I remember Ian Hislop once saying how he had tried to take a satirical programme (a version of Spitting Image?) to the States, only to be met with disbelief: ‘You mean you want to make fun of the President?’. Which

No, that’s a good point, and one worth making as loudly as anyone wants.

I guess I did get a bit caught up today in attacking the idiocy spouted by what is probably a minority of morons and woolly thinkers.

What’s interesting and important is that it went *unreported*. It was as if it never happened, his appearance at the evening an after-thought, if mentioned at all. I’ve heard a rumour that C-SPAN repeated it with the Colbert speech removed, although that’s unconfirmed.

Who cares if some morons spout hyperbole? We ignore them as we always do. But don’t lose sight of the media silence on a speech that so heavily attacked media silence.

Jon Stewart had some nice comments on Monday’s Daily Show. He finished saying, “Stephen, we’ve never been more proud of you buddy.” Then pointed at the camera, hesitated for two beats, and added, “Holy shit.”

In Colbert’s own programme, after boasting (in character) of how he had enraptured the audience, he showed a clip of the speech – the Hindenberg gag – to which they’d edited shots of the audience staring blank-faced, with crickets chirping.

And Colbert – I suppose it could have been a trap that backfired. They were surely aware of who he was before hiring him. They knew what he’d like to say, but thought he wouldn’t have the nerve with the president a few feet away – that he’d be awed by all the power in the room. And if he makes a mild mannered speech that they can spin to seem supportive then all his power as a satirist has been swiped from him. Besides, should the plan backfire, and he does what he actually did, it’s ok because the news everyone reads and watches won’t print it or show it anyway. Sure a few bloggers get het up, but they have very little power to do anything – and next minute they’ll be discussing Tomb Raider with just as much passion.

It was funny (for the most part; some of it was rambling), it was scathing, it was even brave to do it while Bush was almost within touching distance. What it wasn’t was something which will change things in any shape, way or form. That’s fine; there’s a lot to be said for standing up and doing the right thing whether it will have a positive effect or not, and my problem isn’t with Colbert or what he said. It is solely with the moronic reaction of some of the comment. Can you really defend with a straight face some of stuff on the http://thankyoustephencolbert.org/ site and in the comments at Daily Kos?

And while Colbert has done what many a decent lefty has long dreamed of doing (sitting Bush down and telling him exactly what one thinks of him, the adminstration and the affiliated media), I find it difficult to believe that it’s anything Bush wasn’t aware of before.

Was it a big deal? For Colbert, even for political satire and criticism in the US, yes. In the long run, probably not. There’s a lot of hope attached to this, and some people are going to be very disappointed when this disappears. Does that stink? Of course it does, and maybe I’m being too much of a curmudgeon about it, but I just don’t want to see people latching onto unfair expectations.

If you stood up at an Iranian presidential dinner and did the most mild political jokes in the history of existence, it would be one hell of a move. If you said them about Blair, you’d look more pathetic than the bastard offspring of Rory Bremner and Hugh Dennis.

What Colbert did was a *big deal*, and failing to recognise this is failing to take any notice of the culture in which it happened. YES, if you said that about Blair at a UK conference it wouldn’t be that huge, but that isn’t what happened, and it isn’t where it happened. No one’s ever done that before. And yes, that’s not good enough, and yes, that’s indicative of an inherent poverty, but it’s still the case. And he still did it. And he deserves credit for that, and the reaction is understandable.

There’s a deep oppression of a political voice occuring in the US, and when it gets through it’s shocking and affecting. Going, “Blah blah, he only said a few rude things,” is daft. He said things to the *President of the United States* that no one’s said before.

It’s as if Colbert has single-handedly brought about the downfall of the entire Bush adminstration for some of these idiots, when in the real world, if anyone is pausing for consideration at all, it’s to shrug and move on.

Of course the reaction is understandable; it doesn’t stop it being utterly devoid of reason.

Colbert isn’t Murrow, but he’s kept his balls in a situation where pretty much everyone else has lost them.