Cliff's Corner

The Week That Was 5/5/06

Another week. More preposterousness to report.

I’ve been having a hard time figuring out which was funnier, watching Stephen Colbert’s performance at the White House Correspondents Dinner last weekend or observing the Washington glitterati and RightWingosphere line up to defend our poor aggrieved president ever since.

Serially wrong Washington Post Columnist Richard Cohen (Iraq War good, investigating the Plame leak bad) and Richard Perle’s most neoconservative bowel movement, David Frum — our very own Jake and the Fatman investigating true comedy so the rest of us can just take their word for it — have said Colbert “bombed” and was “rude.” For Cohen this was right after he told us in his own column how “funny” he is, because apparently delirium is the new Lenny Bruce. As for Frum, I’m not sure how he was able to even proffer his opinion on Colbert’s comedy without reminding us for the 4,736th time that he coined the phrase axis of evil.

Which is somewhat more celebrated than his other lyrical contribution: Ten Ways Not to Get Laid Until You Can Drive a Rental.

But they weren’t the only ones angry. The Decider sat on the dais with steam coming out of his ears, as he was mocked for some of the greatest war planning by a colonizing power since Dien Bien Phu, poll numbers requiring Levitra-CPR and his personal adaptation of Chuck Norris, Texas Ranger machismo. Yet, while we may know the brush-clearing cowboy act to be performance art, don’t let it ever be said that George W. Bush hasn’t put his life in danger. He was, after all, arrested for being piss drunk behind the wheel of an automobile. If only Colbert had mentioned that one Karen Hughes might have leapt up on the stage and gnawed off chunks of his soft tissue (purely for retribution, not because it was feeding time of course).

Much of the rest of the crowd could only gasp at jokes that were funny to any sentient being located outside the radius of the Reagan family’s favorite Hilton. I wonder why that is? Could it be that much like the once lauded Bob Woodward, most of those “reporters” in the audience see their wealth and status as a formula to be divided by the number of inches that separate their noses from the debased buttocks of Washington power? Or was it possibly because a majority of attendees knew that they just may have to endure a crooked-Cheney-frown while nibbling on broiled scallops and bacon at the next cocktail party at Ted Olson’s place.

In any case it’s a sad spectacle, like a CIA Director suddenly resigning when the words Watergate and prostitute find their way into a sentence together or Barry Bonds’ head becomes so steroidally distended that David Blaine plans to spend a week inside it for his next trick.

Speaking of Mr. Blaine’s bubble, maybe next time Mr. Bush is in a situation where he might actually encounter criticism, he can climb inside… although it’s pretty tough to imagine, ya know, Bush in a bubble, ignoring all reality surrounding him in the physical world.