I think I rather disagree with this take on the Colbert thing. Certainly, his routine, the existence of it, the content of it, the fact that it confronted Bush in a way that he's not often exposed to, the negative reaction of the audience, the fact that Colbert skewered the press as well as Bush & Company -- all of that is newsworthy, and should have been a normal part of the reports about the dinner that were published immediately afterwards, but if that had happened, if those reports had simply made note of those things, honestly and in a straight-forward manner, that would have been the end of it -- and should have been. Colbert's routine wasn't, bottom line, Big News, just news -- political satirists have been making fun of politicians, sometimes right in front of them, for centuries, so for Colbert to do what is, after all, his stock-in-trade shtick, isn't really Big News, it's just newsworthy because it happened and it said things that many people would want to say to Bush and the press if they had the opportunity.

So, if the media had just done their jobs and reported accurately on what happened at the dinner, that would have been the end of it -- not Big News, just news. What made the whole affair Very Big News was that the press didn't report on it, they ignored it almost entirely, and continued to ignore it until the blogs forced them to confront it, and even then, instead of admitting their error and coming clean, the media (in general) attempted to downplay the routine, in part by claiming that it wasn't funny -- which, of course, wasn't the issue at all. Maybe it wasn't funny to a lot of people -- humor is, after all, a matter of personal taste and preference -- but the story, the original story, was about the very existence of the Colbert event and what it meant, not whether it was a successful comedy routine or not, which is a matter for critics and not for reporters. In any case by that point the story had moved on. By then, not only was it about the existence of the Colbert routine, but about the media's de facto coverup of its existence and their subsequent attempt to belittle it.

In short, if the press had merely done its job and reported what should have been reported, there would have been no scandal, no big Colbert to-do at all: a political satirist skewered the President and the press, those who agreed with what he said liked it, those who didn't, didn't -- in any reasonable theory of journalism that's a story, but not a big story -- just give the who, what, where, when, why and how of it and you're done. What made it into Big News was the consensus take of Big Media that it wasn't a story, which speaks volumes about its values and prejudices.

[Thanks to Polly and Jo Ann]

Addenda: Tune into the criticism of Digby and Atrios on Anna Marie Cox's dismissal of the Colbert routine in Time, and Mark Kleiman's fundamentally wrong-headed reply. (Atrios responds here.)

Personally, I've never had much use for Cox's Wonkette persona, and it seems to me that, like many people, she's making a category error in confusing the question of the artistic success of Colbert's routine (i.e. whether it's funny or not) with its political, social and cultural significance.