L’etat, c’est moi.
—Louis XIV (1638–1715), King of France
I am the decider.
—George W. Bush (2006), U.S. President
Just after midnight on December 3, 1984, residents of Bhopal, India, awoke to the sound of screams. People were staggering into the street, their eyes, noses, and mouths burning. Residents described a thick white cloud entering their homes, followed by a burning and suffocating sensation. All hell broke loose in the densely populated city. People ran in panic. Soon they began coughing and vomiting up blood. A survivor, Champa Devi Shukla, remembers, “Those who fell were not picked up by anybody. They just kept falling, and were trampled on by other people. People climbed and scrambled over each other to save their lives—even cows were running and trying to save their lives and crushing people as they ran.”1
The toxic cloud came from the Union Carbide plant located in Bhopal. In all, some 27 tons of the deadly gas methyl isocyanate leaked out after the six safety systems designed to contain the leak failed. A half million people were exposed to the gas. About 7,000 people died immediately, and roughly 20,000 more people have died as a result of being poisoned.2 The shuttered Union Carbide plant has never been completely cleaned up, and toxic waste continues to poison residents of Bhopal. In 2001, Dow Chemical purchased Union Carbide, acquiring the company’s liabilities. Dow has continued where Carbide left off: It has refused to clean up the site or provide safe drinking water, or fairly compensate victims. Some 150,000 people continue to suffer chronic illnesses that stem from the 1984 accident.3
Union Carbide has long denied responsibility for the world’s worst industrial accident. It claimed that its Indian subsidiary, in which it owned a 51 percent stake, was to blame. But documents obtained in 2004 by the London daily The Independent reveal “the intimate and extensive involvement of UCC [Union Carbide] in procuring equipment, designing and providing technical services to the plant in Bhopal.” The American company was involved in procuring “safety equipment” and “control instrumentation”—both of which failed on that December night in 1984. Another company memo revealed that Union Carbide slashed 335 jobs from its Bhopal plant the year before the accident, saving $1.25 million. “Future savings will not be easy,” the confidential Union Carbide memo concluded, hinting that the cuts might jeopardize the plant’s operations. Warren Anderson, then chairman of Union Carbide, has refused to answer a summons in India to face charges of culpable homicide.4 He was recently discovered living comfortably in retirement in the Hamptons.
This tale of corporate negligence and the continuing tragedy of Bhopal has received scant mention in the world’s press, save for the obligatory anniversary stories. So Jacques Servin was surprised to receive an e-mail from the BBC at his Paris apartment in late November 2004. The BBC was airing a story to mark the twentieth anniversary of the disaster. The e-mail, which was addressed to the website www.dowethics.com, requested an interview with a Dow spokesman to discuss the company’s position on the Bhopal disaster.
Had the BBC producers looked a little closer, they would have noticed that the Web site bears the Dow logo, but actually spoofs the company’s lack of ethics. It was a creation of the Yes Men, an activist group that specializes in performing high-profile “identity corrections” for ethically challenged companies.
With the major media so loath to spotlight the crimes of their advertisers and corporate sponsors, it has fallen to activists to break the sound barrier to bring attention to these hidden stories. The Yes Men use parody as a weapon to pierce the wall of silence imposed by the corporate media. As the Yes Men note, “In the U.S. at least, you can’t cover the World Trade Organization (WTO) or the Bhopal anniversary just because they’re tremendously important. We can provide the fodder, sometimes, that lets these subjects get covered.” In 2004, the Yes Men “campaigned” in the United States for George W. Bush. They circulated petitions asking people to support global warming, and asked Bush supporters to sign a pledge agreeing to keep nuclear waste in their backyard and send their children off to war. In May 2006, the Yes Men, impersonating Halliburton officials, spoke at an insurance industry conference on “catastrophic loss.” They demonstrated the Halliburton “survive-a-ball”—an orblike inflatable suit designed for corporate executives to survive a global warming– induced flood.
