ABSTRACT
When comedian Stephen Colbert performed for President George W. Bush and the Washington press corps at the White House Correspondents Dinner in 2006, the video recording of the event became one of the most widely circulated and talked about political events of the year on the internet. One observation rarely mentioned was that Colbert’s performance wasn’t entirely new material. Colbert had delivered many of the best comedic bits in the debut episode of his faux pundit talk show on Comedy Central, The Colbert Report, when he unveiled the concept of “Truthiness.” The playful term refers to the tendency for bloviated television pundits (such as Fox News’s Bill O’Reilly, of whom Colbert’s character is a direct parody) and right-wing politicians alike to gleefully trumpet their illogical, gut-centered way of thinking, irrespective of evidence or facts. By essentially repeating this routine in his speech, Colbert used the occasion for a wide-ranging assault on the president, the Washington press corps, and the broader political culture of Washington. In such a culture, the president has shown he can willfully ignore realities and define truth as he wishes, while a dutiful press corps – through its norms, routines, and practices – not only plays along but helps to construct and justify the mirage. Repeatedly Colbert points to the ways in which inconvenient truths can simply be brushed aside in such an environment. “Guys like us,” he says (including the president in the statement), “we don’t pay attention to the polls. We know that polls are just a collection of statistics that reflect what people are thinking in ‘reality,’ and reality has a well known liberal bias.”
