Did you see Colbert flinch when he mentioned Val’s name?

And I Love Luesy; how has Joe kept Val safe?

(jerry just doesn’t fit. I’m the kim so self-absorbed as to underline.)
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Yeah, those Easterners never made war, or tortured prisoners, or ate the flesh stripped fresh off of a still-live, de-furred animal, practiced human vivisection. Give me a break.
We don’t need a new brand of bullshit here… no bullshit at all for me, thanks.

emptywheel,

Very perceptive. I really wonder what the booker for that gig thought they were going to get. Too often, the press doesn’t seem to â€get†that Stewart and Colbert are laughing at them, rather than with them. It was a little disconcerting for everybody to see Colbert stick with his on-screen persona for the whole bit. Colbert is a sort of Carnival figure every day. By bringing that to the Correspondents Dinner, he â€went all in†on press criticism and they folded. That means they realize he has all the cards. I hope that spurs them to reconsider their position.

I wonder what happens now, now that the press corps has been denied their annual Carnival fun.

Of course they will basically revert to their normal behaviour, but with a difference. Colbert broached a taboo which can’t be unbroached. As you note, he was as harsh on the press as he was on the Pres. They will resent that mightily. But since they report on not so much the actual news, but rather the Conventional Wisdom of it, and Colbert’s brilliant roast is, however subtly, a part of CW now, it can’t help but have some effect. The press poodles are essentially passive (generalizing) and Colbert shifted the wind a little. The ’scales’ aren’t going to ’fall from their eyes’. etc., but I’m positive there was an impact.

As always, EW, you see worlds where others see vaguely discomforting jibes.

Bakhtin’s view of Carnival and social processes in Medieval Europe has been generalized by a couple of very deep thinkers. Gregory Bateson saw the periodic reversal of social roles as a basic means of maintaining social cohesion, present in similar forms across many cultures, and he also recognized its connection to social adaptation – calling it â€schizmogenesis.â€

Mircea Eliade, the great historian of religion, connected the Spring festival to a basic underlying dynamic in pre-Mosaic historical comprehension – what he termed â€The Myth of Eternal Return.†In brief, this idea says that ancient agricultural societies in the northern temperate zones all had some form of Spring ritual to deal with the occasional occurence of an unusually harsh Winter famine, when the existence of the entire community came under threat, and there had to be imposed a â€taboo on the first harvest,†whereby some members of society would have to be sacrificed (to starvation, if not some more pointed end) in order to save seed corn for the new planting. This situation became ritualized with ceremonies celebrating the death and rebirth of a society-founding deity. In this ceremony, time itself comes to an end, and the birth of all things is celebrated as symbolic acknowledgement of the necessity of sacrifice.

Stephen Colbert, in his brilliant riffing on Carnival reversal, gave those of us with an eye for deep symbolism a ritual dance – fascinating, and riveting, portending, we hope, the return of a more glorious Spring, and the birth of a new freedom, after the long Winter of our discontent under the yoke of the usurpers.

Yes, EW, it’s self-deceptive bluster, born of the incredible cultural cluelessness, humorlessness and insularity you find in DC (watch the Kristol interview, but also the Barney Frank one). Who is easier to seduce and con than someone who is utterly self-absorbed?

And it’s a Cultural Borg phenom. Stewart and Colbert are ’hot’ right now, so these self-styled inside-the Beltway Masters of the Universe can’t not appear. They’re PR geniuses, you see; profound shapers of Opinion. How did it come to be that a major corporation released and made millions on an album with the song called ’Kill the Police’ on it? Because it was ’hot’; because it sold. Same sort of deal.

I can miss the Daily Show if I have to, but I NEVER miss Colbert.

You nailed it. ew! I usually have little patience for the court jester phenomenon since much of what Stewart does seems to normalize, anesthetize (a la Bakhtinian carnivale) but Colbert was brilliant, performing politics. It was an emperor has no clothes moment. And as for disdain, it wasn’t about disdain or even irony, it was as the cliche goes, speaking truth to power.

Linking to the historical record with respect to the place of â€Carnival†in society, the genius that keeps all of us coming back to your posts. Thanks ew. Your post reminded me that the movie, â€The Hunchback of Notre Dame,†opens with a scene from the Paris â€Carnival.â€
I think a lot of us focussed on Colbert’s dissecting of Bush and lost sight of how effective he was with the Press.
Bill, thank you so much for the link to â€thankyoustephencolbert.†I linked it to the latest FDL thread. Last I checked, there were around 8700 gratitde comments for Colbert.