So when the BBC contacted dowethics.com, the Yes Men were ready. Servin threw on a cheap suit and went to the BBC’s Paris studio, where he transformed into Dow spokesman Jude Finisterra. Here is what he announced in a live broadcast on the BBC on December 3, 2004:
JUDE FINISTERRA: Today is a great day for all of us at Dow, and I think for millions of people around the world, as well. It is twenty years since the disaster, and today I’m very, very happy to announce that for the first time Dow is accepting full responsibility for the Bhopal catastrophe. We have a $12 billion plan to finally, at long last, fully compensate the victims, including the 120,000 who may need medical care for their entire lives, and to fully and swiftly remediate the Bhopal plant site. . . . We have resolved to liquidate Union Carbide, this nightmare for the world and this headache for Dow, and use the $12 billion to provide more than $500 per victim, which is all that they have [received to date]—a maximum of just about $500 per victim. It is not “plenty good for an Indian,” as one of our spokespersons unfortunately said a couple of years ago. In fact, it pays for one year of medical care. . . . When Union Carbide abandoned the site sixteen years ago, they left tons of toxic waste. The site continues to be used as a playground by children. Water continues to be drunk from the groundwater underneath. It is a mess, Steve, and we need a Dow—
BBC WORLD: It’s a mess, certainly, Jude. That’s good news that you have finally accepted responsibility. Some people would say too late, three years, almost four years on. How soon is your money going to make a difference to the people in Bhopal?
FINISTERRA: Well, as soon as we can get it to them, Steve. We have begun the process of liquidating Union Carbide. I would say that it is better late than never, and I would also like to say that this is no small matter, Steve. This is the first time in history that a publicly owned company of anything near the size of Dow has performed an action which is significantly against its bottom line simply because it’s the right thing to do. And our shareholders may take a bit of a hit, Steve, but I think that if they are anything like me they will be ecstatic to be part of such a historic occasion of doing right by those that we have wronged.
BBC WORLD: And does this mean you will also cooperate in any future legal actions in India or the USA?
FINISTERRA: Absolutely, Steve. One of our nonfinancial commitments is to press the United States government to finally extradite Warren Anderson, who fled India after being arrested in 1984. He posted $2,000 bail on multiple homicide charges and fled India promptly. . . . We are going to release finally the full composition of the chemicals and the studies that were performed by Union Carbide shortly after the catastrophe. . . . And finally, we’re going to . . . fund, with no strings attached, research into the safety of any Dow product. . . . We do not want to be a company that sells products that may have long-term negative effects on the world.
BBC WORLD: Jude, we will leave it there. Thank you for joining us.
Just to reiterate what Jude Finisterra, the spokesman for Dow Chemical has just said, he says Dow Chemical now fully accepts responsibility for the events in Bhopal twenty years ago. And they will cooperate in future legal action.5
Could this be true: Dow Chemical taking responsibility and making restitution for the corporate crime of the century? As this historic event unfolded, the BBC flashed a “BREAKING NEWS” banner across the bottom of the screen. In Frankfurt, Dow’s share price fell 4.2 percent in 23 minutes, wiping $2 billion off its market value before recovering all the day’s losses three hours later.
Alas, it was but a fleeting mirage. An hour after the news segment aired, Dow spokesperson Marina Ashanin issued the following disclaimer:
This morning a false statement was carried by BBC World regarding responsibility for the Bhopal tragedy. The individual who made the statement identified himself as a Dow spokesperson named Jude Finisterra. Dow confirms that there was no basis whatsoever for this report, and we also confirm that Jude Finisterra is neither an employee nor a spokesperson for Dow.
Jacques Servin’s nom de plume was carefully chosen: Jude is the patron saint of impossible causes, he explained to Democracy Now!, and Finisterra means “end of the earth,” which the Yes Men declared “kind of represents the situation” in Bhopal.6
With their cover blown, the Yes Men decided to come clean . . . sort of. They issued a press release about the incident, purportedly from Dow, to clarify the company’s stand on Bhopal. Many media outlets ran this as an actual statement from Dow Chemical:
On December 3, 2004, a fake Dow spokesperson announced on BBC World television fake plans to take full responsibility for the very real Bhopal tragedy of December 3, 1984. Dow Chemical emphatically denies this announcement. Although seemingly humanistic in nature, the fake plans were invented by irresponsible hucksters with no regard for the truth.
As Dow has repeatedly noted, Dow cannot and will not take responsibility for the accident. (“What we cannot and will not do . . . is accept responsibility for the Bhopal accident.”—CEO Michael Parker, 2002.) The Dow position has not changed, despite public pressure. . . .
