Stephen Colbert: More Bad Reviews
The New Republic agrees with me that Stephen Colbert was lame.
Since that link is probably subscriber-only, I'll just quote:
Colbert's problem, blogosphere conspiracy theories notwithstanding, is that he just wasn't very entertaining. Most of the funny lines had been recycled from his show; the new material was all pretty tired--including a way-too-long video presentation whose big joke was that ... Helen Thomas is old and batty. (Stop me if you've heard that one.) Various aggrieved bloggers have suggested the audience wasn't laughing because Colbert was too tough on the president and the press corps. I dunno. I didn't find Colbert appreciably harder on either of them than, say, Jay Leno was two years ago--though Leno did take shots at John Kerry, too, which maybe took some of his edge off. In any case, it wasn't just journalists who didn't find Colbert amusing. I was sitting about ten feet from Ed Helms, Colbert's former "Daily Show" colleague, and kept glancing over to check his reaction. He cracked some smiles here and there. But I never saw him doubled over with laughter, not even close. My sense is that the blogosphere response is more evidence of a new Stalinist aesthetic on the left--until recently more common on the right--wherein the political content of a performance or work of art is actually more important than its entertainment value.
I think that last point is exactly right: People who hate Bush
wanted Colbert to be funny, or "courageous," as one poster below insisted. Sadly, he was neither.
I think this event may have go down as the moment where Colbert's meta-humor jumped the shark.... The man is a one-trick pony, an extended Saturday Night Live skit, and while that trick is pretty funny, it just didn't translate to stand-up.
