At a large public gathering, attended by the president, top officials and “celebrities” from various fields, a well-known comic personality lights into the administration and the media, accusing the one of malfeasance and the other of toadyism, and this, according to Steinberg and the Times, is not newsworthy. Is anyone expected to believe this?

The media buried Colbert’s routine because his comments, rather courageous considering the circumstances, spoke directly to their own role as accomplices of the administration. These are things that simply cannot be said in America.

One of the most dishonest and self-serving attacks on Colbert came from Richard Cohen of the Washington Post. Cohen, in his May 4 column, first returns to the theme: Colbert’s comments were not funny. But why should Colbert have confined himself to amiable, good-natured “ribbing,” as Cohen and others would have preferred? He was sharing the dais with a criminal. He must have realized that he had the opportunity to speak for millions, to tell Bush what he should be told for once.

Cohen further attacks Colbert as “rude” and “insulting.” “Rudeness,” writes Cohen, “means taking advantage of the other person’s sense of decorum or tradition or civility that keeps that other person from striking back or, worse, rising in a huff and leaving. The other night, that person was George W. Bush.”

He continues, “Self-mockery can be funny. Mockery that is insulting is not. The sort of stuff that would get you punched in a bar can be said on a dais with impunity. This is why Colbert was more than rude. He was a bully.”

This is a remark worth considering. It is so preposterous that one has to consider the social and intellectual process by which it could have made its way into print.

Bush, along with his associates, is guilty of launching an unprovoked war, illegal under international law, responsible for the death and mutilation of tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of Iraqis and Americans. He has helped pitch the world forward toward potential conflagrations of horrifying dimensions. As a personality, he is a weakling and a sadist. No one should forget his presiding over 152 executions in Texas, and his mockery of the plea of death-row inmate Karla Faye Tucker for clemency. “ ‘Please,’ Bush whimpered, imitating Tucker, his lips pursed in mock desperation, ‘don’t kill me.’ “

Standing reality on its head, Cohen, however, accuses Colbert, who merely hints at the methods of this administration, of being a “bully.” In making this comment, Cohen speaks for the privileged, profoundly self-satisfied media elite. The Post columnist responds with venom to any signs of political or cultural life going beyond the bounds of the official consensus; hence, his bitter attacks on Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11, Stephen Gaghan’s Syriana and now Colbert.

Cohen and his ilk are not journalists, they are courtiers, part of the administration’s entourage. This insulated media world, where intermarriage is common, where reporters “cover” the activities of their drinking buddies.... Cohen personifies this ignorant, cowardly milieu. He is the type that has made “pundit” into a dirty word.

Cohen is also covering up for his own complicity in the invasion and occupation of Iraq. After initial hesitations, he signed on enthusiastically to the war drive in February 2003, following Secretary of State Colin Powell’s appearance at the UN, during which Powell made entirely false allegations about the Iraqi regime. Cohen claimed at the time that the “evidence he [Powell] presented to the United Nations—some of it circumstantial, some of it absolutely bone-chilling in its detail—had to prove to anyone that Iraq not only hasn’t accounted for its weapons of mass destruction but without a doubt still retains them. Only a fool—or possibly a Frenchman—could conclude otherwise.”

The columnist concluded, “If anyone had any doubt, Powell proved that it [Iraq] has defied international law—not to mention international norms concerning human rights—and virtually dared the United Nations to put up or shut up. There is no other hand. There is no choice.”

Many of the journalists in attendance at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner have similar track records. If they weren’t laughing at Colbert’s remarks, it’s no wonder.