By Adam LoBelia
Stephen Colbert murdered President Bush at the White House Correspondent’s Dinner. That’s the annual “get-together” for politicians and pressmen designed to take a load off of everyone’s backs. But Colbert didn’t quite play along. Instead of being a jolly ol’ sport, he dished out a series of biting barbs at Bush and the press, leaving all but Antonin Scalia in uncomfortable silence.
Colbert’s use of vicious humor is the kind we haven’t seen in a while, and it was refreshing to see someone so powerful being mocked. But what made Colbert’s performance possible wasn’t just his wit; he wasn’t delivering a slew of general insults at Bush. He had plenty of ammunition to work with and he went balls out with it.
Bush’s approval ratings continue to hold steady at an abysmal 32 percent. The military is turning on him, biting the hand that exploited them. Iran is emboldened by his total lack of credibility in the world and Iraq continues to melt down. None of these things are good, but they were all brought upon Bush by a total lack of ethics and competence.
The low opinion ratings pose quite a quandary for the Republicans in Congress. Either they ditch Bush, distance themselves from his policies and have a chance at success, or they keep their first-class seats on the Titanic. That is assuming the Democrats can muster the smarts to take advantage of all this incompetence. The chickens aren’t in the roost yet, but they’re on the road home and years of terrible policy are finally working their magic on the fakes who enacted them.
For the moment, it looks like the Republicans will actually be tempted to stick by Bush. Pundits from The National Review to conservative blogs like Little Green Footballs are urging them to stand by their man, as they themselves are doing. The amount of apologizing for the administration’s blunders is getting pretty pathetic, but when you have a collective ego as big as the “right” does, it’s easy to see why they won’t admit that they made a mistake.
Like Colbert at the roast, the neocons and the faux-conservatives are talking to a crowd that is not amused. The only difference is that there is no audience outside the room that appreciates what’s going on. They had their chance to prove their points and they balked.
That’s why it’s fitting that the largely conservative crowd at the dinner was dumbstruck at Colbert’s performance. It’s not funny that their plans are turning into catastrophes and it’s not funny that people are waking up to the fact that by and large they are all corrupt, morally bankrupt and thoroughly uninterested in the country’s future.
The Bush-supporters are going to throw a myriad of excuses as to why we should pay no attention to the administration’s failures. Some range from the cathartic, like, “Give Iraq time and it’ll work out!” to the just plain pathetic, such as, “United 93 is coming out, we have to remember that there are terrorists!” Then there’s my old favorite, “The economy’s doing great, why aren’t you happy with that?” That’s my favorite because Clinton used that and the GOP still railed against his lack of morals. Oh but now it’s the economy, stupid?
Americans don’t get a lot of credit for their intelligence, but I think they’re getting it now. The joke’s on Bush, and nobody cares if he and his apologists aren’t laughing. Stupid people don’t get jokes anyway. A lot of bad things are going to happen between now and 2008, when Bush is put out to pasture.Maybe then we can figure out how to get back on track. In the meantime, what else can we do but laugh?