Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community - View Single Post - Yes or No: Stephen Colbert:Journalists = stenographers recording what Bush admin. sez

host · 11-28-2007, 12:21 AM

Remember the video of Stephen Colbert at the white house correspondent's dinner, about 18 months ago? We did a thread on it:
http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showthread.php?t=104015

....and many of us posted our reactions. Was Colbert's performance more accurately described like this:

Quote:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...100680_pf.html
All Kidding Aside

By Dan Froomkin
Special to washingtonpost.com
Monday, May 1, 2006; 2:21 PM

President Bush on Saturday night had the audience at the White House Correspondents' Association Dinner in stitches. With doppelganger comedian Steve Bridges alongside -- playing his inner self -- Bush poked gentle fun of his own mangling of the English language, his belligerence and his feelings about the media.

Then Comedy Central satirist Stephen Colbert ripped those stitches out.

Colbert was merciless, reserving his most potent zingers for the people in spitting distance: The president who took the nation to war on false pretenses and the press corps that let him do it.....

...Colbert stayed in character as the bombastic, over-the-top, right-wing cable TV host he plays on the Colbert Report.

"Now, I know there are some polls out there saying this man has a 32% approval rating. But guys like us; we don't pay attention to the polls. We know that polls are just a collection of statistics that reflect what people are thinking in 'reality.' <h3>And reality has a well-known liberal bias. . . .</h3>

"The greatest thing about this man is he'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's beliefs never will. And 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. . . .

"Listen, let's review the rules. Here's how it works: <h3>the president makes decisions. He's the decider. The press secretary announces those decisions, and you people of the press type those decisions down. Make, announce, type. Put them through a spell check and go home.</h3> Get to know your family again. Make love to your wife. 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 -- fiction."

....<h3>"The proof of his accuracy lies in how badly the . . . Washington press corps reacted.</h3> After all, this wasn't the usual baby-soft slapstick they usually get at the correspondents' dinner . . . [F]or the most part the press sat on their hands -- while just moments before, they were laughing uproariously at President Bush's incredibly lame skit with a Bush impressionist. <h3>That was Colbert's real feat: Showing us the real Washington media world</h3>, where everyone worries so much about offending someone, anyone , that the least bit of frank talk turns them into obedient little church mice."......

.....Or, does the following Time magazine "coverage" and "correction", support Wapo's Richard Cohen's May 4, 2006 criticism of Stephen Colbert, or does it support the POV that Colbert was "right on target?

<h3>Yes or No?</h3>

In reaction to Colbert's much publicized appearance as toastmaster in May, 2006, Richard Cohen took exception:

Quote:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...050302202.html
So Not Funny

By Richard Cohen
Thursday, May 4, 2006; Page A25

....The commentary, though, is also what I do, and it will make the point that Colbert was not just a failure as a comedian but rude. Rude is not the same as brash. It is not the same as brassy. It is not the same as gutsy or thinking outside the box. Rudeness means taking advantage of the other person's sense of decorum or tradition or civility that keeps that other person from striking back or, worse, rising in a huff and leaving. The other night, that person was George W. Bush.

Colbert made jokes about Bush's approval rating, which hovers in the middle 30s. He made jokes about Bush's intelligence, mockingly comparing it to his own. "We're not some brainiacs on nerd patrol," he said. Boy, that's funny.

Colbert took a swipe at Bush's Iraq policy, at domestic eavesdropping, and <h3>he took a shot at the news corps for purportedly being nothing more than stenographers recording what the Bush White House said.</h3> He referred to the recent staff changes at the White House, chiding the media for supposedly repeating the cliche "rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic" when he would have put it differently: "This administration is not sinking. This administration is soaring. If anything, they are rearranging the deck chairs on the Hindenburg." A mixed metaphor, and lame as can be.

Why are you wasting my time with Colbert, I hear you ask. Because he is representative of what too often passes for political courage, not to mention wit, in this country. His defenders -- and they are all over the blogosphere -- will tell you he spoke truth to power. This is a tired phrase, as we all know, but when it was fresh and meaningful it suggested repercussions, consequences -- maybe even death in some countries. When you spoke truth to power you took the distinct chance that power would smite you, toss you into a dungeon or -- if you're at work -- take away your office.

