At Big Hollywood, John Nolte writes, “Stephen Colbert: Dem’s Trained Clown Trotted Out to Distract From Obama DOJ Scandal:”
Personally, I completely agree with Glenn Reynolds that having this idiot Colbert testify was nothing more than a Democrat stunt to take the media’s eye off the very real and important testimony also taking place today regarding the Justice Department’s racism scandals. So the more cringe-worthy and embarrassing Colbert’s appearance is, the better. Naturally, the MSM will be all too willing to play along. They fully understand how damaging the DOJ Black Panther case is to the Obama Administration and have no desire to come anywhere near covering it.
And of course, there’s Stephen Colbert, just as willing to play along — a narcissistic attention whore with no respect for the political process who thinks his schtick combined with a ten hour day he spent in the vegetable fields somehow makes him a compelling and important witness.
The one good thing that came out of this is Colbert’s reaction to Conyers’ request that he leave. It’s not very often you see a smug, superior Hollywoodist caught off guard.
Yes, when John “I’ve never met a Republican president I didn’t want to impeach” Conyers is the voice of reason, you know you’ve gone deep, deep, deep into the Twilight Zone of politics and the media gone off the rails.
But while I rarely disagree with John and the Professor, I’m not at all sure that Colbert’s appearance was deliberately planned to take the heat off Coates’ testimony today — the Palace Guard Media would have ignored it on TV tonight and buried it in a one-inch column on page D-27 of the paper tomorrow no matter what was said. Which is why, like President Obama endorsement of the Ground Zero Mosque last month, this was another unforced error of huge proportions.
Or as John Podhoretz writes, “The Meltdown Has Happened:”
This may have been the single biggest pointless blunder in American political history, and I am not kidding. With an election only five weeks from now in which Democrats are poised for major losses, this morning’s depiction of Congress as ludicrous dupes of a TV personality — which will be replayed for weeks — will make the analogistic point that the majority is unfit to be running things. How exactly will they argue otherwise?
Did Colbert himself understand the damage he was going to do to the political and ideological forces he clearly supports by mocking the political process they control in this way? Is he, secretly, more O’Reilly than O’Reilly? Whatever is the case, the disaster was predictable and could have been avoided. I know, because I predicted it. What I didn’t predict is that the House leadership and the Democratic leadership generally are in such a state of degeneration that they didn’t know, or didn’t try, to intervene before this political Jonestown.
UPDATE: Oh my Lord. Speaker of the House Margaret Dumont Nancy Pelosi has defended Colbert’s appearance: “He’s an American. He has a point of view.”
Well, he’s a Hollywood-American, an elite special interest group the Speaker can respect. The rest of us? Not so much. Which is why, deliberately timed or not, Colbert’s appearance today while a racially-charged issue was concurrently taking place serves as the perfect bookend to an earlier, even more shameful day during the corrupt and fascistic tenure of the 111th Congress, whose last day can’t come soon enough:
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Update 9/25/10 (8:5o AM PDT): Welcome Insta-readers. One correction to the above post’s prediction, which I’m very happy to have been wrong about: congrats to the Washington Post, perhaps seeking to make amends for its role as Obama’s “non-official campaign” staff house organ, for putting Coates’ testimony on the front page.
Meanwhile, at Ricochet, having single-handedly taken on Congress, Claire Berlinski predicts bigger and better things for Colbert.
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