Still Over There w/ Stephen Colbert

I has been a real pleasure of watch Steven Colbert's, the Colbert Report this week. Colbert had the courage to broadcast his show from Iraq this week. But his USO show was not his only bully pulpit.

It is important to remember that three years ago, Colbert was the guest comedian at the White House Correspondents dinner where he satirically assualted George W. Bush and Washington Press corps. To me it was a powerful "the emperor had no clothes moment," which exposed not only the Bush Administration incompetence, it crude manipulation of the American press, and the press' acquiesance to that manipulation.

Over the last five years you people were so good, over tax cuts, WMD intelligence, the effect of global warming. We Americans didn't want to know, and you had the courtesy not to try to find out. Those were good times, as far as we knew.

Now Colbert is in Iraq, and he is again taking the media and also the American people to task for forgetting the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Not only did he take his show to Iraq, he also guest-edited the current edition of Newsweek, which devoted the entire issue to the all-to-easily forgotten wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and now Pakistan. According to Jon Meacham, Newsweek's editor the magazine and its guest editor both got what they wanted

In one conversation, Colbert asked an interesting question. I know what is in this for me, he said: I get an issue of NEWSWEEK about something I care about and attention for a project—the broadcasts from Iraq—that I care about. But, he asked, what is in it for you? A fresh voice, I replied, and access to his audience—an audience of politically and culturally engaged people

James Rainey, in an article in the Los Angeles Times noted that Americans seem to quickly forget that we are still at war in Iraq and Afghanistan. According to Rainey,


Colbert's satire clearly, and correctly, skewers the media for losing focus, despite the presence of 130,000 troops in the still-dangerous nation. Statistics from the Tyndall Report tracking service show that all three network evening news programs broadcast a total of just 99 minutes of news on Iraq in the first five months of this year.

The media's attention deficit had Colbert telling Gen. Odierno he had assumed the Iraq war had ended and we "had moved on to the new war between a wise Latino woman and old white men."

I watched three of Colbert's shows from Iraq and read some of his guest edited Newsweek. I was impressed by his efforts to try to bring America's attention back to the most important problems facing America. The problem that Barack Obama promised he would solve after his election, ending the war and Iraq and bringing the troops home.

I am sure that with all the problems confronting us we may lose focus again, but Colbert's achievement is remarkable. As Rainey wrote in the Los Angeles Times that Colbert's fictional character had the power, "to bring everyone's attention back to reality."



Capitano Tedeschi

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