Stephen Colbert just mercilessly slapped down George Bush from ten feet away. Bush had to sit there and smile and pretend he liked it and could do nothing to stop him. Delicious!
Colbert worked in everything--everything! He smacked down the Republicans on:
NSA wiretapping
Katrina
Global warming
capitalist kissing up to China
the Republican aversion to facts
secret prisons in Eastern Europe
bad reporting on WMD intelligence
the complicity of the mainstream media
retired generals attacking Rumsfeld
the 32% approval rating
Jeff Gannon
Plamegate
the relentlessness of Helen Thomas askig tough questions
the culture of corruption
selected killer quotes (rough transcription):
I give people the truth unfiltered by factual argument. I call it the No Fact Zone. Fox News, I hold a copyright on that term.
The government that governs best is the government that governs least, and by these standards we have set up a fabulous government in Iraq.
reality has a well known liberal bias
I stand by this man because he stands for things. Not only for things, he stands on things, like aircraft carriers, rubble and recently flooded city squares. And that sends a strong mesasge that no matter what happens to America she will always rebound with the most powerfully staged photo ops in the world!
The greatest thing about this President is you know where he stands. He believes the same thing Wednesday that he believed on Monday, no matter what happened Tuesday!
Fox News gives you both sides of every story, the President's side and the Vice President's side.
Write that novel you've 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!
[Jesse Jackson] is a very challenging interview... It's like boxing a glacier. Enjoy that metaphor by the way because your grandchildren will have no idea what a glacier is.
Mayor Nagin is here from New Orleans, the Chocolate City... Mayor Nagin, I'd like to welcome you to Washington D.C., the Chocolate City with a marshmallow center... and a graham cracker crust of corruption.
It may appear that he was bombing because the sheltered Fox News watching conservative crowd is unaccustomed to satire and have never heard themselves so throughly skewered before. Republicans don't know how to laugh at themselves and the scattered Democrats are afraid to laugh heartily under the circumstances, but when they get home and watch it on Tivo they'll have tears in their eyes just like me watching it from the safety of home.
I think Stephen the brilliant, the magnificent, the unparalleled, accomplished what he set out to do:
He threw barbs at Bush and Cheney and selected other targets like McCain, Rove, McClellan, and Rumsfeld. He made rude gestures at Antonin Scalia. He showered rhetorical kisses on Helen Thomas.
Most important, he told them his name and they will never forget who he is. He didn't do what liberals usually do and agree to make fun of liberals too in order to appease the crowd. He was so good that they will never ask him back. At least until the liberals are in control of Washington again.
I just figured out why I'm so happy about this performance.
He said everything I would want to say if I could force George Bush to listen to me as a captive audience for 20 minutes.
It's being rebroadcast on C-Span right now. Watch it for yourself.