Our country has always had a chequered past when it comes to dissent. We founded this country on the principle of dissent, but after those that were rebelling against the British government had finished pushing the redcoats back into the sea, they were left with being the "powers that be". After that, the American tradition of dissent quickly came into question with the odious Alien and Sedition Acts, the Civil War, Wounded Knee, the Civil Rights Movement, the anti-war movement, and the labor battles that ended the Robber Baron period of our history. In fact, every time the American government has engaged in vicious crack-downs of dissent, the American people have come back and reasserted that right, often to the benefit of society as a whole.
Dissent was frowned upon during the Nixon era and during the McCarthy trials. These periods were marked by some Americans being quite afraid of what to say, but at least those that were targeted knew who they were and the crack-down was relatively contained.
Then came George W. Bush, the most secretive and anti-Constitutional President in American history. Suddely journalists in Iraq are walking targets, his critics end up in small plane crashes or commit suicide, and those who dare to cast him in a bad light in the press soon find themselves without a job or ridiculed by a nasty and perisitent right-wing propaganda machine. George W. Bush has one message for the American people, as former Press Secretary Ari Fleischer put it "watch what you do; watch what you say". That message wasn't for the terrorists, it was for the American people. NSA wiretaps and free speech zones are testament to that message.
To the scene arrives Stephen Colbert, whose new show is often thought of as a "second fiddle" to John Stewart's "Daily Show". When Stephen Colbert took the stage at the White House Correspondent's dinner this year, everyone expected his roast of the people present to be "edgy", but still relatively safe. After all, there is an unspoken agreement among the press that if they were to point out the horrible condition this President has put our country in, then they would not be considered "fair and balanced" and would be replaced by a less ethical, but better-looking, teletype droid. Stephen Colbert grabbed the podium in the character of the host of his show and delivered a half-hour of scathing satire that blistered Bush, the press, the Generals, Karl Rove, Justice Scalia, and everyone else who has allowed this criminal admministration get away with its crimes for the last five years. And he did it with Bush sitting only five feet away!
link to the video at cooks and liars: quick time
http://movies.crooksandliars.com/WH-Dinner... transcript here:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discu... At first, Bush was laughing at the innocuous jokes about how Stephen worships the man and that they both feel everything in their "gut" instead of their head. Bush's smile soon disintegrated when Colbert went into a routine how "facts" mean nothing to the President...."reality" has a "liberal bias". When Colbert discussed how Bush knows how to stand on things (rubble, the ruins of New Orleans, an aircraft carrier) and stage the best photo-ops in the world, Bush had the look of Claudius watching the play within a play of Hamet. He desperately looked as if he would rise up and flee the room screaming "I need air". The tension was THAT thick.
With each successive joke, the pall and shocked silence in the room grew. Colbert ended with a film where he plays a White House Press Secretary who mockingly jokes with the Press corps until he erringly allows Helen Thomas to ask a question on the reasons for the Iraq war. The rest of the segment featured Colbert running desperately running for his life through a number of obstacles with the ostensibly frail Helen Thomas slowly advancing towards him with her pad in hand. The visual image was wonderful satire considering the White House has deliberately shut Helen out from asking questions for nearly five years (recently, they allowed her a question and she asked the Iraq war question, the theme of the video).
Then Colbert left the stage, briefly shaking Bush's hand and receiving a barely perceivable nod from the first lady. As soon as Colbert had passed the President and his wife, the look on both was visible anger. They quickly left the room amongst a din of loud conversation among the press.
Of course the next day, CNN and their cable news look-a-likes all reported the segment of the show with Bush and his impersonator (2 articles written about the Colbert speech, 300 about the Bush double). In the same fashion as yucking it up about Bush looking for WMDs under a desk, the press would rather discuss the light comedy of the night rather than the bombshell that Colbert landed in the middle of that dinner. Nevertheless, the elephant in the room cannot be ignored forever.
article discussing the press ignoring Colbert's speech.
http://www.themoderatevoice.com/posts/1146... What Colbert did was not only brave and powerful, it followed the best tradition of dissent in American culture. Considering that dissent in times of lock-step jingoism has always led to a reaffirmation of the American tradition of freedom of speech, I would say that Stephen Colbert was one of the bravest Americans of this last weekend.
Thank you, Colbert. You have "los juevos grandes" indeed.
Many are saying that Colbert "bombed" because his audience didn't laugh much. All I can say is that Colbert's audience was the American people, not the people in the room. The people in the room were props to the Bush criminal enterprise, and Colbert decided to use them as props for his satire. They didn't appreciate it much, but then again, dissent never is appreciated by the status quo. That doesn't make dissent any less American.
more articles and blogs concerning the Colbert speech:
http://www.btcnews.com/btcnews/1310 http://www.pej.org/html/modules.php?op=mod... http://www.cinemablend.com/television/Colb... http://www.bradblog.com/archives/00002759.... http://www.truthdig.com/eartotheground/ite... /
manstream article #1 in Editor and Publisher:
http://www.mediainfo.com/eandp/news/articl... *posted to add to my journal...apologies if this is yet *another* Colbert thread. I'm just getting it down while it is fresh.
