In this missive: “Truthiness Revisited,” “Mice…In The Air,” and “Christmas on the Moon”

Truthiness Revisited: Since the entire blogosphere (yuck) is commenting on the White House Correspondents’ dinner where Stephen Colbert appeared, let me throw in my two cents. I was unimpressed. Not that Colbert and his alter ego isn’t usually humorous; I enjoy anything that barbs anyone in power, be it conservative or liberal. I thought this particular performance, however, was underwhelming. The routine probably looked pretty good to him on paper, but he had a seriously off night, and couldn’t maintain his character. That he was clearly nervous, tripping over lines, literally forgetting his routine at one point, was painfully apparent. Suggesting the members of the press there were too “conservative” to laugh is plain silly; Colbert was nowhere near at the top of his game, and even threw away the best line of the bit. I didn’t laugh out loud once, although I did chuckle a time or two, and felt sorry for him more times than that as he stumbled through his performance.

I also thought the President/President bit, with the “ruggedly handsome” Steve Bishop, could have used some rewriting. Bishop’s over-the-top caricature of the President is a hit on The Tonight Show (this should be differentiated from his appearances in prime-time dramas where he successfully performs a subdued imitation), but in the middle I was wishing some of Leno’s writers would have been called in to polish…the ego/id routine kept switching…I understand the President wanted some of the laugh lines, but they should have maintained the “characters” of the two nevertheless, and unfortunately they didn’t.
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