To be perfectly clear:
Most important of all:
With a deft mix of humor, information, and theatrics, the Yes Men shifted the perspective of the reporting about the corporate crime of the century. For a brief moment, the world considered the Bhopal story from the perspective of the victims, and how long justice had been denied.
The Yes Men were criticized by some for raising false hopes among Bhopal survivors, and for tricking the BBC. “We may have given people two hours of false hope,” Servin said of the Yes Men’s action. “Dow has given them twenty years of suffering.”8
A Stranger in Their Midst
It was billed by CNN as an International Town Meeting, a place in the heartland where Clinton administration officials could safely sell their plan to bomb Iraq. It was February 18, 1998, and Secretary of State Madeleine Albright was expecting the usual: hand-picked questioners and carefully screened audiences to which she could present unchallenged the Clinton administration’s case for attacking Iraq. The administration’s push for war was sparked by confrontations with Saddam Hussein over keeping UN weapons inspectors in Iraq. As former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter has argued on Democracy Now!, these confrontations were not “about disarming Iraq. It was about maintaining economic sanctions as a vehicle of containing Saddam until you could overthrow him.”9
The controversy over UN inspections of Iraq occurred against the backdrop of Bill Clinton’s mounting scandals. Indeed, impeachment hearings in the House of Representatives in December 1998 were delayed by a day when joint U.S.-British attacks were launched on Iraq just as the hearings were scheduled to get under way.
Albright, like other politicians who agree to participate in such purportedly unscripted encounters with the public, was assured that these events are carefully stage-managed. Albright had come to Ohio State University with National Security Advisor Sandy Berger and Defense Secretary William Cohen. This troika, the ABC of Clinton’s war cabinet, was expecting a feel-good pep rally. As an account in the Columbus Free Press explained, “Unlike a real town meeting, admittance to this event was highly selective. First there were the red tickets given out for the 1,000 seats out on the arena floor. Red ticket holders would be the only ones with a chance to ask a question. (Yet everyone with a red floor ticket who wished to pose a question to the panel would first have to submit it in writing on a three-by-five card. If the White House or CNN didn’t like your question, you didn’t get to ask it.) Ohio State University would recommend certain local and university groups for red ticket eligibility and CNN would either approve or disapprove them. Groups receiving these red tickets included the ROTC, various veterans groups, active duty military, the League of Women Voters, university professors and staff. As well, forty student groups were approved. Yet many student groups, including two environmental groups, were disapproved and effectively barred. Then there were white tickets for the 6,000 seats in the bleacher stands. White ticket holders would absolutely not be allowed to ask questions . . .”10
So much for a freewheeling discussion. But community members were not so willing to play the part of cheerleaders. Concerned and skeptical citizens and activists lined up to get tickets to the event days in advance. The result: The Clinton officials came to sell war, but this audience wasn’t buying. When Albright started to speak, some protesters began chanting, “One, two, three, four, we don’t want your racist war.” Others unfurled a banner: “No War.”11 CNN reported, “The heckling became so intense at one point that Albright interrupted CNN’s Judy Woodruff and said, ‘Could you tell those people I’ll be happy to talk to them when this is over? I’d like to make my point.’ ”12
CNN handlers came out to negotiate with audience members who were angry that they could not ask questions. The network finally agreed to allow one person who was not in the preapproved front rows to ask a question. It fell to Jon Strange, a 22-year-old substitute teacher in the Columbus public schools, to take on the leading hawks of the Clinton administration. He walked to the front to ask his question:
JON STRANGE: Why bomb Iraq when other countries have committed similar violations? Turkey, for example, has bombed Kurdish citizens. Saudi Arabia has tortured political and religious dissidents. Why does the U.S. apply different standards of justice to these countries?
SECRETARY OF STATE MADELEINE ALBRIGHT: Let me say that when there are problems such as you have described, we point them out and make very clear our opposition to them. But there is no one that has done to his people and his neighbors what Saddam Hussein has done or what he is thinking about doing. . . .
STRANGE: What about Indonesia?
ALBRIGHT: . . . Saddam Hussein has produced weapons of mass destruction which he is clearly not collecting for his own personal pleasure, but in order to use. And therefore he is qualitatively and quantitatively different from every brutal dictator that has appeared recently. And we are very concerned about him specifically and what his plans might be.
