contrapositive

WHERE'S THE OUTRAGE? To the mainstream media, it's almost as if Stephen Colbert didn't attend Saturday night's White House Correspondents Dinner. Truly stunning.

Tonight on (Keith Olbermann's) Countdown, Dana Milbank seemed to suggest that Colbert's performance has been ignored simply because it wasn't funny. And Milbank's right: Colbert wasn't funny--at least not in any conventional sense of the word.

Heck, how funny can you be when you're standing ten feet from the President and telling "jokes" like this one:

I stand by [the President]. I stand by this man because he stands for things. Not only for things, he stands on things. Things like aircraft carriers and rubble and recently flooded city squares. And that sends a strong message, that no matter what happens to America, she will always rebound with the most powerfully staged photo ops in the world.

Funny? Maybe in a very dry, very dark way. But "discomfiting" or "jarring" would be just as apt a description.

Whatever you call it, though, the bottom line is that the President doesn't get called an empty suit, to his face, every day. Satirical or no, Colbert's performance deserved notice.