Stephen Colbert - Man of the Year

Wow! Jonathan Swift, Moliere, Voltaire, Thomas Nast and now - Steve Colbert. Oh yeah, put Jon Stewart in there somewhere too...

I watched a profile of Stephen Colbert on "60 Minutes" Sunday evening, unaware that he was the featured entertainer at the White House Correspondents' Association awards dinner the night before. To say that Colbert's satirical attack was incredibly hilarious would be an understatement - with a great assist by Helen Thomas, I might add. Let's see, I can already predict that new White House Spokesperson Tony Snow (who is shown laughing at one point, when Colbert comments on his recent hiring) will not call on Thomas for a question for at least six months. See the performance for yourself here and here is a great analysis by Michael Scherer on Salon.com.

When the camera shows GWB, who was literally sitting about 15 feet to Colbert's right, much of the time he clearly seems to be pissed. The cut shots to the crowd full of the D.C. press corp were even more telling. The way many of them were reacting, you'd think Colbert was holding a kitten over the whirring blades of a food processor. To be fair, there were many snickers and laughs detected, but Colbert received little or no applause in the entire half an hour of his performance. This coverage by CNN is typical, giving much more time to the stupid Bush look-a-like skit that lasted all of five minutes.

It'll be interesting to see what kind of fall-out, if any, will come of this... Hmmm, what does my GUT say.