New York Times

By DANIEL J. WAKIN
Published: May 6, 2006

HALBERSTADT, Germany, May 5 Ôø? “Three, two, one, out!” With those words, two organ pipes were lifted from their position on Friday. Like a sudden change in light, the chord that had been continuously sounding inside an ancient church here shifted, growing thinner and higher.

It was another milestone Ôø? well, inchstone Ôø? in the performance of “Organ2/ASLSP,” a version of the John Cage composition titled “As Slow as Possible.” And slow means slow. The piece, which began on Sept. 5, 2001, is not scheduled to end until 2640. But there will probably be a break after the first movement, which lasts a mere 71 years.

On a beautiful spring day, more than 100 people gathered inside St. Burchardi Church in what has become something of a ritual every year or so, when a chord changes. They snapped pictures and held tape recorders as a local government official, Rainer Robra, and a German composer, Peter Schnebel, grasped the pipes, which were sounding octave E’s, and lifted them out of the organ frame at 3:49 p.m. People applauded. Mr. Robra bowed, then posed with his pipe.

Meanwhile, an electric bellows continued to pump air into the organ. Small bags of sand held down the organ’s three keys, which controlled four other pipes. They continued to sound, filling the space inside the church’s bare ruined walls with a sound somewhere between a hum and a squeal.

The next chord change will come on July 5, 2008. (Until then, for those interested, the chord consists of G sharp, F sharp, C and A, in descending order.) All changes occur on the fifth day of the month, in honor of Cage’s birthday, Sept. 5. Pipes will be added or subtracted as needed, although some of the project’s backers dream about building a whole organ one day.

“We love the event because it’s so brilliantly funny,” said Jens Frohling, 38, a bank employee who had come from Frankfurt to this town about 110 miles southwest of Berlin. He said government officials had been trying, without great success, to draw visitors to eastern Germany. “So why not this?” he said. “I think it worked.”

Hans-Georg Busch, a former mayor who said he planned to run again next year, was also on hand. He said he was not enamored of Cage’s music, but he thought the performance exciting all the same. “It’s avant-garde,” he said.

The performance is in keeping with Cage’s efforts to explore the boundaries of performance and how music exists in time and space. The change of notes prompted philosophical musings among some listeners, many of whom lingered for more than an hour after the chord change.

“It brought back the idea about time, and how time’s changed,” said Frank Edelkraut, 47, of Hamburg. Others compared it to cathedral-building.

“It’s sort of like in the Middle Ages, when the people building the foundations of those really big churches knew they would not be able to finish the church,” said Werner Kuhlemann, 53, of Hildesheim, a town about an hour away by car.

The chord change was accompanied by a slate of cultural activities. Officials held a news conference to inaugurate the John Cage Academy, a center for new music that will be housed in a building next door within the former Cistercian monastery. A photography exhibit was held there, followed by a concert of Mr. Schnebel’s music later in the evening at the cathedral.

The academy’s first event is a symposium, likely to take place in 2008, with the subject, appropriately, the nature of time.

Money for the project and the academy is tight. The government declined to provide funds, and the organizers depend on small contributions. Plaques inside the church honor those who have sponsored a performance year. An anonymous donor dedicated the first, 2000, to Johann Sebastian Bach. Henning and Inger Bergenholtz went for 2024, which will be the year of their 50th wedding anniversary.

Halberstadt, a once-thriving town that was flattened in World War II and left to molder under the East German authorities, is struggling to bounce back from economic woes unification has brought on the east. Restoration money has poured in. The area also has a problem with skinheads.

Yet like many German towns, Halberstadt takes its culture seriously. The municipal theater puts on more than 500 opera, symphony, theatrical and dance performances a year. The town has a magnificent cathedral, with a concert series, and a handful of museums, including one dedicated to Johann Wilhelm Ludwig Gleim, an 18th-century poet and minor Enlightenment figure who lived here. After Friday, John Cage, who was influential on Germany’s postwar music scene, appeared to be more firmly in the club.

