Hey now, the Colbert performance a few years ago was perfect. He said what had to be said to the media and the President, in their presence.

@oneinsixbillion: I agree!! And what the fuck did they expect from him, anyway? Had none of the people who invited him ever watched his show? They let the fox into the damn hen-house.

@Helman: There is a frightening number of conservatives who don't completely understand that Colbert is parodying them.

@oneinsixbillion: Agreed, which is why it will live in infamy with members of the media as horrible and mean. Best just to stick to the, "Oh, you liberal media," dogma that drives all political reporting coming out of Washington, and which ensures that all the reporting coming out of Washington is incredibly conservative. After all, I'm sure the correspondents dinners circa 1973 were a real drag.

Since when do Heidi Montag and Spencer Pratt qualify as B-List celebrities?

Maureen Dowd proves, one again, what an clever woman she is! Go (or rather, don't go) girl!

Ah well. So long as Spencer and Heidi had a good time only to be taken into custody by the CIA and carted off to a secret prison in like Ajerbaijan or something.

Then my faith in government would be restored.

@oneinsixbillion: Agreed 100%.

@Adminitraitor: Well if Craig Ferguson qualifies as a comedian...

"Too mean" Stephen Colbert? the only media personality with the balls to speak to power?

And the Times is right. Fuck the Scottish Guy with his replay of Dennis Miller's always hilarious "shut the hell up" laugh line aimed at the Clinton's.

@Helman: @TheHonJudgeSmails:
I know, it's hilarious... I always wondered if the person who recommended Colbert for the gig, based on that misperception, ended up losing his/her job.

@oneinsixbillion: Thank you.

I'd like to see a little basis for this "too-mean" description of Colbert's 2006 performance. It seemed like a once-in-a-decade moment of satiric brilliance to me.

@skahammer: OK, I admit the description of Colbert's performance as an "awkward disaster" might be accurate. But what an awkward disaster!

@digitalsmoothie: Touché.

@skahammer: Well, you see. It's only "too mean" in relative terms.

To a room full of media people who were supposed to be questioning the powerful Bush administration, but who instead spent their time sucking his dick, and are now covered in sheets of his ropy sperm, and just praying to wait out the siege of this present administration so that they can move on to failing in whole new unimagined ways... his performance was too mean.

@oneinsixbillion: I also have no recollection of Colbert's performance having been an "awkward disaster." Thank you for enlightening me, Gawker.

"Mean" is being solely responsible for the deaths of 4,000 US soldiers and over 83,000 Iraqis for no fucking reason. Making fun of said person is not.

If Colbert had pulled a gun out and shot Bush in the face, that would still only qualify as "compassionate", not mean.

It's people like Colbert that give me faith in America.

Too mean to Bush? A razorblade & lemon juice enema wouldn't be too mean for that gibbering maggot-brained fascist. For shame, Pareene. Judging by the limp-wristed pseudo-satire pooped out by the Gawker clan, no wonder you failed to comprehend or appreciate Colbert's brilliance. Or is it jealousy? Either way, we should be cringing as we laugh at Bush's murderous incompetence and the barbarous inaction of his willing executioners in the Corporate Media, of which now Gawker has declared itself a part.

is it really, really that hard for any of you to google search on colbert's performance and read the critical/media response to it?

@allyzay: any of you besides pope john peeps, i mean.

Um, I think Pareene was being ironic. I mean, "mean" is certainly how the people throwing the party described Colbert's performance, because they never imagined that anyone would ever call them on being the craven lickspittles they have been throughout the last, um, 28 years and counting. Unless, that is, someone was getting a blow job. Then they got all Woodstein and Bernwood.

But, you know, leave Pareene ALONE.

@allyzay: Please do explain, and enunciate, for I am obviously retarded.

@Mediahohoho: How was he being ironic? Where is the irony? He seemed to be encapsulating the last two years in a sentence fragment? Wink harder, Alex! I need to feel your winking-- otherwise it comes off as, y'know, too mean.

@Baiowulf: I'm going to refrain from answering for him; I just read it that way based on reading him, first at Wonkette and now here, for a while. I'm sure he can answer much better than I can. And who knows, I may be wrong.

My own point of view is that, in his send up of Bush and his dressing down of the media, Colbert was perfect. Which is why the media hated his performance.

@allyzay: Why would I do that when I read the response to it when it first came out? It's not like it's all that long ago.

I'm a little horified to read this and realize that a comedian was mocking the Times and I am sympathizing with the Times.