Damn good question, Sara. I saw somewhere (I think the complaints from NRO) that it was the AP.

Here it is, dug.

marky, you’re confusing spirituality and religion, and I guess I’ll have to make more explicit that Hindu festivals are Carneval like, with many suspensions of everyday tabu.

And you can form bullshit into anything you like; it is still warm. Desicated, it’s flammable.
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Sara – EW is correct. JW and VP were guests of AP

Though I love the comments regarding the history, sociology and anthropology of comedy I think the upshot of Colbert’s performance, as EW suggests, will be the deeper realization by Bush that he has succeeded at what he has tried to do in marginalizing the press and assuming unprecedented powers.
And this is an old story whereby the congruence and ecology of â€the eternal return†are corrupted by politicians until society disintegrates. It is what is illustrated in the decline of the balanced shamanic mayan cultures, the emergence of the brutal blood thirsty urbane aztec societies, and the ultimate abandonment of the entire socio/cultural/religio Meso American project under the weight of imperial invasion leaving only vestiges of a deep hidden rural/suburban paganism. Don Juan was rural/suburban right?

I think we can count on more secrecy from the administration from here on out with the thrust of covert operations being a zealous covert military engagement of Iran and the creation of an indentured class here at home. The instinct to freedom is an inherent impulse in the soul of all men indeed.

At this point the balance of Bush’s political fortunes are in the hands of the press to the degree that they are serving up the symbols but why should the MSM turn on the story of the â€good†war where the benefit of the servile class is just now in reach. It should also be noted that INS sweeps have begun in New Mexico though not much reported. The war has been realized and gas prices are oppressive. The human costs mount. These are the tools of the shifts in social power which are the true savage agenda of the administration. Remember how blithely Laura Bush related a farcical tale of the President sexually manipulating a horse last year. This just didn’t seem to come forth naturally out of that deep ole time religion. It is the cynical comedy of a corrupt elite class. Surely from this standard Colbert’s comedy was a complement only to be privately acknowledged.

Interesting times indeed.

AP — That’s interesting. Yes, they would have an up front table. I was worried that the Downscale and more populist Puritan (when it comes to money) and Quakerly â€The Nation†had bought the farm.

Bit of news on Hardball — or was it Obermann — anyhow, when VP was working at the CIA as a Covert Oofficer her beaty was WMD in Iran. Apparently she was versed in the arts of tracking down illegal purchases of equiptment and personnel, and tracked the integration of all this into their Nuke program. Those guys in Cheney’s circle shre seem to know how to pick smear targets well, don’t they? Perhaps the story is they really didn’t want an expert with depth in the subject matter positioned to challenge the ideological precepts. If correct it is a fascinating mite of intelligence. Wonder who leaked?

Cool Bakhtin fact:
He was a chain smoker, and amidst the privation of WW II was unable to obtain cigarette papers and actually smoked one of his own book manuscripts.

More seriously: He’d make a damned good object lesson for some of the bastards in the audience at the Correspondents’ Dinner. Sent into internal exile for his religious and political beliefs, he continued to work under dire conditions (incl. having a leg amputated) with no expectation of ever being able to return to European Russia or publish under his own name, because he felt the work itself was important.

In other words, nowadays he’d be blogging.

The reason the pinstriped pimps of Versailles-on-the-Potomac haven’t had anything to say is it’s hard to talk when you have a skewer rammed up the old back door so hard and so far that it pops out your mouth.

How nice it would be if the â€marshmallow center†of that swamp was run out of town on a regular basis and actually forced to find real jobs – and I mean that more about the volunteers who go there and stay there forever than those elected to go there. â€Perfumed pimps†is about the nicest thing I can think of to call those imperial courtiers (of both parties).

margaret

Good point–one of the most precious parts of the video was the image of the pundits unable to make up their own minds.

Though for my money, the most uncomfortable person captured on film was Little Scottie, not too happy that his firing is now the subject of Colbert’s jokes.

rcauthen

Thanks for that. Yes, Bakhtin would be an object lesson for these folks.