disutility function

inspiration for this post comes from many conversations abt the internet’s ability (or lack thereof) to assist the progressive’s spread of ideas and actions and, more tangibly, georgia10’s diary post that, besides being insightful as always, ends with this call-to-arms:

No amount of calls to MSNBC or CNN or the AP will result in giving Colbert’s critique the coverage it deserved; the news is already in a new cycle, and while the rhetorical wounds inflicted by Colbert’s speech are still fresh, his wordsmithing is old news for the media.

Where the media fails, the citizens step up. The Colbert critique has gone viral, with internet users rapidly emailing it to thousands online … Email the video to your friends, your family, Republican, Independent, and Democrat alike. I have, and in doing so, I know that Stephen Colbert speaks for me.

if you havent seen it yet, this is one of those moments where the metaphor ‘the _____ was so thick, you could cut it with a knife’ is a bit under-appropriate. watching Colbert rip line after line into both the White House and the main-stream media’s crimes the past five years in front of a room full of, well, the White House and the main-stream media was serioulsy painful.

im not sure i need to go into another of my god-awful analyses of the performance or the lack of media coverage of it, when i would rather just point interested parties to much better discussions of the performance.

so here goes a few nods in a couple directions:

Billmon, over at Whiskey Bar compares Colbert’s performance to the recent “satire” movie American Dreamz (i didnt even realize it was supposed to be a satire, and i mean come on, its got Hugh Grant, what kind of satire stars Hugh Grant?).

In his analysis, Billmon points out the obvious fact that Colbert was quite simply telling everyone in the room they are not only complicit in the utter destruction of this country that is happening right before our eyes, but that he knows it, and they know it, and somewhere around 65 to 70% of the American people know it.

Colbert’s routine was designed to draw blood — as good political satire should. It seemed obvious, at least to me, that he didn’t just despise his audience, he hated it. While that hardly merits comment here in Left Blogostan, White House elites clearly aren’t used to having such contempt thrown in their faces at one of their most cherished self-congratulatory events. So it’s no surprise the scribes have tried hard to expunge it from the semi-official record — as Peter Daou notes over at the Huffington Post.

Colbert used satire the way it’s used in more openly authoritarian societies: as a political weapon, a device for raising issues that can’t be addressed directly. He dragged out all the unmentionables — the Iraq lies, the secret prisons, the illegal spying, the neutered stupidity of the lapdog press — and made it pretty clear that he wasn’t really laughing at them, much less with them. It may have been comedy, but it also sounded like a bill of indictment, and everybody understood the charges.

If things were going well, if Bush’s approval ratings were north of 60%, gas was 80 cents a gallon and the war was being won, I suspect Colbert would have gotten a different reception. His audience could have pretended to be amused — in that smug, patronizing way we all remember from the neocon glory days. But we’re long past the point where the Cheneyites and their journalistic flunkies are willing to suffer such barbs with good humor. The regime’s legal and political troubles are too serious, the wounds too open and too deep for the gang to smile while somebody like Colbert gleefully jabs a finger into them.

There were people at last night’s dinner who really could end up in jail — depending on Patrick Fitzgerald’s theory of the case and/or the results of the next two elections. Things have been done over the past five years that can’t be undone; crimes committed that can’t be uncommitted. If Colbert faced a tough crowd last night, it was probably because so many of them understand that the Cheneyites and the Rovians really are rearranging the deck chairs on the Hindenberg, and that if the airship goes down in flames their own window seats are going to get pretty toasty. Jobs are at stake. Careers could be at stake. For all we know lives could be at stake.

It’s an ugly moment, and expecting people like that to laugh at their own misfortunes isn’t very realistic.

and over at Think Progress, they’ve highlighted a little exchange on fox news in regards to Colbert going “over the line” and being “not very funny” … not that anyone ever accused that crowd of having a well developed sense of humor, or of irony in specific

Transcript: …

DOOCY: [Bush] was playing a good sport as his body double was there. But shortly after that, the paid performer, Stephen Colbert of the Colbert Report, took the stage and did about 15 minutes and it was very uncomfortable. Personally I felt like he went over the line. Today in Lloyd Grove’s column, he says that Colbert “bombed badly.” It was not very funny.

i personally like the little jab at his being a paid performer, you know, as if to make light of the fact that in george bush’s america, even Colbert has a job … or maybe im wrong and it was meant to, lets just say, make him sound a bit like a clown or performing monkey of some sort….

and, um, for the record, Lloyd Grove is a gossip columnist for the NY Daily News … ummmm, yeah…… thats the fox news facts support net for you.

oh and here’s a good update from our gray-haired friends over at Salon, its a good piece, i might recommend you read the whole thing

Make no mistake, Stephen Colbert is a dangerous man — a bomb thrower, an assassin, a terrorist with boring hair and rimless glasses. It’s a wonder the Secret Service let him so close to the president of the United States.
…
Colbert is not just another comedian with barbed punch lines and a racy vocabulary. He is a guerrilla fighter, a master of the old-world art of irony. For Colbert, the punch line is just the addendum. The joke is in the setup. The meat of his act is not in his barbs but his character — the dry idiot, “Stephen Colbert,” God-fearing pitchman, patriotic American, red-blooded pundit and champion of “truthiness.” “I’m a simple man with a simple mind,” the deadpan Colbert announced at the dinner. “I hold a simple set of beliefs that I live by. Number one, I believe in America. I believe it exists. My gut tells me I live there.”
…
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.
…
Laura Bush did not shake his hand.

thanks for reading, please take one and pass it on

Update 5/3:

Crooks and Liars has a clip of The Repor(t) on Monday night in which Stephen recaps the success of his performance.

I think my favorite part is his mention of Ludacris being at the event. i wont spoil the timing of the joke, because as we all know, timing is everything.

so you should check it out for yourself …

…

I have shed this dry hard shell
Traded its comfort for your eyes