You really have to see the video of Stephen Colbert’s address to the White House Press Corps at their annual dinner to believe that it really happened. At the same table as GW Bush and Laura, in front of WH staff, Supreme Court justices and all the WH press bigwigs — Colbert officially smartly ripped everyone a brand-new fecal exit hole. Posing as his own self-made pro-Bush pundit character, he expounded on points like the administration’s course being not like the Titanic, but soaring “like the Hindenburg” and encouraged the WH press corps to take some time to, “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.”

Unfuckingbelievable; this is one of the bravest, smartest things I’ve ever seen. Would Jon Stewart have seen an opportunity like this and gone all the way? I’m not sure. What’s brilliant about Colbert’s character is that he takes the conservative press logic as far as it will go — he follows it through and shows us all where it goes, based on the points and perspectives of the administration and pundits that back them up. This was possibly the furthest he could take it conceptually, and it’s truly incredible. And yes — I caught the Harvey Birdman reference, and it was addressed to GW himself. (Though you’d have to have seen the episode “Yabba Dabba Don”, the Sopranos spoof, to get it. Follow this logic and Bush becomes Fred Flinstone as Tony Soprano…). It seems that from the icy acknowledgement to Colbert afterward, the Prez was not pleased. Colbert is *so* on a list now, if he wasn’t before.

Link to the videos at Crooks and Liars; also at Boing Boing with torrent, text and transcript links.

Update: video is intermittent, but check the Boing Boing post for video mirros and updates, yay!