The Truthiness… It burns!
May 4th 2006
It’s been a long time since I posted anything even remotely political, but Steven Colbert’s speech at the White House Correspondents Association Dinner was so well done that I have to keep on spreading the truthiness.
Salon said it best:
“It’s not just that Colbert’s jokes were hitting their mark. We already know that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, that the generals hate Rumsfeld or that Fox News lists to the right. Those cracks are old and boring. What Colbert did was expose the whole official, patriotic, right-wing, press-bashing discourse as a sham, as more “truthiness” than truth.”
You have to imagine the scene — thousands of the most powerful people in the world, including President George W. Bush, all forced to watch this guy speaking from his gut with such an ironic and powerful tone, yet at the same time almost unfunny, almost painful to watch… all but two of his jokes were met with dead silence, and you get the sense that he meant them to be that way. It was a truly courageous speech with no attention whatsoever to what is correct, politically or otherwise, no care of being well-recieved or humorous, no hiding anything; needless to say, the room did not know how to handle the awkwardness of the truth.
Watch it if you want. It hurts, but it’s so funny–not always his jokes, but the whole situation.
And once you do, give thanks if you are so inclined. 