For days the battle has raged on the Web:
Did Stephen Colbert go too far in lampooning President Bush, to his
face, at the White House Correspondents Dinner on Saturday night? Is
that why his barbs did not generate more laughter around the room of
2700 journalists, celebrities and other guests? Or was it because he
suggested the press was spineless in failing to confront the president
on Iraq? Or was Colbert just not that funny?

In any case, the
event has inspired debate on hundreds of political and media blogs, the
posting of the video on dozens of sites, and massive traffic to
E&P, where the first in-depth account of Colbert performance was
posted Saturday night.

You think from all the criiticism that
the guy had based his routine on joking about launching a war and not
finding the WMDs that inspired it. Oh, right, that was President Bush,
two years ago.

Nevertheless, Dana Milbank of The Washington
Post, appearing on Keith Olbermann MSNBC program Monday night, joined
the ranks of those who attended the dinner who felt Colbert as not
funny.?On the other hand, he said the president routine that night
with a Bush impersonator was a howl.

This is the same Milbank
who last June mocked a congressional forum on the Downing Street memo,
and said it was led by a earty band of playmates.?/span>

Certainly,
deciding what funny is subjective, sometimes a matter of taste (or
tastelessness), but increasingly, also, partisan. We bring our politics
to everything nowadays, although some may be more open to good satire
than others, even when someone on our side?is hit.

Still,
with the knocks on Colbert increasing, I have to ask: Where was the
outrage when President Bush made fun of not finding those pesky WMDs at
a very similar media dinner ?in the same ballroom ?two years ago? It
represents a shameful episode for the American media, and presidency,
yet is rarely mentioned today.

It occurred on March 24, 2004.
The setting: The 60th annual black-tie dinner of the Radio and
Television Correspondents Association (with many print journalists
there as guests) at the Washington Hilton. On the menu: surf and turf.
Attendance: 1,500. The main speaker: President George W. Bush, one year
into the Iraq war, with 500 Americans already dead.

President
Bush, as usual at such gatherings of journalists, poked fun at himself.
Audiences love to laugh along with, rather than at, a president, for a
change. It shows they are good sports, which many people (including the
president) often doubt. It all in good fun, except when it in bad
fun, such as on that night in March 2004.

That night, in the
middle of his stand-up routine before the (perhaps tipsy) journos, Bush
showed on a screen behind him some candid on-the-job photos of himself.
One featured him gazing out a window, as Bush narrated, smiling: hose
weapons of mass destruction have got to be somewhere.?/span>

According to the transcript this was greeted with aughter and applause?from the audience.

A
few seconds later, he was shown looking under papers, behind drapes,
and even under his desk, with this narration: ope, no weapons over
there?(met with more aughter and applause?, and then aybe under
here??(just aughter?this time). Still searching, he settled for
finding a photo revealing the Skull and Bones secret signal.

There
is no record of whether Dana Milbank attended that dinner, but his
paper the following day seemed to find this something of a howl.
Jennifer Frey report, carried on the front page of the Style section
(under the headline, eorge Bush, Entertainer in Chief?, led with
Donald Trump appearance, and mentioned without comment Bush
ecurring joke?of searching for the WMDs.

The Associated Press
review was equally jovial: resident Bush poked fun at his staff, his
Democratic challenger and himself Wednesday night at a black-tie dinner
where he hobnobbed with the news media.?In fact, it is hard to find
any immediate account of the affair that raised questions over the
president slide show. Many noted that the WMD jokes were met with
general and loud laughter.

The reporters covering the gala were
apparently as swept away with laughter as the guests. One of the few
attendees to criticize the president gag, David Corn of The Nation,
said he heard not a single complaint from his colleagues at the
after-party. Corn wondered if they would have laughed if President
Reagan, following the truck bombing of our Marines barracks in Beirut,
which killed 241, had said at a similar dinner: uess we forgot to put
in a stop light.?/span>

The backlash only appeared a day or two later,
and not, by and large, emerging from the media, but from Democrats and
some Iraq veterans. Then it was mainly forgotten. I never understood
why Sen. John Kerry did not air a tape of the episode every day during
his hapless final drive for the White House.

In any case,
another 1,900 Americans have died in Iraq since Bush ha-ha home
video. As it happens, the Downing Street memo, and a similar British
document that surfaced recently, suggested that Bush doubted WMDs
existed and ixed?the intelligence to take the nation to war. What a
riot.

At that same Downing Street memo forum at the Capitol last
year that Milbank mocked, former CIA analyst Ray McGovern, after
cataloguing the bogus Bush case for WMDs and the Iraqi threat, looked
out at the cameras and notepads, mentioned the March 24, 2004 dinner,
and acted out the president looking under papers and table for those
missing WMDs. nd the media was all yucking it up ?hahaha,?McGovern
said. ou all laughed with him, folks.?Then he mentioned soldiers who
had died fter that big joke.?/span>

Dana Milbank, who seems to like a good laugh, did not mention this in his hit piece the following day.

Step 1: Put your MP3 player or whatever on
random.
Step 2: Post the first (few) line(s) from the first 20 songs
that play, no matter how embarrassing the song.
Step 3: Post and let
everyone you know guess what song and artist the lines come from (no search
engining the lyrics!)
Step 4: Strike out the songs when someone
guesses correctly.

