"I can't even describe his face," the New York radio-show host said. "If he'd had a gun, he'd a shot me. I was talking to him like I was sitting next to him on a bar stool..."
Thanks to
Josh Marshall and, of course,
Media Matters for allowing the scales to flake away from my eyes, so I might understand the context surrounding the media blackout in reaction to Stephen Colbert's speech with more clarity. While I had presumed early on that ignoring Colbert completely was the only possible strategy those he had offended could employ, I had forgotten how very different the media world's reaction had been that last time a prominent "comedian" stood up to a President and spoke "truth" (or rather, utter bullshit propoganda) to power.
It was 1996 when Don Imus had similarly
frozen the room with pugnacious and acerbic barbs about Whitewater and the Lewinsky matter, delivered only feet from the Clintons, who sat in impotent silence. The incident caused an immediate furor, in stark contrast to the reaction Colbert's performance has thus far elicited.
While it's true that reaction was mixed to Imus' decision to forsake conventional respect for the President, and that the administration at the time successfully got CSPAN to refrain from running reruns of the remarks, the fact remains that there was something of a media frenzy back in the day.
Here's the NY Times on Imus in '96:
Unexpectedly, the Clintons Are Skewered at a Dinner
By LAWRIE MIFFLIN
When the Radio-Television Correspondents Association invited Don Imus, the WFAN radio morning man in New York, to be the after-dinner speaker at its annual gala on Thursday night in Washington, members knew how uninhibited his barbs could be. And how well informed; Mr. Imus is as well known for being obsessed with politics as for being a so-called shock jock. But the correspondents apparently got more than they bargained for when Mr. Imus made fun of President Clinton's supposed extramarital affairs and Hillary Clinton's legal problems -- with both the President and the First Lady sitting on the dais as he spoke.
March 23, 1996
TV Notes;Imus in the Spotlight
By LAWRIE MIFFLIN
Perhaps the only person more delighted than Don Imus about the flash flood of publicity following his spicy speech at a Washington dinner last week was Mike Wallace of CBS. Mr. Wallace had been working on a "60 Minutes" profile of Mr. Imus, which will now appear on Sunday night, thanks to all the publicity from Mr. Imus's notorious appearance at the Radio-Television Correspondents dinner on Thursday. As the after-dinner entertainer, Mr. Imus, the morning-radio "shock jock" heard on WFAN-AM in New York and syndicated nationally, verbally clawed several dinner guests, including President Clinton, Hillary Rodham Clinton and Senator Bob Dole.
March 27, 1996
After Imus Spoke, More and More Radio Affiliates Started Listening
By STACY LU
Don Imus, the radio talk show host, is reaping the rewards of rudeness. Since his remarks about President and Mrs. Clinton, made to their faces at the Radio and Television Correspondents annual dinner last month, the "Imus in the Morning" show has been picked up by 10 additional stations. With those 10, Mr. Imus is now heard on 80 stations around the country and has about 10 million listeners each week, said Bob Bartolomeo, director of affiliate sales for Westwood One, which syndicates the Imus show. The largest of the 10 new stations is WISN-AM, Milwaukee; the others are in Georgia, Louisiana, Indiana, Ohio, Oregon and Pennsylvania.
April 22, 1996
Wheras Elizabeth Bumiller didn't even see fit to mention Colbert's name at all in her
article from today. I think it is incumbent on absolutely every one of us to contact the Times editorial pages and demand an explanation. Allowing Frank Rich or Maureen Dowd to mention Colbert in their opinion colums is not equivalent to treating the story like news. As you can see, there was column space aplenty ready and waiting in the service of giving an adulterer and his wife a pair of black eyes.
Here's Margaret Carlson for CNN/Time:
They're Shocked, Shocked!
By Margaret Carlson
(TIME, April 1) -- The Washington press corps feigned surprise that radio host Don Imus offended the President, the First Lady, Speaker Newt Gingrich and others at the Radio & TV Correspondents' Dinner last Thursday night. There were some funny moments, and intermittent silences, as Imus, the evening's emcee, took jabs at the Speaker's gay half-sister, Clinton's alleged extramarital activities, Senator Bob Kerrey's artificial leg, and offered X-rated details of a TV journalist's marital difficulties. Imus went easier on people who visit his show (Tim Russert, Bob Dole, Cokie Roberts) than on those who don't, such as Bernard Shaw (an anchor desk away from going postal) and George Will ("the kind of guy who dresses up on weekends in clothes that make him feel pretty").
These are just a few examples I've picked up with some quick Googling, but my recollection of the time is that Imus got tons of free publicity, improved his ratings and probably hiked his advertising rate. The conventional wisdom was that what was proper for discussion at the water cooler was proper for discussion in the news pages and on TV.
Here's Howard Kurtz from 1999 on the profound impact of comedians and their deathlessly important contribution to the political landscape:
Clinton, not surprisingly, has become a late-night punching bag. In 1998, according to the Center for Media and Public Affairs, Leno, Letterman, Maher and Conan O'Brien told 1,712 jokes about Clinton, compared with just 338 in 1995. The other top targets last year were Lewinsky (332 jokes), Ken Starr (139), Hillary Rodham Clinton (100), Linda Tripp (90) and Paula Jones (88).
Republican strategist Mike Murphy has a more benign view: "People have marginalized politics so much that being made fun of doesn't matter that much anymore, and that's a tragedy. Leno will go into the behavior that the serious press is shocked and aghast to talk about, but it's still a comic buffoon caricature of a frat boy chasing Monica around the White House."
One reason for the popularity of political comedy shows may be that they reflect the way real people talk. When ABC's Cokie Roberts was interviewed by Imus, she said that if the Senate calls Lewinsky to testify, "we could pretend that we'll be shocked and horrified . . . but it's just too delicious." Such admissions are not generally made on network newscasts.
My how times have changed. Now apparently, no matter how "delicious," the corporate media oligarchy have determined that satire should be neither seen nor heard.
It's a testament to the thoroughness of Colbert's satirical vision that silence from the establishment is the only possible reaction. The sight of an entertainer pointedly reminding the President, while standing mere feet away from him, that they are equals was a radical act, by today's establishment standards. The preemptive snub he laid on Bush as he left the daïs was the cherry on top. No one will dare criticize Colbert on substance, since doing so is part of the ingenious trap posed by Colbert's sardonic tour de force.
I missed the duelling Bush's entirely, but for my money James Adomian is the best, hands down. Best second term Bush by far, great detail, perfect fractured logic. That other guy Bush performed with is a Vegas hack.