{"id":5501,"date":"2010-09-25T12:17:31","date_gmt":"2010-09-25T16:17:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=5501"},"modified":"2010-09-25T12:17:31","modified_gmt":"2010-09-25T16:17:31","slug":"colbert-performance-mocks-the-legislators-who-invited-him","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2010\/09\/25\/colbert-performance-mocks-the-legislators-who-invited-him\/","title":{"rendered":"Colbert performance mocks the legislators who invited him"},"content":{"rendered":"<p align=\"center\"><object width=\"640\" height=\"390\"><param name=\"movie\" value=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/v\/k1T75jBYeCs&#038;hl=en_US&#038;feature=player_embedded&#038;version=3\"><\/param><param name=\"allowFullScreen\" value=\"true\"><\/param><param name=\"allowScriptAccess\" value=\"always\"><\/param><\/object><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.weeklystandard.com\/blogs\/surprise-colbert-committee-testimony-becomes-sideshow\" target=\"_blank\">Mary Katharine Ham<\/a> observes how this will play out during the remainder of the American election this year:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>One wonders exactly what Democrats thought would come of this. A <em>Roll Call<\/em> story Thursday showed at least a few members of Congress were concerned that the event would become a side show (implying, rather frighteningly, that some thought it wouldn&#8217;t).<\/p>\n<p>Now, they&#8217;ve managed to portray themselves, not just as fat and happy incumbents willing to irresponsibly throw our money at problems, but as fat and happy incumbents who hire a court jester with our money to entertain them while they irresponsibly throw our money at problems. That ought to be great for the party&#8217;s message this fall.<\/p>\n<p>[. . .]<\/p>\n<p>And, as Jim Geraghty notes, this allows every single Republican challenger to ask the incumbent Democrat he&#8217;s running against, &#8220;Can you justify this embarrassing use of our tax dollars, and the literal mockery that the Democratic Congress has become?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>[. . .]<\/p>\n<p>The problem is not that a comedian made jokes in front of a Congressional committee. Colbert&#8217;s hilarious. The problem is that his appearance laid bare what voters suspect about Congress &mdash; that it&#8217;s just one really expensive joke.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Mary Katharine Ham observes how this will play out during the remainder of the American election this year: One wonders exactly what Democrats thought would come of this. A Roll Call story Thursday showed at least a few members of Congress were concerned that the event would become a side show (implying, rather frighteningly, that [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[57,28,53,13],"tags":[316,86,554,516,101],"class_list":["post-5501","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-humour","category-media","category-politics","category-usa","tag-borders","tag-criticism","tag-immigration","tag-mexico","tag-tv"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-1qJ","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5501","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5501"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5501\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5503,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5501\/revisions\/5503"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5501"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5501"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5501"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}