Colbert Lends a Hand

Stephen Colbert, who plays a rabidly right-wing talk show host of the same name on Comedy Central, walks a tight rope on every show. He satirizes that large segment of America’s media that hews to the White House party line no matter how much it zigs and zags. He does this by pretending to be one of them, but more so. Though an exaggerated version of Bill O’Reilly or Rush Limbaugh is hard to contemplate, Stephen has to try to stay one step ahead of their theatrics every week. Needless to say, it’s not an easy job—especially of late, as both of those fine gentlemen have upped the ante considerably, leaving Colbert struggling to be an even bigger fake jackass than they are real ones.

All credit goes to him for his poise in finding ways to ridicule the Bush administration, the Republican party, the mainstream media or all of them at once—all while pretending that he’s fully supporting them and condoning their every move. He’s truly the fan and proponent no one wants.

Below are three examples of his brilliance:

Shameless

Even as he says that “[i]t is shameless the way the mainstream media is coming down on Rush Limbaugh” (for mocking Michael J. Fox’s Parkinson’s disease), it’s so clear that he’s spending these four minutes calling Rush Limbaugh a shameless idiot – even though he’s doing his best to pretend to support him. His ostensible support is merely a way to showcase what a reprehensible human being Rush is.

Stay the Course

Next up are President Bush and his administration, with their recent campaign to consign “Stay the Course” to Orwell’s memory hole. To do so, he took advantage of his last week’s hiatus to claim that he was going to go through his official White House faxes from the previous week. In that way, he pretended to get a “Stay the Course” message from Bush two weeks ago. He added it to an enormous binder of similar messages. Bush’s next announcement that “we’ve never been ‘stay the course’”; this perplexed Colbert slightly, as he had to work hard not to notice the enormous binder still lying on his desk. The next message was from Tony Snow’s recent press conference in which he said:

“The President is determined not to leave Iraq short of victory, but he also understands that it’s important to capture the dynamism of the efforts that have been ongoing to try to make Iraq more secure, and therefore, enhance the clarification – or the greater precision.”

After several seconds of reflection (and parsing, presumably), he says “Ok, stay the course” and adds the page to the binder. Brilliant. Just brilliant. It’s hands down the best analysis of this latest insult to America’s intellience while, at the same time, showing how the media was only too happy to swallow any and all information from the White House as received truth.

John Kerry

Kerry recently put his oversized foot in his mouth:

“You know, education … if you make the most of it, you study hard and you make an effort to be smart … um … you can do well. If you don’t, you get stuck in Iraq.”

From the quote, he’s clearly deriding the intelligence of America’s troops. Hard to believe considering he was one, but there it is. He apologized almost immediately, claiming it was a backfired joke about president Bush—a completely believable excuse coming from someone so vaunted for stiffness—and that the sentence was simply lacking the word “us”. Stephen next plays a clip of Tony Snow’s press conference, in which he mocks the senator, claiming there is no logical place to put the word “us” in the sentence. Snow gives an example in which he places the word in a completely ludicrous position, then claims that it just doesn’t “scan”. Stephen is quick to agree wholeheartedly, backing up Snow with his own example:

“…if you don’t make an effort to be smart, you get us stuck in Iraq? … does anyone understand that?”

Again, he uses his enthusiastic support to drag the administration’s lies and obfuscation into the light of day. Granted, it’s not like the White House and its apparatus is especially clever, but Colbert is still so good at using their own words to lay bare their black hearts. Colbert continues with more attacks on Kerry:

“Senator Kerry does not support our troops; if he had won the election, there wouldn’t be any troops left in Iraq. President Bush has given our troops the opportunity to fight in a war without end. Now that’s creating jobs. In fact, the President’s policies helped create 104 more job openings last month. Now who’s stupid, senator?”

Well struck. Well struck indeed.