I hope this isn't a dupe
Stephen Colbert's Attack On Bush Gets A Big 'No Comment' From U.S. Media Mainstream outlets largely ignore Comedy Central host's scathing remarks at White House dinner.
Hey, did you hear about the White House Correspondents Association dinner last weekend?
Oh, yeah, that cute thing where President Bush parried with a look-alike and poked fun at himself? That was adorable.
No, not that. Did you hear the three or four dozen verbal napalm bombs that Comedy Central's Stephen Colbert laid out for the president at the annual dinner on Saturday night? No?
Well, maybe it's because much of the mainstream media — from CNN to Fox News, from the "Today" show to The New York Times — ignored or largely glossed over reporting on the stinging zingers Colbert lobbed Bush's way in favor of brief mentions of his more innocuous jokes.
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Not surprisingly, Colbert got a chilly reception after the speech from the president and his wife. According to an account in Editor and Publisher, "as Colbert walked from the podium, when it was over, the president and first lady gave him quick nods, unsmiling. The president shook his hand and tapped his elbow, and left immediately."
More surprising has been the chilly reception his speech — the sentiment of which was very much in line with any number of editorials that appear in major American periodicals every week — has received from the mainstream media. Some outlets have essentially treated him as they would a heckler; others criticized his failure to observe the decorum of the annual dinner, the jokes of which traditionally stop well short of Colbert's level of intensity.
Writing in a blog on the Web site of the conservative magazine National Review, reporter Stephen Spruiell suggested that the virtual media blackout was not a result of the press protecting Bush, but rather their colleague, Colbert.
"I like Stephen Colbert — as someone who watches cable news every day, I find his pundit-show satire is dead-on," Spruiell wrote. "But his routine at the WHCD was not funny. It was not effective satire, either. It meandered all over the place, ending with the usual leftist critique of the reporters who cover the White House: that, with the exception of Helen Thomas, they are an uncritical bunch of stenographers who rarely challenge the administration's line on anything. ... The jokes bombed because the truth in comedy is what makes it funny.
"The lefty bloggers who are now complaining believe that Colbert's critique of the White House press corps was accurate, but by and large they also believe that the Bush administration is a criminal enterprise and that all reporters should be spouting invective and accusations at press conferences — like Helen Thomas."
<snip
However, Columbia School of Journalism professor Todd Gitlin begged to differ. "It's too hot to handle," said Gitlin, who teaches journalism and sociology. "He was scathing toward Bush and it was absolutely devastating. They don't know how to handle such a pointed and aggressive criticism." Gitlin said the criticism was so harsh that its omission from most major news outlets made it all the more remarkable.
"I think this is a case of a media who have tiptoed away from the embrace of the administration and are now reluctant to take what would seem to them a deeper plunge into the wilderness of criticism," Gitlin said. "When Bush makes fun of himself, it's within a very narrow and limited framework. But Colbert's digs went to some of
fundamental incapacities."
Source:
http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1529981/20060502/index.jhtml?headlines=true
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