1. Every time I go downtown, I think I might find you
   around.
2. As war drums beat in
   Babylon, Cinnamon girl starts to pray.
3. Say
   now listen here, I wanna be oh so clear.
4. The
   world has turned and left me here, just where I was before you
   appeared.
5. Do me wrong, do me
   right, tell me lies but hold me tight.
6. I
   got fifty Bentley's in the West Indies, I got a pocket full of cheese in a
   garden full of trees.
7. Going outside
   shoveling snow in the driveway, driveway.
8. I
   don't know where to begin, I don't know how to get out there to see
   you.
9. Well it's true that we love one
   another, I love Jack White like a little brother.
10. Break
    me in, teach us to cheat.
11. Sometimes
    late at night, I lie awake and watch her sleeping.
12. Tough,
    you think you got the stuff, you're telling me and anyone you're hard
    enough.
13. If that's the way you want it, well
    there you go.
14. How could I believe anything you've ever
    said, I'm on the bottom of your shoes.
15. It's that hop that
    I'm talkin bout right here, Timbo!
16. Babe,
    baby, baby, I'm gonna leave you.
17. It
    takes more time that I've ever had, drains the life from me, makes me want to
    forget.
18. Smoke in the sky, slime in the sea,
    tall timber tumblin' down around me.
19. I'm walking out in a
    force ten gale, birds thrown around, bullets for
    hail.
20. Coming out of my cage and I've been
    doing just fine.

Has anyone else seen the new Dixie Chicks video? Wow. Intense.

I don't have anything meaningful to say right now. Some things are
brewing right under the surface, and perhaps they'll work themselves
out in my mind so I can write them down. Until then....

Love to all!
It's Spring! Finally!

~Drew

Which bike should I get?

1) Nirve Switchblade Chopper Single-Speed Coaster

2) Electra 3-Speed Rally Sport

I'm stopped at a red light, turning right. The light turns green, and so does the crosswalk sign.

Two people are waiting to cross the street, one at each end, and begin
their journey across the four lanes which I am attempting to traverse.
They are crossing from both sides, which ensures that I must wait the
maximum possible time. Inevitably, they are the two slowest people on
earth at that particular moment. One, an impossibly old man who walked
like a person trying to hold severe diarrhea at bay, and the second, an
impossibly short person whose strides were likely equivalent
to....well....a duck. The one waddled while the other shuffled--butt
cheeks clenched against an impending fecal explosion; and when both
were finally across the intersection, my light turned red.

I don't know why I felt the need to share this. I believe it's a common
type of experience which all red/hot-blooded young men face daily, and
in a very Seinfeld-esque sense, knew that many could appreciate and
sympathize.

Love to all.
~Drew

P.S. Thanks for everyone's comments on yesterday's post. I appreciate it!

Truth is mighty and will prevail. There is nothing the matter with this, except that it ain't so. [Mark Twain]

I've been thinking a lot lately, as those who read my blog will know,
about honesty. Emily Dickinson said that "Truth is such a rare thing,
it is delighted to tell it." Delighted, perhaps, but sometimes
terrified.

I think that the fear of being truthful lies within the judgements we
feel we may face in light of the truth. It's easy to say that "the
truth will set you free" if you're interested in pursuing truth.
However, it's misplaced to apply that to every truth in every
situation, particularly when encouraged to BE truthful. The simple fact
of the matter is, we all have prejudice and we all judge. It's nice to
think that those closest to us could tell us anything and it wouldn't
change the way we feel about them. In theory. It's another thing
altogether to be faced with a truth so unexpected and uncomfortable
that it forces you to choose what you really believe.

I guess I just feel frustrated by what I see is a double-standard,
especially by Christians. Tell the truth. Be honest. Don't lie. Don't
sin. And YET...we only want to hear easy truths: I stole something; I
lied; I cheated on my test; I was lustful; I am selfish. Be honest and
tell me, what would be the majority reaction if someone were to tell
you that they were: unfaithful to their spouse, a pedophile, cheated on
their taxes, a homosexual, addicted to pornography, a prostitute, etc?
Be honest.

We want easy truths. When faced with the "hard" truths, we have two
options: 1) accept it and move on (and offer genuine help if it's
wanted), or; (2)  pretend to care, but secretly think differently
about that person. I'm afraid to say that I see the scale weighing
heavily down on option #2. Call me a pessimist or a realist. I just
can't help it. Perhaps you can change my mind.

~Drew~

What's the deal with taxi drivers? They have got to be the most
aggressive, crazy drivers in the city. It's like they fled from the
Gaza Strip or the Kashmir, and are still fleeing, except with
passengers now.

I'm working my last overnight shift tonight--hallelujah!

Not much else to say. Love to all.

~Drew~

As per request:

The number of coffee beans it would take to cover the surface of Canada
is a tough thing to figure out, though I have done my best. Considering
that the average coffee bean (regular OR decaffeinated) is anywhere
from 0.05mm?- 1.1mm? I took an average of about 0.75mm? and arrived
at the following number:  18,194,494,560,000.

It's way too late for this. I should be reading my uber exciting book.
I'm such an uber geek.
And these Maple Creme Cookies are uber good.
I've uberly overused "uber" already.
Drew out.

Uber out.