Colbert on Glenn Beck

Don't drink while you're watching this one.

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
The 10/31 Project
comedycentral.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor NASA Name Contest

Sherman Alexie on Colbert (Updated)

Here's the link to the entire show; Sherman Alexie comes on at @16.00 minutes, after the second blank bar on the bottom line. You can push the play button there to watch. (You have to watch a 30-second ad, and the play button jumped around on me, but it's worth it.)

Updated: The video:

Sherman Alexie Silences Colbert (Updated)

I will post video when it's up. Sherman Alexie! (A favorite author.)

Updated: The video:

Two Interesting Analyses of McCain

FiveThirtyEight.com: The Tongue Jut

Last night on The Colbert Report, Dr. Stephen T. Colbert (DFA) noted that John McCain was doing something peculiar with his tongue. The upshot of the joke was that McCain was repeatedly sticking his tongue out like a reptile.

[]

Retired FBI agent Joe Navarro, a Bluff Magazine columnist and author of Read ‘Em and Reap, a book on poker tells culled from his professional interrogation experience, has written about the “tongue jut,” which is exactly what McCain was doing in the Colbert debate clips. Its significance?

Tongue-jutting behavior is a gesture used by people who think they have gotten away with something or are “caught” doing something. I have seen this behavior in flea markets both in the United States and in Russia, among street vendors in Lower Manhattan, at poker tables in Las Vegas, and in business meetings. In each case, the person made the gesture – tongue between the teeth without touching the lips – at the conclusion of some sort of a deal or as a final nonverbal statement. This behavior has several meanings – depending on specific situations – but is usually associated with one of these: I got caught (taking candy from a drawer), gleeful excitement (look at what I just did, Mom), I got away with something (and I didn’t get caught), I did something foolish, or I am naughty.

Read the rest to see exactly at which points in the debate McCain gave us this telling "tell".

BAGNewsNotes: Finally Taking His Turn, Mac Suffers Palin Too

Michael Shaw dissects six still images from the weird John McCain/Sarah Palin joint interview with Katie Couric

It's one thing to watch interviewers respond to Sarah Palin's odd mixture of bravado and gibberish. It's another to observe McCain along for the ride. As such, I offer you a breakdown of McCain's "micro reactions" in the first first forty-four seconds of last night's interview with Katie Couric.

Off the bat, Couric asks Palin about her statement, made over the weekend, that "the U.S. should absolutely launch cross-border attacks from Afghanistan into Pakistan" given McCain's admonition that you don't say that kind of thing out loud.

In the first shot, McCain's eyes bulge, then he shoots a glance to someone off camera, after Palin quickly and presumptuously launches in with: "We had a great discussion with President Zardari..."

[]

Obama To Go On O'Lielly Thursday

This is how to take on O'Reilly: Colbert on O'Reilly, January 18, 2007.

Obama is coming out fighting, going on Fox Noise Thursday night to debate Stephen Colbert's Papa Bear Bill O'Reilly.

I like the fighting spirit. But I don't want to give Fox any credit as a media outlet, though. They're the House Organ, the Pravda of the rightwing revolution, not a news organization.

Much better than going on Fox Noise is Obama's new radio ad, running in Virginia, Wisconsin, Colorado, and Iowa, touting his support for abortion rights and McCain's opposition. That appeals to the almost 70% of American voters who favor choice. It's good to see a Democrat attacking Republicans on this issue.

Michelle Obama on Colbert Report

Michelle Obama: Cool and on message.

Just For Laughs

GQ: The Real Colbert Report Every time I see the GQ cover photo of Colbert holdng his baby self on a magazine stand, it cracks me up.

Bob Geiger's Saturday Cartoons

Predictions of the Year 2000
from The Ladies Home Journal of December 1900

Dependable Renegade has John McCain, still out there visiting in his flak jacket:

The Gates of Hell

Applebee's in Petaluma, CA

Colonial Williamsburg

Graceland

Orlando, Florida

historic San Francisco

The Lower East Side
Indiana

And my personal favorite: Portland, Maine

White House Correspondents' Dinner

Comedian Rich Little (R) arrives for a party following the annual White House Correspondents' Association dinner in Washington April 21, 2007. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst (UNITED STATES)
Who got him out of the crypt?
I didn't see it but Editor & Publisher says Rich Little laid an egg. Atrios says this was the only funny part, a David Letterman Top 10 List:



From Oliver Willis, the funniest White House Correspondents' Dinner routine evah, Steven Colbert rocking Bush's world:



Update: Oh, and Sheryl Crow and Laurie David used the WHCD to try to talk to Karl Rove about global warming. You can guess how that turned out.

