Colbert's big splash

Stephen Colbert's little chat at the WHite House Correspondents' Dinner has caused a wee firestorm in the blogosphere, a firestorm that seems to be in exact opposite proportion to the deafening silence one (mostly) hears from the corporate media.

A major exception is WashingtonPost.com's Dan Froomkin, who asks the right question:

So was the biggest news of the night that Bush so effectively and humorously poked fun at himself? Or that a captive president -- and, to a lesser degree, the press corps -- had so sit and watch as they were subjected to devastating, vitriolic satire?

Possibly because they themselves were targets, most reporters chose to downplay the Colbert part of the evening.

Elisabeth Bumiller writes in the New York Times with some of her favorite bits: "Mr. Bush: 'I'm sorry that Vice President Cheney couldn't be here tonight. I agree with the press that Dick was a little late reporting that hunting episode down in Texas. In fact, I didn't know a thing about it till I saw him on "America's Most Wanted." '

"Mr. Bridges: 'You reporters would go nuts if you knew the full story. He was drunk as a skunk! On one beer! Light beer! Oh, people were duckin' and divin' for cover. I wish I'd been there. I saw him coming down the hall the other day, I looked at him and said, "Don't shoot!" '

"White House officials and Mr. Bridges said the double stand-up was the idea of the president, who last year ceded his spot on the program to his wife and in previous years relied on slide shows as visual props for his routines. As the 2,500-plus guests at the annual event know, by tradition the president is supposed to make fun of himself in an effort to establish his regular-guy credentials and ingratiate himself with the press."

Bumiller doesn't even mention Colbert at all.

As mentioned, the lack of media attention has rather raised Mr. Colbert's already high status on the left to rather a cause celebre.

If you want to see what I mean, just check out some of the diaries over at Daily Kos, this one, for example, or perhaps this one.

And I'm not EVEN trying to list all the postings at HuffingtonPost and Eschaton.

Where I would like to direct you is to a site created by Kos diarist grokgov: Thank You Stephen Colbert whose mission is to collect a million thank you notes. The site's been up since last night and as I type has collected 15292 thank yous.

If you appreciate speaking truthiness to power as much as I do, click over there and add your name to the list.

Oops, that's 15319 thank yous now.