Re Colbert

I saw Stephen Colbert’s performance on C-SPAN, and while it was generally all right, it didn’t have the sting that a Mort Sahl or a Tom Lehrer would have given it, although it was certainly more biting than a Mark Russell performance. As the news report put it, Mr. Bush did not seem amused. More telling, however, were the responses – or lack thereof – of members of the press corps audience. When Colbert got off a good anti-Bush comment, there was a decided “see-no-evil, hear-no-evil, speak-no-evil” sense of quiet from most of these make-believe journalists. Their silence expressed a great deal of what is so sadly missing in modern “journalism.”

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