Arctic Glaciers Could Be Gone in 24 Years

And you thought Stephen Colbert was telling a joke when he said,

[Interviewing Jesse Jackson is] like boxing a glacier. Enjoy that metaphor, by the way, because your grandchildren will have no idea what a glacier is.

To all the people who say, well, global warming isn't going to happen in my lifetime, better think again. Scientists at the US National Snow and Ice Data Centre say the Arctic Glaciers could be gone by 2030, and gone in the summers by 2016. Time to pull our collective heads out of the sand, before there's nothing but sand left.

The Guardian (uk): Meltdown fear as Arctic ice cover falls to record winter low

Record amounts of the Arctic ocean failed to freeze during the recent winter, new figures show, spelling disaster for wildlife and strengthening concerns that the region is locked into a destructive cycle of irreversible climate change.

Satellite measurements show the area covered by Arctic winter sea ice reached an all-time low in March, down some 300,000 square kilometres on last year -an area bigger than the UK.

Scientists say the decline highlights an alarming new trend, with recovery of the ice in winter no longer sufficient to compensate for increased melting in the summer. If the cycle continues, the Arctic ocean could lose all of its ice much earlier than expected, possibly by 2030.

Walt Meier, a researcher at the US National Snow and Ice Data Centre in Colorado, which collected the figures, said: "It's a pretty stark drop. In the winter the ice tends to be pretty stable, so the last three years, with this steady decline, really stick out."

Experts are worried because a long-term slow decline of ice around the north pole seems to have sharply accelerated since 2003, raising fears that the region may have passed one of the "tipping points" in global warming. In this scenario, warmer weather melts ice and drives temperatures higher because the dark water beneath absorbs more of the sun's radiation. This could make global warming quickly run out of control.

Dr Meier said there was "a good chance" the Arctic tipping point has been reached. "People have tried to think of ways we could get back to where we were. We keep going further and further into the hole, and it's getting harder and harder to get out of it."

The Arctic is rapidly becoming the clearest demonstration of the effects of mankind's impact on the global climate. The temperature is rising twice as fast as the rest of the planet and the region is expected to warm by a further 4C-7C by 2100. The summer and winter ice levels are the lowest since satellite monitoring began in 1979, and almost certainly the lowest since local people began keeping records around 1900. The pace of decline since 2003, if continued, would see the Arctic totally ice-free in summer within 30 years - though few scientists would stake their reputations on a long-term trend drawn from only three years.

Experts at the US Naval Postgraduate School in California think the situation could be even worse. They are about to publish the results of computer simulations that show the current rate of melting, combined with increased access for warmer Pacific water, could make the summertime Arctic ice-free within a decade. Dr Meier said: "For 800,000 to a million years, at least some of the Arctic has been covered by ice throughout the year. That's an indication that, if we are heading for an ice-free Arctic, it's a really dramatic change and something that is unprecedented almost within the entire record of human species."

The winter ice has declined all around the region - bad news for polar bears, which spend summer on land before returning to the ice in spring to catch food.

But It Was A Powerfully Staged Photo Op, Wasn't It

I stand by this man. I stand by this man because he stands for things. Not only for things, he stands on things. Things like aircraft carriers and rubble and recently flooded city squares. And that sends a strong message: that no matter what happens to America, she will always rebound -- with the most powerfully staged photo ops in the world.

--Stephen Colbert, White House Correspondents Dinner, 2006



dailykos: Meanwhile.... (in the lower 9th ward of New Orleans, 8.5 months later)



People living outdoors in camping tents, in America, 8 1/2 months after the federally-built levees broke.

Happy Birthday To Me ... And Stephen Colbert

Bush contemplates sending Colbert on all-expenses paid permanent vacation to Guantanimo for his 42nd birthday.
We're kind of a freaky lot, the May 13ths, weirdos like Jim Jones and Dennis Rodman (not that I'm equating their weirdness), and tons of artists, actors and musicians. This year for the first time I notice I share a birthday with Stephen Colbert. Go watch the Correspondents Dinner roast again to celebrate.

Wikipedia: May 13

# 1882 - Georges Braque, French painter (d. 1963)
# 1907 - Dame Daphne du Maurier, English author (d. 1989)
# 1913 - Gil Evans, Canadian musician (d. 1988)
# 1914 - Joe Louis, American boxer (d. 1981)
# 1923 - Beatrice Arthur, American actress
# 1931 - Jim Jones, American cult leader (d. 1978)
# 1939 - Harvey Keitel, American actor
# 1941 - Ritchie Valens, American singer (d. 1959)
# 1944 - Armistead Maupin, American author
# 1950 - Stevie Wonder, American singer and musician
# 1956 - Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, Founder of the Art of Living Foundation
# 1961 - Dennis Rodman, American basketball player and actor
# 1964 - Stephen Colbert, American comedian and actor
# 1966 - Darius Rucker, American singer (Hootie & The Blowfish)
# 1978 - Barry Zito, baseball player
# 1978 - Mike Bibby, American basketball player

Wikipedia missed one: Oguchi Onyewu, defender for the U.S. Men's National Soccer Team, born May 13, 1982.

