Demagogue

Judging from Lisa de Moraes' column, the White House correspondents are almost as boring as the man they cover for a living. And, while we're at it, it sounds as though de Moraes could use some help removing the pole from her you-know-what.

In today's Washington Post, she writes:

Comedy Central's faux news show host Stephen Colbert stupidly delivered a stingingly satirical speech about President Bush and those who cover him at Saturday's White House Correspondents' Association Dinner because "he was under the impression they had hired him to do the thing he does on TV every night," Jon Stewart quipped last night on his "Daily Show."

Unless the Association explicitly asked him to do something other than his normal schtick, it sounds like a perfectly reasonable impression for Colbert to have. What was truly stupid was the apparent assumption made by the WHCA organizers that Colbert was not going to engage in stinging satire.

Hello!? Have any of them ever watched his show? That's what he does. That's all that he does.

According to de Moraes:

This year, according to news accounts ... the president and first lady were unamused by Colbert's remarks to the estimated 2,600 people who attended. In his speech, Colbert ... advised Bush to ignore his lousy approval ratings because they were based on reality "and reality has a well-known liberal bias."

What the correspondents might not have expected was the degree to which Colbert's verbal darts would be aimed at them:

Colbert also made no friends in the crowd when he advised them to remember the rules of covering the White House: "The president makes decisions . . . the press secretary announces those decisions, and you people of the press type those decisions."

In your spare time, he advised them, "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."

I guess when satirical humor gets this close to reality, it can sting.