Daily Kos: Re-Improved Colbert transcript (now with complete text of Colbert-Thomas video!)

If you haven’t had the chance to see Stephen Colbert’s speech at the recent dinner for the White House press association (I forget their actual name, but that’s close), give this a read. There’s a TON of subtle (and some overt) insults directed at the president, his staff members, the Supreme Court, NSA, John McCain… you name it.

What blows my mind is that the president didn’t actually seem to get it at first, and that as the speech wore on, you could almost feel the heat rising from under his collar as he started to get that grim, uncomfortable scowl on his face. I believe there’s a link to the videos on the Daily Kos page, so give them a look (NSFW because of the surrounding thumbnails for other videos on the site). I went ahead and made an iPod-compatible clip of the movie, so if you’re interested and already know me, I’ll share it w/ you.

The most entertaining part of the clip is that you can hear how uncomfortable everyone is w/ just how close to the truth he’s cutting w/ his incredible satire. Colbert’s show on Comedy Central irritated me at first because I admittedly didn’t get it. As a spin-off of the Daily Show, he touted himself as the right-wing counter-part to Jon Stewart’s democratic slant. Having watched a few shows, I found that there was a lot to laugh at, but his smug, openly mocking attitude towards Stewart got under my skin. Stewart made Colbert famous, and it seemed he was thumbing his nose at him. Over time, while discussing this at work, a co-worker enlightened me — the entire show is an act. Logically, I knew this; emotionally, I’d been duped. His mannerisms were boisterous and arrogant — his hubris highly irritating. Just like the republicans he was mocking.

It suddenly dawned on me that I’d missed the point. In my disgust for that attitude, I missed the subtlety — he was being sarcastic. Silly me.

Sadly, I think the person who hired Colbert also missed the point…… and somehow identified w/ him and found the same obvious jokes I’d laughed at in the beginning quite funny; but critically, missed the point. If I’m wrong on that, this is the biggest backfire I’ve seen in a while. Some of my co-workers thought that it was a republican attempt at trying to soften their image through self-deprecation.

I dunno — self-deprecation is one thing, getting flayed at the hands of a quick-tongued comedian is a whole different thing.

Highly recommend at least reading the speech.

Update: Fox News (predictably) thinks Colbert was “over the line” on this. I guess because they were specifically called out as being yes-men. Gosh — I never saw this coming.

Think Progress » Fox News Slams Colbert: ‘Inappropriate,’ ‘Over the Line,’ ‘Not Very Funny’
BRIAN KILMEADE: We’re also going to talk about what happened at the White House Correspondents Dinner. The inside story about the Steven Colbert speech: was it really over the line or is that just typical when the President goes to these Washington correspondents dinners?

STEVE DOOCY: [Referring to on-screen image] There you’ve got the dueling Dubyas. Stephen Colbert — I have been to twenty of them and he was over the line.

[snip]

KIRAN CHETRY: What I was wondering though, because we did show some clips and at times it looked like the President was not laughing. Do you think he was annoyed by that or he thought it was not funny?

DOOCY: He was playing a good sport as his body double was there. But shortly after that, the paid performer, Stephen Colbert of the Colbert Report, took the stage and did about 15 minutes and it was very uncomfortable. Personally I felt like he went over the line. Today in Lloyd Grove’s column, he says that Colbert “bombed badly.� It was not very funny.