From thisyearthatday.com, add

1950 : Peter Gabriel, rocker (Genesis-Against All Odds)

and from BellaOnline.com

1943 Mary Wells, singer ("My Guy")

All I wanted for my birthday this year was frogmarching, but I guess that will have to wait. Maybe next week?

truthout: BREAKING
Jason Leopold:
Rove Informs White House
He Will Be Indicted

Reaction Shot

Bush contemplates sending Colbert to Guantanimo after Correspondents Dinner
For your viewing pleasure, here's a YouTube video showing seven minutes of Bush's reaction to Stephen Colbert's Press Secretary Audition video.

Pissy, pissy little man.

I saw this at DailyKos: Wow! He was PISSED! Bush Reaction to Colbert : New ABC Video

Gitchyer Stephen Colbert Here

Atrios says YouTube has been forced to pull its video of Colbert's Correspondent's Dinner speech; now you have to go to AOL to get his fabulous skewer job.

My favorite joke:

I stand by this man. I stand by this man because he stands for things. Not only for things, he stands on things. Things like aircraft carriers and rubble and recently flooded city squares. And that sends a strong message: that no matter what happens to America, she will always rebound -- with the most powerfully staged photo ops in the world.

Once Upon a Time, The New York Times Covered Insulting Speeches at the Correspondents Dinner

The Wayback Machine
We're going back in time.....

back......

back.......

to Saturday, March 23, 1996. Don Imus spoke at the Radio-Television Correspondents Dinner on Thursday, March 21, 1996:

NYTimes:
NATIONAL DESK

Unexpectedly, the Clintons Are Skewered at a Dinner

By LAWRIE MIFFLIN (NYT)
Published: March 23, 1996

When the Radio-Television Correspondents Association invited Don Imus, the WFAN radio morning man in New York, to be the after-dinner speaker at its annual gala on Thursday night in Washington, members knew how uninhibited his barbs could be. And how well informed; Mr. Imus is as well known for being obsessed with politics as for being a so-called shock jock.

But the correspondents apparently got more than they bargained for when Mr. Imus made fun of President Clinton's supposed extramarital affairs and Hillary Clinton's legal problems -- with both the President and the First Lady sitting on the dais as he spoke.

The remarks were deemed so insulting that the association sent a letter of apology to the Clintons yesterday, and Michael D. McCurry, the President's press secretary, asked C-Span, the cable network that routinely rebroadcasts Washington events, to refrain from retransmitting this one.

At C-Span, the vice president for programming, Terry Murphy, said the dinner speech would be rebroadcast, tonight at 8, as scheduled. Then, Mr. Murphy -- who is also the chairman of the correspondents association -- signed the letter apologizing to the Clintons.

At his daily news briefing yesterday, Mr. McCurry said he had not discussed Mr. Imus's remarks with President or Mrs. Clinton, and had acted on his own in calling C-Span.

"I just thought it was so bad," Mr. McCurry said, "that they ought to just think about it before they automatically re-aired it."

About 3,000 people in the Washington Hilton heard Mr. Imus, along with a live C-Span audience. Not many more than that would have been expected to hear him on C-Span tonight, if not for Mr. McCurry's calling attention to the rebroadcast. The cable network, the home of endless Congressional hearings, political speeches and policy discussions, does not typically attract a large crowd on Saturday nights.

Mr. Imus's program -- 660 on the AM dial in New York -- is syndicated to radio stations around the country, and Mr. Clinton and many other politicians have been on the program.

On Thursday night, Mr. Imus began by shuffling some papers in front of him, saying that they did not appear to be his notes. He wondered where they had come from, and said that they did not look like papers someone would leave lying around.

He then looked directly at Mrs. Clinton, making an obvious connection to an aide's finding of papers important to the Whitewater investigation "lying around" in a room at the White House. Later, Mr. Imus jokingly referred to Mrs. Clinton's having been "indicted."

He also made insulting references to Speaker Newt Gingrich's lesbian half sister, Senator Bob Kerrey's "wooden leg," and Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr.'s hair transplant, and allusions to the marital problems of several television people in the room.

"His satire was in many ways brilliant," said a television correspondent who was there but who insisted on anonymity, "but it was deeply and personally cutting. The President, the First Lady and Speaker Gingrich were clearly not amused; you could see by their faces. But it was Imus to the hilt; he was right on his game."

