Stephen Colbert is my hero

I now have a raging man-crush on Stephen Colbert. He just savages Bush, savages him, while looking Bush in the face and talking directly to him. Absolutely brilliant.

And, as noted here, the coverage of this has been a bit slow in coming, as compared to when Imus skewered Clinton in '96. But some stuff is trickling out. Fox News, surprisingly, didn't find it amusing. One of the guys quoted in there says: "Today in Lloyd Grove’s column, he says that Colbert 'bombed badly.' It was not very funny." From what I heard on Stephanie Miller's show today, it did bomb badly, but that does not mean that it wasn't very funny. However, take a bit like this:

But, listen, let's review the rules. Here's how it works: the president makes decisions. He's the decider. The press secretary announces those decisions, and you people of the press type those decisions down. Make, announce, type. Just put 'em through a spell check and go home. Get to know your family again. Make love to your wife. Write that novel you got kicking around in your head. You know, the one about the intrepid Washington reporter with the courage to stand up to the administration. You know - fiction!

I'm not saying that the White House correspondents don't deserve this type of skewering (I also suspect that there are many of them that are not the tools they appear to be, but the gig is such that you can't do much pro-actively; investigative reporting is another thing entirely). I'm just saying that that's why it bombed. The live audience was not going to be amused. But many people outside that auditorium are...

Update: Chris Durang on the Huffington Post makes an observation that I sort of intimated but didn't say directly and that needs to be said: "Colbert stood on the dais near the President and kept making eye contact with him as he said truly biting comic remarks.... It's very witty when you read the text; but actuality as Colbert says these things to the President's face, it's very uncomfortable. Watching it, it's like Hamlet forcing King Claudius to watch the play that accuses him of murder... Colbert's was a brave and shocking performance..."

I absolutely agree. The chance to figuratively spit in the eye of Bush or Cheney, to tell them to their face what evil and reprehensible people they are, is something that occupies my daydreams pretty frequently. Stephen Colbert just did that last Saturday night.