But in this country, anyone can insult the president of the United States. Colbert just did it, and he will not suffer any consequence at all. He knew that going in. He also knew that Bush would have to sit there and pretend to laugh at Colbert's lame and insulting jokes. Bush himself plays off his reputation as a dunce and his penchant for mangling English. Self-mockery can be funny. Mockery that is insulting is not. The sort of stuff that would get you punched in a bar can be said on a dais with impunity. <h3>This is why Colbert was more than rude. He was a bully.....</h3>

On November 21, in print, and online, Time journalist Joe Klein reported:

Quote:

http://www.time.com/time/politics/ar...686509,00.html
The Tone-Deaf Democrats
Wednesday, Nov. 21, 2007 By JOE KLEIN

....The Democratic strategy on the FISA legislation in the House is equally foolish. There is broad, bipartisan agreement on how to legalize the surveillance of phone calls and emails of foreign intelligence targets. The basic principle is this: if a suspicious pattern of calls from a terrorist suspect to a U.S. citizen is found, a FISA court warrant is necessary to monitor those communications. But to safeguard against civil-liberty abuses, all records of clearly nontargeted Americans who receive emails or phone calls from foreign suspects would be, in effect, erased. Unfortunately, Speaker Nancy Pelosi quashed the House Intelligence Committee's bipartisan effort and supported a Democratic bill that — Limbaugh is salivating — <h2>would require the surveillance of every foreign-terrorist target's calls to be approved by the FISA court</h2>, an institution founded to protect the rights of U.S. citizens only. In the lethal shorthand of political advertising, it would give terrorists the same legal protections as Americans. That is well beyond stupid....

On November 15, the house of representatives passed a FISA revision bill containing the following:

Quote:

http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c110:H.R.3773:

There are 3 versions of Bill Number H.R.3773 for the 110th Congress
1 . RESTORE Act of 2007 (Introduced in House)[H.R.3773.IH]
2 . RESTORE Act of 2007 (Reported in House)[H.R.3773.RH]
3 . RESTORE Act of 2007 (Engrossed as Agreed to or Passed by House)<a href="http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/D?c110:3:./temp/~c110iHF3P5::">[H.R.3773.EH]</a>

<a href="http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/F?c110:3:./temp/~c110iHF3P5:e3684:">CLARIFICATION OF ELECTRONIC SURVEILLANCE OF NON-UNITED STATES PERSONS OUTSIDE THE UNITED STATES</a>
H.R.3773
RESTORE Act of 2007 (Engrossed as Agreed to or Passed by House)

`CLARIFICATION OF ELECTRONIC SURVEILLANCE OF NON-UNITED STATES PERSONS OUTSIDE THE UNITED STATES

`Sec. 105A. (a) Foreign to Foreign Communications-

`(1) IN GENERAL- Notwithstanding any other provision of this Act, <h3>a court order is not required for electronic surveillance directed at the acquisition of the contents of any communication between persons that are not known to be United States persons and are reasonably believed to be located outside the United States for the purpose of collecting foreign intelligence information</h3>, without respect to whether the communication passes through the United States or the surveillance device is located within the United States.....

When democrats complained to Joe Klein's editor at Time about his clearly erroneous and misleading reporting, here is the correction to the article added by Time's editor:

Quote:

http://www.time.com/time/politics/ar...686509,00.html

In the original version of this story, Joe Klein wrote that the House Democratic version of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) <h3>would allow a court review</h3> of individual foreign surveillance targets. <h2>Republicans believe the bill can be interpreted that way, but Democrats don't.</h2>

Before the Time correction was added to Klein's November 21, article, Klein wrote this on his blog on November 24:

Quote:

http://www.time-blog.com/swampland/2...orrection.html
November 24, 2007 6:17
FISA Confusion and Correction
Posted by Joe Klein

I may have made a mistake in my column this week about the FISA legislation passed by the House, although it’s difficult to tell for sure given the technical nature of the bill’s language and fierce disagreements between even moderate Republicans and Democrats on the Committee about what the bill actually does contain.
Democrats say that I was wrong to report that the bill includes a FISA court review of individual foreign terrorist targets who might communicate with U.S. persons, although it does include an annual “basket” review of procedures used by U.S. intelligence agencies to target foreign suspects. <h3>The Republican Committee staff disagrees and says my reporting is correct.</h3>

I have to side with the Democrats. I reported as fact a provision of the bill that seems to be disputable, to say the least. Clearly, I didn’t do sufficient vetting of the facts.....

Despite his denials, later in his blog post (click on link at top of preceding quote box), it appears that Klein acted as a stenographer copying "up is actually down", opposition talking points which starkly contrasted the actual language in the version of the FISA bill actually passed on Nov. 15, by house democrats.

<h3>More troubling, Time's editor's concept of a correction to Klein's article was to simply "steno" what "both sides" said about the disputed language in the FISA bill, instead of actually "CORRECTING" KLein's report to make it an accurate account of the bill's language...</h3>

My answer is "yes", Cohen's criticisms of Colbert is weakened by this ridiculousness at Time, and Colbert has wrongly and repeatedly been taken to task by the "altered state" in the parallel universe of the right of center POV:

Quote:

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1007/6460.html
Sunday talk show tip sheet

By: Daniel W. Reilly
Oct 19, 2007 06:47 PM EST

.....Let’s hope Colbert does better Sunday morning than he did in his last big-time Washington appearance, when he bombed in prime time last year at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner.....