STRANGE: What do you have to say about dictators in countries like Indonesia, who we sell weapons to, yet they are slaughtering people in East Timor? What do you have to say about Israel, who is slaughtering Palestinians and who imposed martial law? What do you have to say about that? Those are our allies. Why do we sell weapons to these countries? Why do we support them? Why do we bomb Iraq when it commits similar problems? [Audience cheers, applause, drowns him out.]
ALBRIGHT: There are various examples of things that are not right in this world and the United States is trying—[Shouting.] I really am surprised that people feel that it is necessary to defend the rights of Saddam Hussein when what we ought to be thinking about is how to make sure that he does not use weapons of mass destruction.
JUDY WOODRUFF, CNN: People are shouting . . . just a moment. . . .
STRANGE: I am not defending him in the least. What I am saying is that there needs to be a consistent application of U.S. foreign policy. We cannot support people who are committing the same violations because they are political allies. That is not acceptable. We cannot violate UN resolutions when it is convenient to us. You’re not answering my question, Madame Albright. [Applause, cheers.]
ALBRIGHT: I suggest, sir, that you study carefully what American foreign policy is, what we have said exactly about the cases you have mentioned. Every one of them has been pointed out. Every one of them we have clearly stated our policy on. And if you would like, as a former professor, I would be delighted to spend fifty minutes with you describing exactly what we are doing on those subjects.13
The audience was shouting at Albright, and CNN host Judy Woodruff admonished them: “The more time you take shouting, the more time you take away from people who have questions.” But then Woodruff picked up where Jon Strange left off:
WOODRUFF: Secretary, I do have a brief follow-up and that is on this point. There are many countries that have these biological and chemical weapons—six countries in the Middle East alone. You’ve stated why Saddam Hussein should be singled out. But it is puzzling to people who wonder why it’s okay for other countries to have these biological and chemical weapons, but not for Iraq.
ALBRIGHT: I think that it is clear that other countries have weapons of mass destruction. It is a question of whether there is a proclivity to use them, and Saddam Hussein is a repeat offender. I think it is very important for us to make clear that the U.S. and the civilized world cannot deal with somebody who is willing to use those weapons of mass destruction on his own people, not to speak of his neighbors.
Jon Strange asked the impolite questions that all reporters should ask—making it safe for Woodruff to press the point. This was on live TV, so the Clinton administration officials could not hide from the anger sparked by their policies. Strange’s challenge was heard by some 200 million people around the world. His exchange was followed by angry questions from other audience members shouted to the administration officials. CNN described a “heckler” criticizing the entire affair, saying it was not a town meeting but “a media event staged by CNN.” The network also recounted how another “heckler” asked how Albright, Cohen, and Berger could sleep at night, knowing that innocent Iraqis would be killed and injured by any military strike.
The unidentified man in the audience addressed the trio: “We will not send messages to Saddam Hussein with the blood of the Iraqi people. If you want to deal with Saddam, deal with Saddam, not the Iraqi people.”
Albright shot back, “What we are doing is so that you all can sleep at night.” She continued, shouting over the audience, “I am very proud of what we are doing. We are the greatest nation in the world. . . .”14
Albright hurried away immediately after the event. Jon Strange’s promised fifty-minute lecture never happened.
The following day on Democracy Now!, Kathy Kelly, founder of Voices in the Wilderness, spoke from Iraq, where she was bringing food and medical supplies to hospitals that were suffering under sanctions. The CNN Town Hall was watched widely in Iraq. Kelly said, “I think many people here derived encouragement from it. People said to me ‘There’s no support for military strikes in the Middle East, and not even in the U.S.’ . . . I spent most of the day in the hospital today, where mothers said to me, ‘We need medicine. We need milk. We don’t need bombs.’ ”15
This is how it is in our democracy today: Government leaders and the corporate media collude to protect those in power from being challenged. In a theatrical routine that has been perfected in recent years by the Bush administration, CNN and the Clinton administration used the trappings of participatory democracy as a prop behind which they could avoid having to answer tough questions. This is how the echo chamber of government and media works. People who disagree with the government are frozen out of the one-sided “debate” and are then reduced to having to shout their concerns or questions. They are labeled “hecklers,” and caricatured and dismissed. Were they allowed to freely question their leaders—as the pro-war pundits get to do—they could be described differently: as concerned citizens.
