The Truth Has a Well-Known Liberal Bias

So, okay, I watched it. Contrary to the FOXNews consensus, Colbert did not bomb. It's funny; people, including President Bush, were laughing. And, as a number of leftoid bloggers have pointed out, Colbert's comments were at times subversive in pointing out uncomfortable truths to Washington elites, political and journalistic. Granted, the stuff that I thought was funny and what most of the crowd thought was funny were often two different things. The funny stuff was in fact not very funny at all, which is the best kind of humor. In my book.

But I don't feel that this amounts to a Speak Truth to Power moment (or, as Tony Snow quipped, "speak 'truthiness' to power"—despite its source, that's a smart rejoinder) any more than an Extremist Attack on the President. Colbert the comedian was doing what good comedians, especially those like Colbert who are smart and conscientious, do when confronted by the King and his Court: he plays the Fool to the best effect of truth and absurdity that the role affords. The room in this case includes the President and his staff, and Joe Wilson and his wife, whom the President's staff almost put in mortal peril by revealing her identity. How do you hold up a funhouse mirror to that? Or do you just hold up a standard mirror and laugh uncomfortably at the distortions made when competing ruling elites fight over reality while demanding their usual privileges?

What I appreciate most about Colbert's performance is how much it reflected the compassion he has for the people not in the room, people like you and me (and, really, him), who are caught in the middle of these competing forces, every day, paying taxes and dying in wars and struggling for jobs and watching the nation grieve. What's not to laugh?