Along with the church, Halberstadt also provided the piece’s duration. The cathedral was said to have had the first organ with a modern keyboard arrangement, built in 1361. That year subtracted from 2000 yields 639, the number of years of the Cage performance.

Sarah Plass contributed reporting from Halberstadt for this article.

From Agony Shorthand blog…

Monday, May 01, 2006
After our post from a couple weeks ago on “The Rapidshare Connundrum”, Scott Soriano of S-S RECORDS and the CRUD CRUD & STATIC PARTY mp3 blogs sent us his take on the whole RapidShare/SoulSeek phenomenon and its implication for labels like his.

“I am not sure if there is much of a difference between soulseek style filesharing of LPs and rapidshare downloads of full LPs (that are in print) on specialty blogs. Though you can trust a blogger’s taste, same goes with individual soulseek posters. People not only search for specific things on soulseek, they also follow certain posters and hit all their files.

As far as the impact on a label’s sales, I can’t speak to the impact of rapidshare and a specialty blog, but I do know that the combination of soulseek, lower priced DSL, fast burners, and 10 cent cdrs killed my CD sales. I put out three cds, all great records, all that got great reviews and much airplay on WFMU and other stations. I pressed and sold 1000 each of A Frames s/t & A Frames II and sold them in less than a years time (slower than both vinyl sales by the way). I did a repressing of each thinking that they would sell the same or faster due to the Subpop signing. Funny thing happened with the rise of soulseek and the other things I mentioned: My sales of A Frames CDs ground to a near halt. Of the second pressing of both cds, I’ve sold about 300 of AF II and 500 of AF s/t and that after more than a year.

The Monoshock cd has sold about 500. Its release was unfortunately timed with the jump of popularity of soulseek. After we were done editing it Scott Derr thanked me for putting it out and hoped I was able to break even. I quipped that it would sell 1000 and download 3000. I was off. It sold 500 and probably downloaded (or was burned) 5000. Of the 500 I sold, about 450 was in the first 9 months. In the past year and a half I’ve sold 50. If not for Revolver pushing it, I would have sold far less.

Compare that to undownloadable vinyl. A Frames – Complication 7″ sold 1000 in 4 months. 1500 of A Frames – Police 1000 were pressed in November and 150 are left. I pressed 500 each of Frustration 7″ & Cheveu 7″ and that was maybe a month ago. I have 200 left of Frustration, who have a following, and 300 of Cheveu, of whom few outside Paris knew about til the S-S record came out.

I reluctantly started doing CDs because there was a call for them and I thought the profit would make it able for me to put out more and more obscure vinyl. Plus it would enable me to actually pay the bands decent money rather than give them a pile of records with the words, “Here sell these.” This worked for one pressing of each of the A Frames CDs and then the downloaders, filesharers and burners killed that. I now put out only vinyl because I love the format and it pays for itself. I can sell a small run of 7″s by a relatively obscure band in far less time than I can a CD by a known band. The way it is now putting out a CD by a known band is pretty much an announcement to people that it is now available for free on soulseek.

Because putting vinyl on to the internet involves a real time commitment and not point click copy download, only real obsessives do it. And real vinyl obsessives are always gonna track down and buy the vinyl even if it is available as a download. People also want an object that they think is real and so they buy vinyl. Cheveu’s Dog was available on their MySpace site for at least 6 months before the record came out and if anything its availability has helped vinyl sales. I think this is because people look at CDs as a cheap ripoff and as disposable as a bic lighter.

You might suggest that I get into the paid download game to make up for the loss of CD sales. Being a small label, doing the pay for download thing is cumbersome and really not worth it. The major distros of downloads dont deal direct with small labels. They want volume not one download a week. So to get in with something like itunes, I would have to go through two more layers of distribution, which means the distros make more than me for doing nothing but accounting. At the end of the year, I’d be lucky to split $500 between the label and the bands.