Jon Strange was aware that his impertinent questions angered the administration and CNN. As he told Democracy Now! the next day, “I don’t think this is what they had in mind.”
Death-Defying Activism
In 1981, the Centers for Disease Control’s newsletter reported five unrelated cases of pneumonia in homosexual men in the Los Angeles area. Two of them had already died. The report generated little interest. This was the quiet, deadly start of the AIDS epidemic.
As the death toll mounted, people with AIDS and their allies found themselves up against incredible odds: a government that refused to acknowledge the disease (President Reagan never mentioned AIDS publicly during his first term in office); government bureaucrats who dragged their feet on drug approval; right-wing leaders who called the disease “God’s revenge on gays”; brutal police who wore rubber gloves while beating up activists; and a homophobic general population that stood by silently watching.
AIDS activists needed a way to break through this deadly complacency. Taking inspiration from the civil rights movement, their creative confrontations brought unprecedented attention to this hidden plague:
As AIDS continued its deadly course, activists grew increasingly frustrated at how little the media covered the disease, and at the misplaced priorities of the government. The two issues converged in January 1991, when President George H. W. Bush launched the Persian Gulf War. John Weir, a member of ACT UP in New York City, was planning for a protest dubbed “Day of Desperation” in New York City, which aimed to protest both the war and the inadequate response to AIDS.
Weir and two other activists decided to make a surprise appearance on CBS Evening News with Dan Rather the night before the Day of Desperation. Another ACT UP member, Ann Northrup, was a former CBS producer. She provided them with directions to Rather’s studio and an old CBS ID tag to gain entrance to the building.
On January 22, 1991, Dan Rather began his broadcast in the usual fashion: “This is The CBS Evening News, Dan Rather reporting. Good Evening—”
Suddenly, John Weir’s head popped into the frame in front of Rather. “Fight AIDS not Arabs! Fight AIDS not Arabs!” he shouted with two others.
Rather stared straight ahead, but appeared startled. He announced urgently, “We’re going to go to take a quick break for a commercial now.” Studio technicians grabbed the men, hauled them off the set, and they were later taken to jail.
A grim-faced Rather appeared after the break. “I want to apologize to you for the way the broadcast came on the air tonight. There were some rude people here. They tried to stage a demonstration. They’ve been ejected from the studio, but our apologies for the way we began our coverage of the Gulf War. We will continue after these messages.”
Meanwhile, another ACT UP group was staging an action a few blocks away at PBS, on the set of The MacNeil/Lehrer Newshour. Activists sat down during the live broadcast and chained themselves to chairs and a desk. The action prompted a discussion between the hosts. Robert MacNeil explained what happened to the viewing audience:
“There’s been a demonstration in our studio. It was a group of nonviolent demonstrators from ACT UP who complained that we and the media are spending too much time and attention on the war in the Middle East, which they say will never kill as many people as are dying of AIDS. And I told them that this program has spent a lot of time on the AIDS matter and will be covering it more in the future.”
On ACT UP’s Web site, they recounted how a reporter questioned the disrupters afterward: “Don’t you think this is an immature and silly way to get your point across to the country?”
The activists responded, “No, we think spending hundreds of billions of dollars bombing people in another continent is a silly and immature way to get a point across.”16
As Ann Northrup recounted later on Democracy Now!, “I thought it was fantastic because this interruption of the CBS news was seen all over the world. CNN ran it as a story, and I remember the columnist Jimmy Breslin told me that he was in Israel at the time trying to cover the Gulf War and he saw it on CNN. This did make an impact everywhere.
“The whole point of all these actions was to get AIDS into the news, to get it talked about, to get it recognized and looked at as an issue,” she explained. “Because what happens is these issues we care about get ignored by the mainstream media. What we’ve learned as activists is that we have to do things that will grab attention to get the issue covered. Our aim has always been not to be liked personally, but simply do whatever we need to do to get these things covered.”
She said of ACT UP: “We do not defer to authority. And I think that’s what has made us so effective. We are willing to speak the truth under any circumstances.”
Some Unexpected Crossfire
Comedian Jon Stewart, host of The Daily Show on Comedy Central, has been making waves with his nightly parody of the day’s news. His straight-faced takeoffs of journalists and politicians often serve as biting indictments of official hypocrisy and media complicity. That’s what earned the fake news anchor an invitation to be a guest on CNN’s Crossfire, a political show that featured hosts Tucker Carlson, the house conservative, and former Clinton aide Paul Begala.
