Reykjavík Grapevine - 19.05.2006, Qupperneq 10

News of the event arrived a little late in Iceland,
but Stephen Colbert’s April 29th speech at the
White House Correspondents’ Association
Dinner definitely has our attention now. The
Grapevine has mocked most political parties in
Iceland, and in America and elsewhere for that
matter. And we have proudly gotten behind
artists and figures who saw injustice and spoke
up. But we have not walked up to a room full of
the most powerful people in the world, people
known to not take criticism well, and bullied
them continuously for 24 minutes, as Colbert
did.
To celebrate the event, and to express
our complete shock that Colbert did what he
did, we will present the best quotes from the
comedy sketch that put punk to shame. To set
the scene, George Bush, the President of the
United States, held a banquet at which he was
to earn the press’s graces by showing he had a
sense of humour – last year, Mrs. Bush took the
lead by explaining George’s fondness for horse
genitalia in a wry, WASPy kind of way. This
year, presumably, Stephen Colbert was sup-
posed to imitate a Fox News correspondent and
joke about blue states and red states.
“Madame First Lady, Mr. President, my
name is Stephen Colbert and tonight it’s my
privilege to celebrate this president. We’re not
so different, he and I. We get it. We’re not brai-
niacs on the nerd patrol. We’re not members
of the factinista. We go straight from the gut,
right sir? That’s where the truth lies, right down
here in the gut. Do you know you have more
nerve endings in your gut than you have in your
head? You can look it up. I know some of you
are going to say “I did look it up, and that’s not
true.” That’s ‘cause you looked it up in a book.
Next time, look it up in your gut. I did. My gut
tells me that’s how our nervous system works.
(…)
“I believe in pulling yourself up by your own
bootstraps. I believe it is possible – I saw this
guy do it once in Cirque du Soleil. It was magi-
cal. And though I am a committed Christian,
I believe that everyone has the right to their
own religion, be you Hindu, Jewish or Muslim.
I believe there are infinite paths to accepting
Jesus Christ as your personal saviour. (…)
“Now, I know there are some polls out
there saying this man has a 32% approval rating.
But guys like us, we don’t pay attention to the
polls. We know that polls are just a collection of
statistics that reflect what people are thinking
in “reality.” And reality has a well-known liberal
bias. (…)
“I stand by this man. I stand by this man
because he stands for things. Not only for
things, he stands on things. Things like aircraft
carriers and rubble and recently flooded city
squares. And that sends a strong message: that
no matter what happens to America, she will
always rebound – with the most powerfully
staged photo ops in the world. (…)
“As excited as I am to be here with the pres-
ident, I am appalled to be surrounded by the
liberal media that is destroying America, with
the exception of Fox News. Fox News gives you
both sides of every story: the president’s side,
and the vice president’s side.
“But the rest of you, what are you thinking,
reporting on NSA wiretapping or secret prisons
in Eastern Europe? Those things are secret
for a very important reason: they’re super-de-
pressing. And if that’s your goal, well, misery
accomplished.
“Over the last five years you people were so
good -- over tax cuts, WMD intelligence, the
effect of global warming. We Americans didn’t
want to know, and you had the courtesy not to
try to find out. Those were good times, as far as
we knew.
“But, listen, let’s review the rules. Here’s
how it works: the president makes decisions.
He’s the Decider. The Press Secretary an-
nounces those decisions, and you people of
the press type those decisions down. Make,
announce, type. Just put them through a spell
check and go home. Get to know your family
again. Make love to your wife. 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!
“Because really, what incentive do these
people have to answer your questions, after all?
I mean, nothing satisfies you. Everybody asks
for personnel changes. So the White House
has personnel changes. Then you write, “Oh,
they’re just rearranging the deck chairs on the
Titanic.” First of all, that is a terrible meta-
phor. This administration is not sinking. This
administration is soaring. If anything, they are
rearranging the deck chairs on the Hindenburg!
(…)
“See who we’ve got here tonight. General
Moseley, Air Force Chief of Staff. General Pe-
ter Pace, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
They still support Rumsfeld. Right, you guys
aren’t retired yet, right? Right, they still support
Rumsfeld.
“Look, by the way, I’ve got a theory about
how to handle these retired generals causing all
this trouble: don’t let them retire! Come on,
we’ve got a stop-loss program; let’s use it on
these guys. I’ve seen Zinni and that crowd on
Wolf Blitzer. If you’re strong enough to go on
one of those pundit shows, you can stand on a
bank of computers and order men into battle.
Come on.
“Jesse Jackson is here, the Reverend.
Haven’t heard from the Reverend in a little
while. I had him on the show. Very interesting
and challenging interview. You can ask him
anything, but he’s going to say what he wants,
at the pace that he wants. It’s like boxing a gla-
cier. Enjoy that metaphor, by the way, because
your grandchildren will have no idea what a
glacier is. (…)
“John McCain is here. John McCain, John
McCain, what a maverick! Somebody find out
what fork he used on his salad, because I guar-
antee you it wasn’t a salad fork. This guy could
have used a spoon! There’s no predicting him.
By the way, Senator McCain, it’s so wonderful
to see you coming back into the Republican
fold. I have a summer house in South Carolina;
look me up when you go to speak at Bob Jones
University. So glad you’ve seen the light, sir.”
When a comedian’s set goes horribly, hor-
ribly wrong, you say the entertainer bombed.
To give an example of the way the jokes Colbert
told were taken, think of the sensitivity of
mocking John McCain about his connections to
Bob Jones University. A Bob Jones University
professor had, during the 2000 presidential pri-
maries, helped to push Bush into the forefront
in South Carolina by sending an emailed report
that Senator McCain had an illegitimate, bi-
racial child. Not tasteful humour, and nothing
McCain found amusing when Colbert joked.
By any account, as a person there to
make the immediate audience laugh, Colbert
bombed. The marvel is what an effective, jaw-
dropping bombing he performed, directly to the
face of the most powerful men in the world.

You can access Colbert’s speech for free through
Google Video by searching the title “Colbert Roasts
President Bush.”
Reinventing the Bomb
Excerpts from the day Stephen Colbert made satire the new punk
by bart cameron
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