Wonkette

The Colbert Report tests the boundaries of just how long one can stand arch irony. Or maybe I mean satire and “arch” is just what Stephen Colbert’s eyebrow does the entire show. In any case, the Colbert Report’s shtick will be familiar to any Daily Show viewer — Colbert’s fatuous, arrogant character deadpans nonsense and near nonsense in the exact low tones of our most trusted (or, uhm, at least highest-rated) news anchors. His showy “gravitas” (as Colbert congratulates himself) targets loofah-lover Bill O’Reilly most explicitly, right down to the bullet-pointed commentary on his opening spiel against “the word police.” (On the screen: “Head bad, heart good.”) This first show was probably long-planned so we won’t hold its relative lack of currency against it, especially since rants against elitism are pretty much evergreen. Just plug in the President’s latest decision: “If you THINK about Harriet Miers, of course her nomination is absurd. But the president didn’t think about her nomination — ‘I know her heart’ — notice how he didn’t mention her brain.”

MORE »

Belatedly, we learn that today Tom Brokaw is moderating a forum commemorating the 10th anniversary of “George.” We didn’t notice the magazine itself when it happened, either, but apparently it had a wide-ranging, permeating influence on popular culture — without the culture knowing it. According to Richard Bradley (who was an editor at the magazine under the decidedly more appealing moniker “Rich Blow”), “George” is the Kevin Bacon of today’s pop-politics nexus and its celebrity-fucking DNA is present in everything from “The West Wing” to “Air America” to Ann Coulter to (gulp) Wonkette. Of course. We wondered where we got the idea to dress up like George Washington. Most meaningfully, Bradley/Blow credits “George” with helping pave the way for “The Daily Show,” saying the program “owes a creative debt” to the magazine. Hey, what’s the interest for also being in English? — WONKETTE MORE »

• Daily Kos poster, LGF commenters form suicide call help line. How-to line, maybe. [Mr. Snitch]
• m4m, must be over 18, willing to travel, kill people. [NYPost]
• We are pleased to report that Benton M Wilmoth IV still makes the shittiest money in the White House. [Froomkin]
• Roy Moore hoping to make Alabama safe for 5000 pound religious sculpture. [WP, The Atlantic]
• The Iraq war is not going so well, according to both Jon Stewart and, uhm, Andy Rooney. [C&L, CBS] MORE »

An article in The Hill reveals the not-so-surprising disconnect between politicians and their constituents: They haven’t heard of “The Daily Show.” Is this proof that young people don’t vote or that politicians don’t care if young people don’t vote? There are, of course, a few hipsters in this aged crowd — multiple TDSers McCain and Biden, for instance. And then there’s Lindsey Graham.

“I love the Jon Stewart show,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), adding that he’d like to appear but has never been asked.

Oh, sweetie. Poor Lindsey. John Roberts isn’t returning his calls, either. MORE »

Crooks and Liars has the video of Stewart very politely and quietly handing Christopher Hitchens his ass. MORE »

We read that the government will spend $250 million on advertising over the next six months — maybe if they had less they’d be a little more careful about where they spent it:

The thing about Christopher Hitchens is that no matter how wrong or drunk he is, he always sounds like he’s making sense. It’s an impenetrable articulateness that makes him a compelling talking head even when he’s talking out of his ass. He doesn’t often fail to get the last word, but Jon Stewart just beat him to it. After a sublimely cordial conversation that began with Stewart asking Hitchens to explain “why I am wrong about Iraq,” Hitchens bristled to Stewart’s suggestion that the war was just “the British and Churchillian method that we’ll just go into the Middle East and we’ll redraw the map.”

Stewart: The people who say we shouldn’t fight in Iraq aren’t saying it’s our fault. . . That is the conflation that is the most disturbing. . .
Hitch: Don’t you hear people saying. . .
Stewart: You hear people saying a lot of stupid [bleep]. . . But there are reasonable disagreements in this country about the way this war has been conducted, that has nothing to do with people believing we should cut and run from the terrorists, or we should show weakness in the face of terrorism, or that we believe that we have in some way brought this upon ourselves. . .
Hitch: [Sputter]
Stewart: They believe that this war is being conducted without transparency, without credibility, and without competence…
Hitch: I’m sorry, sunshine… I just watched you ridicule the president for saying he wouldn’t give. . .
Stewart: No, you misunderstood why. . . . That’s not why I ridiculed the president. He refuses to answer questions from adults as though we were adults and falls back upon platitudes and phrases and talking points that does a disservice to the goals that he himself shares with the very people needs to convince. MORE »