Stephen Colbert's recent performance at the White House Correspondents dinner has generated a lot of back and forth this week. Some of the reviews have been highly negative and others filled with praise and admiration. I'm on the praise and admiration list. If you haven't had the chance to see the performance click on http://www.salon.com/ent/video_dog/politics/2006/04/30/colbert_press/index.html and enjoy!

I've been a fan of Colbert's since he was a featured correspondent on The Daily Show with my hero Jon Stewart, so my admiration has been building for some time. Having said that, I thought his satiric performance at the Correspondents dinner was nothing short of brilliant. If you watch President Bush's profile he seems at turns befuddled and confused (nothing new there) and appears to be trying hard to get the joke but doesn't quite get there. Indeed if you had never seen the Colbert Report or The Daily Show you might actually think Colbert was a fan of the Bush administration. I guess it goes with out saying that in order to get the joke you have to understand satire. If you are a Three Stooges or Pink Panther fan, chances are this material is going to go over your head. The sad part for me was the refusal of the audience, the media elite, to respond to the jokes at their expense. Apparently this material hit too close to home and they responded by not only sitting on their hands, they stifled their laughter as well. Maybe they were just too pissed to laugh at all.

The sometimes-deafening silence in the room during Colbert's all too short performance speaks to the ongoing problem with the mainstream media. Because most of them have traded journalistic integrity for access they can't laugh about how ineffectual they were at the beginning of the George W. Bush era and how derelict in their duties they remain today. Helen Thomas gets the joke because she's in exile. When President Bush deigned to call upon her at a recent news conference it was the first time the grand lady of the White House press corps had been called upon by the President or his men in 6 long years. Perhaps because she's so old, wise or just plain cynical Helen has always seen through this President and his minions. Unfortunately for the American public Helen Thomas's voice has been muted by virtue of her lack of wide circulation and syndication. She remains at the front of the pressroom because of tradition not because she commands respect or star status in the mainstream media.

With the exception of David Gregory I can't think of anyone in the White House press corps who has aggressively questioned or challenged President Bush or members of his administration. Gregory has taken a lot heat for his sometimes antagonistic tangling with former White House spokesman Scott McClellan. Maybe folks have forgotten that sometimes you gotta get your hands dirty to get the job done. If you play by the rules and swallow every piece of bullshit official spokes people hand you end up writing press releases not news and certainly not investigative reports.

Let's think about what the world would have been like if Woodward and Bernstein sat at Richard Nixon's feet and lapped up every lie and distortion he fed them? Oh, I forgot, Bob Woodward has sold out and the 2002 book,"Bush at War," a hosanna of praise for this war President is proof of that. So if you want to know how dreadful it can be to watch an award winning investigative journalist whore himself out for access to the power brokers, go read Woodward's latest publications or look up his putrid cable television defense of the Joe Wilson-Valerie Plame affair.