From Daily Kos :: Comments to
“The REAL reason the press threw Colbert down the memory hole”
Why this whole thing makes me angry
I’ve been trying to figure out why it makes me so angry that the press ignored this story despite the fact that they were sitting there staring at it for what, half an hour? It’s not that they missed it, they actually consciously chose not to report it.
And I realized the reasons that makes me so mad is that:
(1) This was a once in a lifetime opportunity. Bush is perhaps more averse to criticism than any previous president, and he is allowed to hide from it 99% of the time. That Colbert was chosen to speak is something of a small miracle in itself.
(2) He nailed it. Anyone who says “but, but… it wasn’t funny” has totally missed the point. The point is: a comedian just got up and had the balls to criticize President Bush on almost every aspect imagineable – to his face. If you look closely, Colbert actually looks directly at Bush throughout much of the time he’s at the podium.
You know what I call that?? A f&cking news story!! Regardless of whether you thought his jokes were funny or not, there’s simply no escaping the fact that this is a news story because Colbert criticized Bush to his face like no one has before.
And not only did he criticize Bush, he also criticized the media itself, and the interelationship of the two. He showed a video with Helen Thomas chasing a fictional White House press secretary who was scared shitless to answer the simple question of why we invaded Iraq.
But no, that’s not news.
I keep going back to the old joke about the headline that states: “Bush says world is flat; Dems disagree”. In every other case, the press will slavishly present two sides of the story. Like in the Abramoff case when they kept wanting to call it a bipartisan scandal even though it clearly was not.
Yet now, where are the two sides? Do we get a headline that says “Colbert satire rips Bush; Repubs downplay significance”? No. We get spoiled “reporters” who simply decide the story isn’t worth running at all. I’m fed up with this.