Awkward disaster? For whom? Perhaps for the idiot staffer who booked Colbert. Certainly not for the nation. Colbert's mocking performance that evening was the single most courageous political act undertaken by anyone in the US during all of 2006. I was honestly surprised that they didn't cut his mic and tackle him mid-sentence. Were she not so chronically cotton-mouthed from the meds, Laura would have spit on him.

@Mediahohoho: On reflection, I realize you're right, Pareene was surely playing an irony card. I overreacted and now I wish to tone down my comments.

Also, special citation to you for your virtuoso use of "lickspittle," which says more in one word than I could wring out of my brain in two successive posts.

It wasn't A-Listy enough for the Times, though, Bro. Seriously. The prez is B-List at best.

Wait until he's out of office. He's going to make Jimmy Carter's brother look like a finishing school principal.

@magneticfields: Forgive Ferguson. The organizers had to ply him with T-Bird to get him even to walk on stage.

@Mediahohoho: @skahammer: Actually, it was craven lickspittle -- very nice usage.

Ferguson rightly points out that journalists have been asleep at the wheel for the past 8 years. He misses, however, the journalist asleep in his audience, observed from 2:00 - 1:55 in this video. (Center of frame, two left of woman in red dress).

@donmiguel: @skahammer: Thanks.

@edgydrifter: I'm inclined to agree but in a deftly broad-stroked way, Lettermen's 10 Ten clips were probably more devastating.

+ Watch video

@Baiowulf: no one with such an awesome pun for a name is "obviously retarded"

Kill this event already. Hopefully the NYT not attending will do that. Surely if they hire someone of Craig Ferguson's stature again, they'll do it to themselves in no time.

Stephen Colbert's performance two years ago was such a stirring tour de farce that the White House Correspondents completely overreacted and picked Rich Little last year so as not to offend anyone. Craig Ferguson is/was affable enough, and managed a couple of zingers.

But the 36 or so minutes before Ferguson's speech were the true awkward disaster, with ABC's Ann Compton admonishing the assembled media and F-listers for talking too loudly during the scholarship honors, Bush climbing on a chair for a picture with a tall college student, frightening clips packages that showed how horrible previous dinners were, including one "joke" in which W. suggested that Cheney was masturbating while peeping on him in the Oval Office, all capped off with Bush conducting the Marine Band about as well as he conducts the rest of his duties (spoiler alert?). OMFG.

@edgydrifter: Totally agree: It is shocking that the microphones weren't cut. But that was the beauty of the thing -- he stuck it to the truth-squelching administration on the one venue when everyone had to listen. Fucking brilliant and brave.

Seriously: Congrats and nothing but kudos to The New York Times for boycotting this overall disgusting and vomit-inducing pile of stinking manure that is the WHCA crap. This thing should be cancelled as it is run now--100 percent cancelled. The JOURNALISM AWARDS that the dinner is supposed to be about should be awarded, with them as the main focuse, at a small dinner of JOURNALISTS and only journalists--NO politicians, NO "celebrities," NO show business idiots--and that should be it. No circus. No carnival. No "before" pieces of crap. No "after" pieces of crap. No "red carpets," or "velvet ropes" or "limos" or those stupid backdrops with company names on them. Nothing. Cancelled. Goodbye! Until that happens, journalists should be ashmed of themselves for this whole stinking piece of crap! Really.

Thank you for showing that. Those of us there had no idea what he said because the sound system was simply atrocious.

@TheHonJudgeSmails: @Helman: And thank god the Clueless Connies have no clue. Thanks to them, I am treated every so often to the television brilliance that is "Better Know a District."

Unrelated: I'm with C. Fergie -- Dana Perino is one hot bitch.

The echo chamber in here about Colbert is positively deafening.

@thecomicscomic: And of course the poor bastards in the band had to keep playing and playing and playing and playing because Bush had no exit strategy

@thefrontpage: Yeah, but let's face it. These are the Oscars for average looking people so it's probably the one night of the year that anyone besides MoDo gives a flying fuck who or what MoDo is wearing.

You mean the New York Times?

I usually love Fergie, but as a NYTimes employee, I'd just like to say - he can go fuck himself too. But I'll still watch his show, even though Conan is funnier. And Colbert's speech in 2006 was genius.

Priya, Tinsley
Tinsley, Priya

If you coulod sue for being made fun of, Tinsely would have another couple of million from Gawker