But when Carlson and Begala began their live interview on October 15, 2004, they did not bargain for the political comedian aiming some sharp criticism at them. Here is an excerpt of their exchange:
JON STEWART: I made a special effort to come on the show today, because I have privately, amongst my friends and also in occasional newspapers and television shows, mentioned this show as being bad.
PAUL BEGALA: We have noticed.
STEWART: . . . It’s not so much that it’s bad, as it’s hurting America.
But I wanted to come here today and say: Stop, stop, stop, stop hurting America. . . .
Right now, you’re helping the politicians and the corporations. And we’re left out there to mow our lawns.
BEGALA: By beating up on them? You just said we’re too rough on them when they make mistakes.
STEWART: No, no, no. You’re not too rough on them. You’re part of their strategies. You are partisan—what do you call it?— hacks. . . . It’s not honest. What you do is not honest. What you do is partisan hackery. And I will tell you why I know it.
TUCKER CARLSON: You had John Kerry on your show and you sniff his throne and you’re accusing us of partisan hackery?
STEWART: Absolutely.
CARLSON: You’ve got to be kidding me. He comes on and you . . .
STEWART: You’re on CNN. The show that leads into me is puppets making crank phone calls! What is wrong with you?
CARLSON: Well, I’m just saying, there’s no reason for you—when you have this marvelous opportunity not to be the guy’s butt boy—to go ahead and be his butt boy. Come on. It’s embarrassing.
STEWART: . . . You have a responsibility to the public discourse, and you fail miserably.
CARLSON: You need to get a job at a journalism school, I think.
STEWART: You need to go to one. The thing that I want to say is, when you have people on for just knee-jerk, reactionary talk . . .
CARLSON: Wait. I thought you were going to be funny. Come on.
Be funny.
STEWART: No. No. I’m not going to be your monkey.
BEGALA: Go ahead. Go ahead.
STEWART: I watch your show every day. And it kills me.
CARLSON: I can tell you love it.
STEWART: It’s so painful to watch. [Laughter.] You know, because we need what you do. This is such a great opportunity you have here to actually get politicians off of their marketing and strategy.
CARLSON: Is this really Jon Stewart? What is this, anyway?
STEWART: Yes, it’s someone who watches your show and cannot take it anymore. I just can’t . . .
CARLSON: I do think you’re more fun on your show. Just my opinion. . . .
STEWART: You know what’s interesting, though? You’re as big a dick on your show as you are on any show. [Laughter.]
CARLSON: Now you’re getting into it. I like that. Okay. We’ll be right back.17
After the laughter died down, Stewart’s criticism hit its mark. On January 4, 2005, CNN president Jonathan Klein canceled Cross-fire and terminated Carlson’s relationship with the network. The key reason cited by Klein: “I agree wholeheartedly with Jon Stewart’s overall premise” that viewers are interested in information, not opinion.18
If only CNN applied the same standard to the rest of its coverage.
A Little “Truthiness”
Every year, the leaders of the corporate media gather for a ritual of schmoozing, backslapping, and joking around with the power elite they cover—and cover for. The occasion is the White House Correspondents’ Association annual dinner, at which celebrities, journalists, and the president join for a lighthearted evening.
But by mid-2006, it was getting harder to joke about the lying, incompetence, and lawbreaking of the Bush administration. As the elites were dusting off their tuxedos, revelations were spilling forth daily about the relentless and unprecedented efforts by President Bush to claim dictatorial powers. In April 2006, the Boston Globe revealed that President Bush had “quietly claimed the authority to disobey more than 750 laws enacted since he took office”—one in ten of the laws introduced during his presidency— rendering the U.S. Constitution irrelevant.19 Numerous retired generals were calling for the delusional defense secretary to be fired. As thousands of American and Iraqi bodies piled up in Iraq, Bush sought to change the subject—by preparing to attack Iran. At home, millions of immigrants protested new anti-immigration laws that threatened arrest and deportation for undocumented workers.
It was telling that at the White House Correspondents’ dinner on April 29, 2006, with 2,600 of the media glitterati and their guests crowded into the Washington Hilton, the only one in the house willing to call out the president of the United States on his policies was . . . once again, a comedian. It fell to Stephen Colbert, the nebbishy, razor-witted host of The Colbert Report, the nightly fake news show on Comedy Central (it follows The Daily Show), to rain on the party.
