Kewl Kidz yearbook editor, frequent guest on Hardball and former style reporter, Elisabeth Bumiller has put the official cap on Saturday night's WHPCA dinner with a glowing, fawning tribute to Dear Leader's comedy chops:
White House officials and Mr. Bridges said the double stand-up was the idea of the president, who last year ceded his spot on the program to his wife and in previous years relied on slide shows as visual props for his routines. As the 2,500-plus guests at the annual event know, by tradition the president is supposed to make fun of himself in an effort to establish his regular-guy credentials and ingratiate himself with the press.
This is the night the captain of the football team actually gets drunk with the hangers-on instead of showing up late and taking the head cheerleader straight upstairs to get laid. It's a magic night as they jostle for his attention and it looks like from this column that Ms. Bumiller has toadied her way to the head of the class:
He had known about Mr. Bridges, who appears regularly as a Bush impersonator on "The Tonight Show," since 2002. At Christmas that year at the president's ranch, Barbara Bush, the president's mother, showed her son and the assembled clan a video of Mr. Bridges imitating Mr. Bush that had been used to introduce her at an appearance in Texas. Mr. Bush, amused, asked to meet Mr. Bridges, and eventually got together with him in Washington on Feb. 24, 2003, three weeks before the American-led invasion of Iraq.
"Maybe he needed a break or something," said Randy Nolen, Mr. Bridges's manager. "We had him laughing."
...
Mr. Bush told Mr. Bridges, Mr. Nolen said, that the time was not right for comedy, but that in the future they had to get together and do "something big." This year's correspondents' dinner was apparently big enough, and by mid-April Mr. Parvin had a script.
He needed a break but he knew that the time wasn't right for comedy. How presidential. Dear Leader knew when the time was right to laugh again. That's how he just knew that in March, 2004, at the Radio and Television Correspondants' Dinner, with the Iraqi insurgency starting to explode, 52 US soldiers dead that month and over 300 wounded, the time was right to joke about looking for WMD under White House sofa cushions.
Those weapons of mass destruction have got to be somewhere. (Laughter and applause.)
...
Nope, no weapons over there. (Laughter and applause.) Maybe under here. (Laughter.) Oops, this photo wasn't supposed to be in here. This is the Skull and Bones secret signal. (Laughter.)
Laughter and applause from the assembled journalists. That gag was fun-ny. And don't kid yourself; as Ms. Bumiller lets us know today, that kind of instinct for comedy and sensitivity isn't something you can learn. You have to be born with it. Thank god, Dear Leader was born with the gift. And thank god he's willing to share it with the people who matter at their proms.
There was no mention of Stephen Colbert in the yearbook. His comedy is just rude. And he's so angry. Doesn't he get that it's a party?
Related: You can't read about Colbert's performance in the corporate media, but you can watch it here, (and here), see BushCo's reaction to Colbert's video here, read a transcript of the speech here and leave a message for him at Thank You, Stephen Colbert.
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