate and enlarge the continued false smearing of the president, Bush and Republicans may be allowing still another long term left leaning dynasty to form. Again, at the expense of Republicans, the public and reality.

Sammy Sanchez
Santa Fe, NM


Have you ever heard the "Trifecta Tape" where Bush joked, soon after 9-11, about winning the trifecta (a national crisis, a war, and economic problems) and his fat cats roar with laughter? What kind of sick individual would do that?

Hey, he talks to God and God tells him what to do. So maybe it's God writing his comic material.

Bob Reynolds
Orange Park, Fla.



A man who takes a nation to a war in which tens of thousands are killed should have slightly thicker skin that to let a television comic upset him, secondly "some aides crowed over reports that the president easily bested Colbert..."? We now have the staff of the leader of the most powerful nation on the planet in a urinary fusillade with a comic? What is this world coming to, or where is it going and why do we need a hand basket?

Richard L. Fricker
Tulsa, Okla.



The whole concept of the WW Correspondents dinner is as bizarre as it
is sad. Bizarre, because the White House and the media make such strange bedfellows, at least on the surface. Sad, because on a more fundamental level, this peculiar spectacle shows that truth, moral values and integrity are secondary (even if that) to power games played by the rich and well-connected in the American society.
Once more, bravo to Colbert for exposing the hypocrisy of this unfortunate and unhealthy set-up.

Elizabeth Mika
Gurnee, IL


Watching that brave and brilliant performance, I finally felt proud to
be an American again. It is a great country that allows such 'dangerous' speech to occur publicly, in the same room as the president.

Nomi Schwartz


Re: Criticism of Colbert in the mainstream media.

As Colbert pointed out on CBS's "60 Minutes" the following night, children have no sense of irony.

Deborah A. Alexander, Esq.
Warren, NJ



I am one of the (apparently few) people that caught the footage of Mr. Bush joking about a half-hearted search for WMD when it was broadcast.

In the Letters column that followed (expressing the record volume of traffic), and especially in your "President Joked" piece I found distinctly reassuring that there ARE those in the press that are: a) not partisan hacks, b) endowed with sufficient perspective to comprehend both the traditional print and television media scene as well as the actually goings on in internet media (blog-o-sphere, if I must), and c) a memory that stretches beyond one year coinciding with an intellect that is capable of association.

So... In perspective, E&P published a fairly minor but newsworthy item,
followed by an opinion piece. But as a member of neither the Red Team
or Blue Team, and a free-thinking Wyoming independent soul, and
moreover a humble American citizen (just like Mr. Bush): Thank you.

Ryan W. White



I thought it was great, except for Colbert, he was terrible, nothing funny there! I love to see what the women wear, and the only thing I can say about Washington is there are a lot of ugly women, in government and the press, who do not have any fashion sense at all.

Rita Nelson
Minnesota