Ignoring Colbert

Chris Durang writes:

Stephen Colbert was the star attraction at the White House Correspondents Dinner Saturday night, and his performance was thrilling or insulting or uncomfortable, depending on your point of view. Apparently, according to Editors and Publishers.com, President and Mrs. Bush looked very uncomfortable, and quickly left right afterward.

But the mainstream media is apparently ignoring this part of the evening, and instead is covering the early entertainment where Bush and a look-alike imitator do a "he says this, he's really thinking this" routine. Moderately amusing, but very mild.

This, by the way, is the same Washington event where Bush previously charmed many (and horrified others) by pretending to have trouble finding Weapons of Mass Destruction (after we'd started to realize they weren't in Iraq), and wandered the room looking under tables. Really cute, huh? They should send videos of that to the families of soldiers killed.

The media's ignoring Colbert's effect at the White House Correspondents Dinner is a very clear example of what others have called the media's penchant for buying into the conservative/rightwing "narrative."

In this instance, the "narrative" is that President Bush, for all his missteps, has a darling sense of humor and is a real regular guy, able to poke delightful fun at himself and his penchant for mis-using and mispronouncing words.