And Stephen Colbert gave Bush and the Washington Press establishment a massive dose of it last night. This is hillarious, you have to watch it.

As E&P noted,

As Colbert walked from the podium, when it was over, the president and First Lady gave him quick nods, unsmiling. The president shook his hand and tapped his elbow, and left immediately.

Those seated near Bush told E&P's Joe Strupp, who was elsewhere in the room, that Bush had quickly turned from an amused guest to an obviously offended target as Colbert’s comments brought up his low approval ratings and problems in Iraq.

Several veterans of past dinners, who requested anonymity, said the presentation was more directed at attacking the president than in the past. Several said previous hosts, like Jay Leno, equally slammed both the White House and the press corps.

"This was anti-Bush," said one attendee. "Usually they go back and forth between us and him." Another noted that Bush quickly turned unhappy, and left the dais shortly after while most seated near him, including Colbert and Snow, glad-handed the crowd. "You could see he stopped smiling about halfway through Colbert," he reported.

it may have been hard for the Washinton insiders to watch it, but one thing is certain, this kind of presentation of the issues is a lot more comfortable for the average American to watch, and with this video and reports rushing around the blogsphere and web today, more and more Americans are, "taking the medicine."

Other info, via Crooks and Liars:
Colbert's show on Comedy Central, is "Must See TV" at this point already and these types of performances are the toughest in the business to pull off when he's tackling issues that obviously made most of the crowd nervous.

C-Span is running it again in its entirety.

Atrios has a picture posted about Gannon.

TMV, The Sister, Blondesense, Democratic D, News Hounds weigh in.

Uh... and I think MSNBC missed the whole point... or did they?

TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.grupo-utopia.com/blog/mt/mt-tb.cgi/1914