For the last eighteen months or so, the chips have been stacking up against the Republican party's corrupted culture. Abramoff's tangled web of lobbyist bribes affecting numerous incumbents, links to officials being bribed by prostitutes, Scooter Libby's potential indictment epidemic - there's so many contagious corruption bugs out there that it seems everyone in red is vulnerable and hasn't backed up their immunisations.
The one intact prevention against corruption, NSA spying scandals and the rapidly disintegrating Iraq (civil) war has been the media. Even as the president's approval ratings slumped to new lows, the bought-and-paid-for journalists refused to admit the diseases to the public and although many people now realise it, they've been intact from major challenges.
Until Stephen Colbert stepped up to the plate, criticism of the partisanship of the WaPo and Fox could be shrugged off easily. Not anymore.
The united front the media has put up is the one thing keeping the administration from collapsing under its own scandals. When any critc can be blasted by attack pieces across most of the 'professional' journalism people are going to see, the chances are the target will fold before it can win its argument - the combined media forces are too strong.
Stephen Colbert is a different kind of target - one so satirical some people think his faux-Republican persona is real. He's clever, quick witted and he can point out people's weaknesses in a way that half the time they don't even notice until it's too late.
The White House Correspondents' Assocation dinner speech shows the power of new media that until now the traditional forms have been able to ignore. Viral videos, blogs and podcasts didn't have the reach that a newspaper or television channel had, so the swarm of denial and silence could outweigh any criticism of the government.
The sheer volume of views of Colbert's speech on sites like YouTube and via bittorrent and the vehemence of the media response shows that they too are scared. They aren't in control of large proportions of people like they would have been ten or even five years ago. The internet gives people too much free thought to avoid publications that don't tell the truth, which is ultimately more satisfying than lies and omission.
For the first time, the media is feeling the threat that their bias might be truly (rather than in a shrugged off fashion) exposed to the world at large. They will follow the government line if it helps their numbers but ultimately a paper or channel is there to shift numbers and make money. The fact that so many people have responded positively to the Stephen Colbert story does more than make the media angry at its criticism. It makes the editors and owners scared that people might switch off or turn away from the printstand.
If the line they're taking supporting the administration ceases to get them viewers and readers, the media will have to change tactics completely. They have to, if they want to keep their jobs. But they'd rather not.
So the media attacks Colbert with every barrel they have. The easiest is to ignore it but too many people have seen it and this rapidly fails. 'He's not funny' is the next line of defense, but the fact that the look on the audience and especially the presidents face was the funniest part of the joke overwhelms this argument. The media don't find it funny because they are the joke. The fact that everyone else does enjoy the joke means they can't hide behind that either.
Personal attack is the last line of the media's defence, the trump card they play to pressurise the target into submission as usually the target can do little to protect himself against whatever allegations are made.
Stephen Colbert is too clever and more importantly to highly exposed to succumb to this. A man who has a regular tv show in which he has full reign to unleash his satirical comments is not the person the media wants to be attcking right now. He can throw their hollow arguments back at them with too much truthiness for them to deny.
The media is the most dangerous part of this administration as its attacks and omissions allow a lot of the corruption to go away unchallenged. If the administration is to be defeated, the media is the biggest obstacle. However, with their attacks on such an intelligent satirist, the MSM may have started their own demise.