be the change you want to see in the world

Stephen Colbert stood up in front of the Washington press corp, the President of the United States and countless high-ranking US political types at the Washington Correspondents’ Dinner and said this:

“Let’s review the rules. Here’s how it works. The president makes decisions, he’s the decider. The press secretary announces those decisions, and you people of the press type those decisions down. Make, announce, type. 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.”

Opportunity of a lifetime: maximised. Stephen, you may retire a honorable man.

Don’t miss Stephen Colbert taking the piss out of Bush, Washington culture, etc. at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner (up on YouTube.com). Amazingly gutsy performance, and he keeps his cool when the crowd turns on him. Currently pushing 2000 diggs on digg.com. There are three parts to this video. YouTube allows only ten minute clips, so look for the links to parts two and three to the right of the video. If you can’t find them, here are the links: part two - part three. For the bandwidth-challenged, here is the transcript.

There is now a torrent for the entire show. If you have a bittorrent client and some bandwidth, download and seed this. I use Bitcomet on the PC and Azureus on the Mac. This is the power of the Internet. If the media doesn’t get it out, we now have the power using the collective capacity of our PCs and the existing Network. Unfortunately, the big telcos in the US are trying to take this away via their whore politicians in Washington, the very same folks Colbert rips on a nightly basis, so don’t make the mistake of thinking there isn’t a very real struggle going on.

That struggle includes silence in the mainstream media when somebody does something like this. Colbert’s performance is non-existent:

C-Span links to this article about the dinner:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060430/ap_on_go_pr_wh/bush_correspondents

No mention of Stephen.

Same thing at CNN:
http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/04/30/bush.press.dinner.ap/index.html

Same thing at MSMBC:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12555176/

Same thing at CBS:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/04/29/national/main1561619.shtml

ABC video, “Funny Man Bush”. Same account of the dinner as all the others:
http://abcnews.go.com/Video/playerIndex?id=1906597

Same video and commentary at FOX:
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,193709,00.html

People should see what courage looks like. Speaking “Truthiness” to Power through a thin veneer of hilarity. Colbert’s act is quite special. He plays a wingnut commentator, but utterly discredits the right through his hyperbole and arrogance. In other words, his act is more realistic than some think. Satire at it finest. Jonathan Swift would be very proud.

See how long it takes you to recognize the samples in this track.

This track uses samples from Bill Clinton lying about Monica Lewinsky. This is my first try with GarageBand so be kind. Need to mix down Bill a bit I think, but the sample I found is a bit hot to start with. Oh, I’m podcasting these trax so subscribe if you like.