Every year, the White House Press Corps gets together and schmoozes with the administration in what is known as the White House Press Corps Association Dinner. Usually, the press hires some comedians to poke gentle fun at the administration, all without any serious criticism.

Until now.

Stephen Colbert, formerly of The Daily Show and now host of his own Comedy Central show, The Colbert Report, turned the dinner from a moderately funny distraction from the horrors of the Bush administration into a stinging criticism of the administration. For twenty minutes, Colbert deadpanned biting criticisms of the administration in his Colbert Report persona: a pompous conservative zealot (in the mold of Bill O'Reilly or Joe Scarborough) who makes the Bush administration and conservatives appear ridiculous whiel he's trying to defend them. This Boing Boing link provides a link to a summary of the routine, as well as links to videos and torrents of videos of Colbert's twenty-minute speech, as well as the whole dinner.

Though he normally silences or ignores critics, President Bush was a captive audience as Colbert lambasted him and his administration, often speaking directly to him. Bush was reportedly fuming as he was forced to actually listen to criticism of his administration. The White House now says that, next year, comedians will be screened more carefully.

While Colbert is clearly a satirical hero -- speaking directly to the object of satire as that object is forced to sit and listen, something that satirists from Aristophanes to Jonathan Swift must have dreamed about -- the press has remained remarkably quiet, and only recently has the so-called mainstream media talked about Colbert's performance, dubbing him unfunny. Salon suspects this is because Colbert was also criticizing the media's complicity in the Bush machine's takeover:

Colbert's deadly performance did more than reveal, with devastating clarity, how Bush's well-oiled myth machine works. It exposed the mainstream press' pathetic collusion with an administration that has treated it -- and the truth -- with contempt from the moment it took office. Intimidated, coddled, fearful of violating propriety, the press corps that for years dutifully repeated Bush talking points was stunned and horrified when someone dared to reveal that the media emperor had no clothes. Colbert refused to play his dutiful, toothless part in the White House correspondents dinner -- an incestuous, backslapping ritual that should be retired. For that, he had to be marginalized. Voilà: "He wasn't funny."

And so, instead of The New York Times talking about Colbert as a comedy hero, it talked about fluff, which is the best way to play down something's significance: "Bush impersonator funny!"

For taking on the administration and winning, Stephen Colbert joins John Stuart Mill as a SEDHE Hero of the Forever.