Asked whether the association had been aware of how tasteless Mr. Imus's "game" could be, Kenan Block, the outgoing president, who selected Mr. Imus, said he and Mr. Imus had talked several times beforehand about what was appropriate for this audience.

"He said, 'I can't tell womanizing jokes about the President with his wife sitting right there,' and 'Don't worry, I'm not going to embarrass myself,' " said Mr. Block, a producer for "The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer" on PBS.

"I felt he knew what the limits were," Mr. Block said. "We took a risk, and unfortunately it didn't turn out the way we hoped. I can't pass the buck. It was my fault."

Mr. Imus, who is on vacation, was unavailable for comment yesterday.

Yet Stephen Colbert is ignored. And they say we have a liberal media. Hah!

Must See TV

Pay no attention to that little man in the corner
Stephen Colbert put George Bush on the spit, with a side of pompous Washington journalists, grilled to perfection, at the Correspondents Dinner last night.

I saw the replay after midnight and was afraid I was going to wake up my upstairs neighbor with my peals of laughter.

It was a little tense in the room, as almost no one seemed to enjoy being the main dish of the barbecue. George and Laura had real sourpusses.

I say 'almost' because Injustice Scalia (Colbert addressed him with a "Vaffunculo", and some other hand gestures, "I'm just saying hi to my Sicilian paisan") grinned broadly and went to the podium after it was over to shake Colbert's hand. George Bush put on a fake smile to shake his hand, then it disappeared as he turned away. Laura didn't even extend her hand. She and Colbert just nodded at each other. Helen Thomas (star of Colbert's video when she pursued him trying to ask why we went to war in Iraq) got a big hug and kiss.

The corporate media seems to be trying to pretend it didn't happen. CNN is running a piece on Bush's schtick with his fake Bush sidekick, with no mention of Colbert. C-Span doesn't have it on the schedule today. Hmmmmm.

Guess you'll have to watch it on the internet. Crooks & Liars has the video, and several other links.

Editor & Publisher: Colbert Lampoons Bush at White House Correspondents Dinner-- President Does Not Seem Amused

Colbert, who spoke in the guise of his talk show character, who ostensibly supports the president strongly, urged the Bush to ignore his low approval ratings, saying they were based on reality, “and reality has a well-known liberal bias.”

He attacked those in the press who claim that the shake-up at the White House was merely re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. “This administration is soaring, not sinking,” he said. “If anything, they are re-arranging the deck chairs on the Hindenburg.”

Colbert told Bush he could end the problem of protests by retired generals by refusing to let them retire. He compared Bush to Rocky Balboa in the “Rocky” movies, always getting punched in the face—“and Apollo Creed is everything else in the world.”

Turning to the war, he declared, "I believe that the government that governs best is a government that governs least, and by these standards we have set up a fabulous government in Iraq."

He noted former Ambassador Joseph Wilson in the crowd, just three tables away from Karl Rove, and that he had brought " Valerie Plame." Then, worried that he had named her, he corrected himself, as Bush aides might do, "Uh, I mean... he brought Joseph Wilson's wife." He might have "dodged the bullet," he said, as prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald wasn't there.

Colbert also made biting cracks about missing WMDs, “photo ops” on aircraft carriers and at hurricane disasters, melting glaciers and Vice President Cheney shooting people in the face. He advised the crowd, "if anybody needs anything at their tables, speak slowly and clearly on into your table numbers and somebody from the N.S.A. will be right over with a cocktail. "

Observing that Bush sticks to his principles, he said, "When the president decides something on Monday, he still believes it on Wednesday - no matter what happened Tuesday."

Also lampooning the press, Colbert complained that he was “surrounded by the liberal media who are destroying this country, except for Fox News. Fox believes in presenting both sides of the story — the president’s side and the vice president’s side." He also reflected on the alleged good old days, when the media was still swallowing the WMD story.

Addressing the reporters, he said, "You should spend more time with your families, write that novel you've always wanted to write. You know, the one about the fearless reporter who stands up to the administration. You know-- fiction."

He claimed that the Secret Service name for Bush's new press secretary is "Snow Job." Colbert closed his routine with a video fantasy where he gets to be White House Press Secretary, complete with a special “Gannon” button on his podium. By the end, he had to run from Helen Thomas and her questions about why the U.S. really invaded Iraq and killed all those people.

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.

Youtube video of Colbert's video piece: his application for White House Press Secretary.

The Democratic Daily has a rough transcript.

A high quality bittorrent file of Colbert's appearance. (I saw this at Boing Boing)

AOL Poll on who was funniest at Correspondents dinner; Bush imitator Bridges holds a slim lead.