The NYT's David Carr dissects Stephen Colbert's appearance on NBC's Meet The Press.
It is Mr. Colbert’s ability to both mimic and amplify the tics of political convention and play them back with just a little more topspin that makes his satire so discomfiting. His last notable engagement with the Beltway — his appearance at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner in 2006 — drew withering reviews from the elites in attendance and an overwhelming, ecstatic response from YouTube nation. The reason that the journalists found Mr. Colbert so offensive was not because he disrespected the president; it was his decision to show them up, calling them “fools” and suggesting that they are part of a self-sustaining apparatus.
On “Meet the Press,” Mr. Colbert’s agenda was prosaic: He was trying to leverage his show and a faux candidacy in support of a new book. For Mr. Russert and other mainstream media types (Maureen Dowd of The New York Times got in on the fun even before he announced by turning over a column to Mr. Colbert), the transaction is more nuanced. Mr. Russert demonstrated that he could not only take a joke, but also that he was in on it, and could create a spicy point of entry for a demographic that network news almost never touches — anyone under 50.
Here are the YouTube clips: Part 1 and Part 2.
But the message I draw from Mr. Colbert is not that members of the media-political complex need to laugh at themselves, but that they need to take a hard look. The incipient generation of news consumers has made it clear that it does not want to see a bunch of guys with really nice neckware standing on the White House lawn talking about what they did not learn in the press room behind them and then flick at “sources” who suggest that “one thing is clear.”
One thing is, in fact, clear, from the plummeting numbers for network news: the jig is up. Consumers have decided that network news and talk shows are every bit as fake and not nearly as funny as “The Daily Show” and “The Colbert Report.”
“Why shouldn’t a comedic fake newscaster feel right at home in a news format that itself verges on fakery?” said Mark Feldstein, a journalism professor at George Washington University. “After all, these shows aren’t all that different from televised wrestling, with the shouts and grunts that simulate combat during what is really a fixed fight, followed by everyone involved in the charade going out for drinks afterward.”