All Things Profane and Sacred

If you like seeing public figures faced with uncomfortable truths, then you should head on over to www.youtube.com and check out Colbert at the White House Correspondent's Dinner.

Here's what Media Mattershas to say:

But in their subsequent coverage of the event, numerous news outlets focused only on Bush's light-hearted comedy, while omitting mention of Colbert's blistering performance. On the April 30 edition of ABC's This Week, host George Stephanopoulos played an excerpt of Bush's act and remarked that the dinner "gets more inventive every year." That same morning, on NBC's Sunday Today, co-host Lester Holt introduced clips of the Bush-Bridges routine by noting that the "relationship between the White House press corps and the president can be a contentious one, but last night it was all laughs." The footage of Bush's performance also aired on the April 30 broadcast of NBC's Nightly News.

On May 1, all three major networks played clips of Bush's routine on their morning shows, but ignored Colbert entirely. CNN's American Morning did the same.

Similarly, a May 1 New York Times article on the event -- "A New Set of Bush Twins Appear at Annual Correspondents' Dinner" -- by reporter Elisabeth Bumiller recounted Bush and Bridge's performance in detail and provided some background on how the routine was devised. The article reported, "With his approval ratings in the mid-30's and a White House beset by troubles, there is some evidence that Mr. Bush worked harder on his performance this year than in the past." But Bumiller omitted any mention of Colbert or the fact that he had highlighted the White House's current problems at the dinner.

Further, while C-SPAN broadcast the April 29 event live and aired the event in its entirety several times in the following 24 hours, the network also aired an abridged version of the dinner that featured only Bush's performance. Indeed, on May 30, C-SPAN broadcast a 25-minute segment (7:35 p.m. -- 8:00 p.m. ET), which featured approximately 10 minutes of footage of guests entering the event, followed by the full 15-minute Bush-Bridges routine.

And so on, as Vonnegut likes to say. So, go take a look, if only because they don't want you to.