Ok, having watched the video of Stephen Colbert's oh-so-shocking, scandalous speech at the WH Correspondents Dinner Saturday, I find myself distinctly un-scandalized and un-shocked. Anybody with half a brain (hello, White House Correspondents Association) should have known that Stephen Colbert was not going to get up on that dais and make a few gentle jokes and generally make nice. All anybody would have had to do (hello, Bush White House) is watch one episode of the Colbert Report to know that softball kissy-face is not what Stephen Colbert does, especially not in the full, screaming, hot-blooded bloom of his first year of what is becoming mega-stardom. And TCG happens to know from personal experience that if a big shot politician gets humiliated in public, guess what: it's his staff's fault (and believe me, when she was on a staff like that, she wasn't shy about telling people to get out of her way/sit down/shut up because Big Shot was coming through, even though she is basically a shy person.) Always. It's why advance offices exist, it's why the people around the big pols are called "handlers." They're supposed to handle stuff like this. And the Bush White House should have taken two seconds to think about this, and say to each other and to the President: "Hey, this is Stephen Colbert we're talking about. No matter what we think of him, we have to agree that he is mercilessly intelligent. He's the faux-polite WASP version of Don Imus. No good can come of giving him a mic and a captive audience that includes POTUS. So sorry, the President has something else to do Saturday night. What's the press going to do, sue him? Believe me, if they could, they would have done it by now. So pound sand, White House Correspondents Association, and better luck picking an acceptable speaker next year."
But did they do that? No. But here's the thing--the Bush White House shouldn't have had to deal the question of do we/don't we put POTUS in the same room with Colbert in the first place. Because this is the bigger issue: that the White House Correspondents Association picked Colbert. They're not dumb. They knew what was going to happen, and they did it anyway, and believe me they had more than a few bloodthirsty, anticipatory snickers imagining it beforehand. And the press wonders why it has such a contentious relationship with the people it covers. It's because of stunts like this that show zero respect for the President--who, I don't care what you think about him, is a very busy man and has a lot more responsibility that you or I--that the press gets such a bad reputation. The President doesn't need the hassle of going to the Hilton to be nice to 2600 people, most of whom are actively contemptuous of him. But he was a good sport, he went, and what did he get? He got it in the teeth, that's what he got.
Now, I like Stephen Colbert, and I think we live in a great country where he can express his feelings about the administration fully and freely through satire without being shot against a wall. I also like President Bush a lot. I like chocolate and tuna salad too, but I'm not about to put them on the same fork.
One last thing. President Bush is a strong person, and he can take criticism. But the First Lady--though clearly every bit as strong as the President--shouldn't have been subjected to Colbert's monologue. It was hideously disrespectful to her. And in the end, the blame lies with the White House Correspondents Association. They don't care, of course. But they should.
