silversand

Steven Colbert gave a dark and bitingly funny speech at last night’s White House press correspondents’ dinner. Colbert spoke after President Bush himself, who appeared with Bush impersonator Steve Bridges acting as the President’s internal monologue as the two delivered a speech. The Bush/Bridges duo was innocuous but uproariously funny. Colbert’s speech was much more sophisticated, very funny, and pretty darn edgy, and seemed to put off a good portion of the audience, as well as the President and Laura Bush.

After watching the speech I immediately wondered how the media would respond. The press correspondents’ dinner generally gets reported in the media, mostly because they are all there, but also because it’s a rare opportunity to see the President joking around (well … not really). Not surprisingly, the Bush/Bridges duo (or the “Double-You,” to quote the BBC) won the overwhelming majority of the coverage.

Only two United States news outlets devoted all, or a substantial portion of their article on the press dinner to Colbert, Editor & Publisher, the only article with a title that references Colbert, and USA Today, the only major circulation newspaper to discuss Colbert’s speech at any length:

• Bush, celebrities attend press corps dinner (USA Today)
• Colbert Lampoons Bush at White House Correspondents Dinner — President Not Amused? (Editor & Publisher)

Most major outlets devoted just a sentence or two to Colbert. AP and Reuters devoted just one sentence each to Colbert. Many of the papers who reprinted the wire stories actually excised the Colbert sentence, and other papers followed the AP/Reuters lead, mentioning Colbert only briefly:

• Bush skewers self at correspondents’ dinner (Reuters)
• Bush plays straight man to his lookalike (AP, reprinted in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer)
• Celebs Join Bush for Reporters’ Dinner (AP, reprinted in Forbes)
• At Annual Correspondents’ Dinner, a Set of Bush Twins Steal the Show (No mention of Colbert at all in the New York Times)

This trend was only amplified abroad. UK papers made no mention of Colbert:

• ‘Double-You’ Bush delights media (BBC)
• Double Bush delights media (UK Telegraph)

If you haven’t seen it, watch Colbert’s speech, hosted by Crooks and Liars.

Addendum

The Minneapolis/St. Paul City Pages has written an analysis of the media coverage of the correspondents’ dinner along the same lines as this post. They cite the Editor & Publisher article as the only thorough report on Colbert’s speech, pointing out that a Google News search reveals that over 300 news outlets have written on the Bush/Bridges act. (By my count that number is now approaching 400.) The article then lists a number of Colbert’s best and most biting jokes. They also link to video of Colbert’s speech with better resolution (though more compression) than the copy I linked above. Definitely worth a read. Check out:

• The truthiness hurts (Minneapolis/St. Paul City Pages)

Also, while the New York Times article on the correspondents’ dinner makes no mention of Colbert, an AP video hosted on the Times site features one of Colbert’s jokes and Colbert’s name is mentioned in the copy to the right of the video. Take a look at A New Set of Bush Twins to watch the video.

And lastly, it seems that Lou Dobbs showed a clip from Colbert’s speech and devoted some time to a substantive discussion on his humor and its impact at the event on May 2.

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 30th, 2006 at 12:16 pm and is filed under Politics, Media and Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.