President Bush opened the evening with a stand-up comedy routine with a Bush impersonator. He was greeted with howls of laughter from the assembled journalists. As Elizabeth Bumiller reported in the New York Times, the event was an opportunity for the president “to make fun of himself in an effort to establish his regular-guy credentials and ingratiate himself with the press.” By that measure, it was another mission accomplished for the president.
Then it was Colbert’s turn. Standing a few feet from George and Laura Bush, Colbert postured as Bush’s number one fan. He launched in: “I know there are some polls out there saying this man has a 32 percent approval rating. But guys like us, 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.
“So don’t pay attention to the approval ratings that say 68 percent of Americans disapprove of the job this man is doing. I ask you this: Does that not also logically mean that 68 percent approve of the job he’s not doing? Think about it. I haven’t.”
Colbert continued, “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.
“The greatest thing about this man is he’s steady. You know where he stands. He believes the same thing Wednesday that he believed on Monday, no matter what happened Tuesday. Events can change; this man’s beliefs never will.”
Noting the presence in the audience of several generals, including Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Colbert declared, “They still support Rumsfeld! You guys aren’t retired yet, right?”
Colbert then offered a suggestion “about how to handle these retired generals causing all this trouble: Don’t let them retire! Come on, we’ve got a stop-loss program; let’s use it on these guys.” He said that instead of allowing generals to retire, they could still “stand on a bank of computers and order men into battle.”
The faux right-wing populist then took aim at the media. “As excited as I am to be here with the president, I am appalled to be surrounded by the liberal media that is destroying America, with the exception of Fox News. Fox News gives you both sides of every story: the president’s side, and the vice president’s side.
“But the rest of you, what are you thinking, reporting on NSA wiretapping or secret prisons in Eastern Europe? Those things are secret for a very important reason: They’re super-depressing. And if that’s your goal, well, misery accomplished. 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.”
Colbert then summarized the media’s rules of engagement with Bush. “Let’s review the rules. Here’s how it works: The president makes decisions. He’s the decider. The press secretary announces those decisions, and you people of the press type those decisions down. Make, announce, type. Just put ’em through a spell check and go home.
“Because really,” he added, motioning to administration officials, “what incentive do these people have to answer your questions, after all? I mean, nothing satisfies you. Everybody asks for personnel changes. So the White House has personnel changes. Then you write, ‘Oh, they’re just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.’ First of all, that is a terrible metaphor. This administration is not sinking. This administration is soaring. If anything, they are rearranging the deck chairs—on the Hindenburg!” (A reference to the 1937 disaster in which the German zeppelin Hindenburg crashed and burned in New Jersey, killing 36 people.)
Speaking of Iraq, Colbert declared, “I believe that the government that governs best is a government that governs least, and by these standards we have set up a fabulous government in Iraq.”
Colbert’s blistering routine was greeted in the audience by muted laughter. This was in stark contrast to Bush’s warm reception by media luminaries at another dinner in 2004, when they roared at a video skit that showed Bush searching in vain under papers and in drawers in the Oval Office for missing WMDs—just as U.S. soldiers were being cut down while pursuing a similar futile hunt in Iraq.
The corporate media acted as if Colbert’s twenty-five-minute scorching of the president never happened: Bumiller’s New York Times story on the dinner detailed the “love at first sight” that Bush felt for his impersonator, Steve Bridges, and quoted extensively from their skit together; Colbert was not mentioned. The Washington Post “Reliable Sources” column reported three days later that Colbert “fell flat.” For proof, it quoted Bush’s joke writer, and his impersonator. It wasn’t until bloggers gave wide circulation to video footage of the Colbert routine on the Internet that the media was forced to report on it—and then to dismiss it as tasteless or say, as the New York Times declared, it “just was not funny.”20
As for Bush, he was smiling at the beginning of Colbert’s routine, but wasn’t by the end. Aides reported that night, “He is pissed. . . . He is ready to blow.”21
Colbert had some advice for media celebrities who couldn’t take the heat. “Write that novel you got kicking around in your head. You know, the one about the intrepid Washington reporter with the courage to stand up to the administration. You know— fiction!”22