"Among attendees at the black tie event: Morgan Fairchild, quarterback Ben Roethlisberger, Justice Antonin Scalia, George Clooney, and Jeff "Skunk" Baxter of the Doobie Brothers--in a kilt."

In a kilt? Who let him in. Don't they have security at these things?

wow. standing O for a man with stones like that.

and what a strange event. it's almost like a roast.

I don't know if it's always quite that roast-like.

Goddamn that was amazing.

That was one of the best things I've ever seen on television (well, actually, on my computer). And not just because it confirms my ideology! As a matter of fact it has never been that roast-like, to my knowledge. It is usually a goddamn love-in between two establishments which are supposed to be independent of each other. The correspondent's dinner usually is just the apogee of the incestuousness that had grown up between politicians and pundits and even entertainers. It usually makes me sick, but my hat is off to Colbert's heavy-handed irony --he really punctured some illusions, really made the site of contact between the Bush administration and the media as uncomfortable as it SHOULD be.

"correspondent's dinner" was for you crazymonk.
PS- William T. Vollmann spoke at BU and I purposely skipped the event. Just to spite you.

They don't need to be enemies all the time, there's really no reason for them to be antagonistic at a dinner/fun function. But, regardless, it was funny, so it's good. The point of the evening is humor, not bringing down the president. Unfunny assaults would have been horrific. Funny assaults are A-OK.

I disagree with you, Angiven. While traditionally the press and the White House can chide each other during this event, we are currently in a place where the Press needs to err on the side of antagonism toward the administration. I don't care if the event is about humor, we are living in some very unfunny times. I again applaud Colbert for his biting criticism, funny or no (and it was funny).

Every time is an unfunny time. I defy you to pinpoint a time in history where people living in it would say it wasn't an unfunny time. What's unfunny changes, but the concept never vanishes.

Oh, and can you take my name off that last post. I signed it like an email.

Because I'm a moron.

I watched the video and really enjoyed it. Me like things that are biting. I just wish I could have seen cut aways of Bush during the damn thing. Of course, that audition tape thing was very very very unfunny. Some might say even terrible (except for the key part with the car. That made me chuckle). It just went on and was paced pretty poorly.

Well the idea of the audition tape was pretty hilarious, I though, just the execution was not so hot. Which doesn't mean Colbert isn't an audacious genius. I do wish I'd gotten to see Bush, since I'm curious how accurate that article was in describing him as 'not really smiling.' Scalia, however, seemed to get quite a laugh from Colbert's pretty aggressive stab. Scalia probably thinks everything's funny, though. Including unwanted pregnancies.

It's not that every era doesn't have its horrifying qualities, it's that within the context of modern history, history of the press, global politics, duplicitous domestic American political aristocracy, etc., the whole point is that as soon as the two groups start making babies, we're all fucked. But only they get to enjoy it.

Ingen, of course there's reason to be antagonistic towards the president, at any function at any time: he's a miserable excuse for a human being who is directly responsible for the deaths of thousands of people.

and of course, you're right, it was hilarious.

Bill Maher did the same joke this weekend. He showed his own audition tape and it was much funnier.

Scalia's a funny guy, he knows what good comedy is. For example, I give you this gem:

If one assumes, however, that the PGA TOUR has some legal obligation to play classic, Platonic golf–and if one assumes the correctness of all the other wrong turns the Court has made to get to this point–then we Justices must confront what is indeed an awesome responsibility. It has been rendered the solemn duty of the Supreme Court of the United States, laid upon it by Congress in pursuance of the Federal Government’s power “[t]o regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States,” U.S. Const., Art. I, §8, cl. 3, to decide What Is Golf. I am sure that the Framers of the Constitution, aware of the 1457 edict of King James II of Scotland prohibiting golf because it interfered with the practice of archery, fully expected that sooner or later the paths of golf and government, the law and the links, would once again cross, and that the judges of this august Court would some day have to wrestle with that age-old jurisprudential question, for which their years of study in the law have so well prepared them: Is someone riding around a golf course from shot to shot really a golfer? The answer, we learn, is yes. The Court ultimately concludes, and it will henceforth be the Law of the Land, that walking is not a “fundamental” aspect of golf.