{"id":1824,"date":"2006-05-10T18:02:16","date_gmt":"2006-05-11T00:02:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/nada\/dump-duhbya\/the-president-and-the-press-are-naked\/"},"modified":"2006-05-10T16:04:47","modified_gmt":"2006-05-10T22:04:47","slug":"the-president-and-the-press-are-naked","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/nada\/dump-duhbya\/the-president-and-the-press-are-naked\/","title":{"rendered":"The President and the Press are Naked"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/dailykos.com\/storyonly\/2006\/4\/30\/1441\/59811\">Daily Kos: Re-Improved Colbert transcript (now with complete text of Colbert-Thomas video!)<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Now, I know there are some polls out there saying this man has a 32% approval rating. But guys like us, we don&#8217;t pay attention to the polls. We know that polls are just a collection of statistics that reflect what people are thinking in &#8220;reality.&#8221; And reality has a well-known liberal bias.<\/p>\n<p>So, Mr. President, please, pay no attention to the people that say the glass is half full. 32% means the glass &#8212; it&#8217;s important to set up your jokes properly, sir. Sir, pay no attention to the people who say the glass is half empty, because 32% means it&#8217;s 2\/3 empty. &#8230;<\/p>\n<p>The greatest thing about this man is he&#8217;s steady. You know where he stands. He believes the same thing Wednesday that he believed on Monday, no matter what happened Tuesday. Events can change; this man&#8217;s beliefs never will.<\/p>\n<p>As excited as I am to be here with the president, I am appalled to be surrounded by the liberal media that is destroying America, with the exception of Fox News. Fox News gives you both sides of every story:  the president&#8217;s side, and the vice president&#8217;s side.<\/p>\n<p>But the rest of you, what are you thinking, reporting on NSA wiretapping or secret prisons in eastern Europe? Those things are secret for a very important reason:  they&#8217;re super-depressing. And if that&#8217;s your goal, well, misery accomplished.<\/p>\n<p>Over the last five years you people were so good &#8212; over tax cuts, WMD intelligence, the effect of global warming. We Americans didn&#8217;t want to know, and you had the courtesy not to try to find out. Those were good times, as far as we knew.<\/p>\n<p>But, listen, let&#8217;s review the rules. Here&#8217;s how it works: the president makes decisions. He&#8217;s the Decider. The press secretary announces those decisions, and you people of the press type those decisions down. Make, announce, type. Just put &#8217;em through a spell check and go home. Get to know your family again. Make love to your wife. <strong class=\"highlight\">Write that novel you got kicking around in your head. You know, the one about the intrepid Washington reporter with the courage to stand up to the administration. You know &#8211; <em>fiction!<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"mine\"><p>Read <a href=\"http:\/\/dailykos.com\/storyonly\/2006\/4\/30\/1441\/59811\">the whole transcript<\/a> &#8212; it is full of zings and barbs. Colbert&#8217;s presentation is amazingly blunt and wreckless. I hope everyone in the audience squirmed constantly. <span class=\"sig\">mjh<\/span><\/p>\n<p>[Thanks, Jas.]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/wp-dyn\/content\/blog\/2006\/05\/01\/BL2006050100680_pf.html\">All Kidding Aside<\/a> By Dan Froomkin, Special to washingtonpost.com<\/p>\n<p>So was the biggest news of the night that Bush so effectively and humorously poked fun at himself? Or that a captive president &#8212; and, to a lesser degree, the press corps &#8212; had so sit and watch as they were subjected to devastating, vitriolic satire?<\/p>\n<p>Possibly because they themselves were targets, most reporters chose to downplay the Colbert part of the evening. &#8230;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;As Colbert walked from the podium, when it was over, the president and First Lady gave him quick nods, unsmiling, and handshakes, and left immediately.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s what CNN&#8217;s Ed Henry reported: &#8220;Now, the president ended his remarks by &#8212; his official remarks by saying that it&#8217;s really important to laugh in this job. That&#8217;s probably more true than ever, now that he&#8217;s so low in the polls. But I have to tell you, near the end of Stephen Colbert&#8217;s routine, the president didn&#8217;t really seem to be laughing. He actually seemed to be a little bit annoyed at some of the pokes from Stephen Colbert, it went on for a bit.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.themoderatevoice.com\/posts\/1146380087.shtml\">The Moderate Voice &#8211; Colbert&#8217;s White House Correspondent Dinner Performance Underscores Irony&#8217;s Power And Delicacy<\/a> [lots of excerpts of reactions from Left and Right]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Daily Kos: Re-Improved Colbert transcript (now with complete text of Colbert-Thomas video!) Now, I know there are some polls out there saying this man has a 32% approval rating. But guys like us, we don&#8217;t pay attention to the polls. We know that polls are just a collection of statistics that reflect what people are &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/nada\/dump-duhbya\/the-president-and-the-press-are-naked\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">The President and the Press are Naked<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1824","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dump-duhbya"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1824","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1824"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1824\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1824"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1824"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1824"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}