Thanks to everyone who came out to KGB Bar for the comics presentation. It was really Tim Kreider's night, and his presentation rocked -- Bush imitations, robot voices, and everything.
One snippet of my little talk: I described seeing John King on the Colbert Report last week. Colbert asked him about the criticism that the press was too soft on Bush for the first five years of his administration. King's response:
“We, as an institution, did make some mistakes. No question about it. In the lead-up to the Iraq War, in the post-9/11 moment, we in the media did, I think his own party, and the Democrats in Congress did. Too many people got caught up in the post-9/11 patriotic mood and thought maybe we’re not supposed to ask the critical questions of the president. I hope we ask those questions of any president, whether his name be George W. Bush or Barack Obama, and I hope we learn that lesson.”
I told the crowd that it wasn't this canned self-serving speech that sent shivers up my spine -- it was the smirk King shot Colbert for a split-second, right afterwards. The smirk said: See, I got off my obligatory little paragraph proving I'm not an idealogue and will admit to mistakes, so get out of my way and let me do my new Sunday morning talk show, where I'll have on the same people who were so confidently wrong during those five years, and ignore all the unserious wack-jobs who were right.
And then, the crowd gasped when I showed on the screen...
the smug smirk of the mainstream media: