Sunday, April 30, 2006

Stephen and Joe and Valerie and...Lyndon?   [Byron York]

Lefty bloggers are outraged at what they say is the media's cover-up of Stephen Colbert's nationally-televised performance at Saturday night's White House Correspondents' Dinner. At the Huffington Post, Salon writer and former Kerry campaign worker Peter Daou has written an item headlined Ignoring Colbert: A Small Taste of the Media's Power to Choose the News. "Colbert delivered a biting rebuke of George W. Bush and the lily-livered press corps," Daou writes. "He did it to Bush's face, unflinching and unbowed by the audience's muted, humorless response." In subsequent coverage, including pieces from the Associated Press, Reuters, and the Chicago Tribune, Daou says,

Colbert's performance is sidestepped and marginalized while Bush is treated as light-hearted, humble, and funny. Expect nothing less from the cowardly American media. The story could just as well have been Bush and Laura's discomfort and the crowd's semi-hostile reaction to Colbert's razor-sharp barbs. In fact, I would guess that from the perspective of newsworthiness and public interest, Bush-the-playful-president is far less compelling than a comedy sketch gone awry, a pissed-off prez, and a shell-shocked audience. This is the power of the media to choose the news, to decide when and how to shield Bush from negative publicity.

Of course, maybe the audience just thought Bush was funnier.

And by the way, has anyone commented on what was perhaps the weirdest sight of the night, or maybe of any other night: former ambassador Joseph Wilson and his wife, the former CIA employee Valerie Plame Wilson, chatting with Lyndon LaRouche? It happened at the receptions prior to the dinner and left more than one onlooker shaking his head at the strangeness of it all. Conspiracy theorists, take it away.

04/30 05:54 PMShare