All that said, I do an MP3 blog, though it is of music that is very obscure and/or out of print, and I download off of similar blogs. I don’t have a problem with it. What I do have a problem with is the mass denial by “indie” people regarding download/filesharing’s affect on labels. There is this cavalier assumption that everyone who checks something out via unpaid download is going to buy it. In my experience, that isn’t true. At least not with CDs. I say, just be frank. Downloading/filesharing is not home taping and it does have an adverse effect of labels, the impact being greater on small labels where 500 lost sales is a hell of a lot more than a major losing 5,000 sales. That is something that really needs to be kept in mind if one is truly a supporter of independently produced music. This isn’t about greed. It is about finding a way to pay the bills.”

CEREMONIES OF CONSUMMATION
Delia GONZALEZ & Gavin RUSSOM

May 4 Ôø? June 24, 2006
Opening Thursday, May 4, 6 Ôø? 9 pm

Javier Peres is very pleased to present the first Los Angeles solo exhibition of Delia GONZALEZ and Gavin RUSSOM, “CEREMONIES OF CONSUMMATION.” Gonzalez and Russom will present a new body of sculptures triggered by sound. The artists reside in Berlin and New York and will be present for the opening.

For their first exhibition at Peres Projects, Gonzalez and Russom reference Kenneth Anger’s films “Puce Moment” and “Ceremonies of Consummation”. In their sculptures and installations, Gonzalez and Russom explore the forces of magic on earth via simple modular forms made in Formica. The sculptures are often arranged to suggest a range of images, from minimal sculpture to failed architectural experiments to vanity mirrors, but the sound components imbedded within the simple forms are at the heart of these works. The duo imbed analog synthesizers that play meditative, repetitive sound, based on the settings of knobs on controls panel built into each of the works. The sound that lurks from the forms takes over space via repetitive sound waves which create new forms that become sculptures that exist, albeit momentarily, yet continuously. The forms created by the sounds can be made and remade infinitely, in a multitude of forms, as an endless pursuit of creation, meditation, and consummation.

Recent exhibitions include “While Interwoven Echoes Drip into a Hybrid Body Ôø? an Exhibition about Sound Performance and Sculpture,” curated by Heike Munder and Raphael Gygax, Migros,Museum fur gegenwartskunst Zurich, Zurich (with catalog), “I Feel Love,” Galleria Fonti, Naples, Italy, “No Ordinary Sanctity,” curated by Shamim Momin in conjunction with Galerie Thaddeus Ropac, Kunstraum Deutsche Bank, Salzburg, Austria, and “Evolution is Extinct,” Daniel Reich, New York, New York. Their work has been featured in numerous US and international media, including The New York Times, Artforum, Frieze and most recently, they appeared on the cover of Arthur accompanied by a feature story entitled “INNER SPACE ODYSSEY, How Delia and Gavin Are Making the Earth Cooler”.

“CEREMONIES OF CONSUMMATION” featuring Delia Gonzalez and Gavin Russom will be on view at Peres Projects Los Angeles (969 Chung King Road, LA) through June 24, 2006. Hours: Tuesday through Saturday, from 11:00 A.M. to 6:00 P.M.

The truthiness hurts

Stephen Colbert’s brilliant performance unplugged the Bush myth machine — and left the clueless D.C. press corps gaping.

By Michael Scherer, Salon.com

May 1, 2006 | Make no mistake, Stephen Colbert is a dangerous man — a bomb thrower, an assassin, a terrorist with boring hair and rimless glasses. It’s a wonder the Secret Service let him so close to the president of the United States.

But there he was Saturday night, keynoting the year’s most fawning celebration of the self-importance of the D.C. press corps, the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner. Before he took the podium, the master of ceremonies ominously announced, “Tonight, no one is safe.”

Colbert is not just another comedian with barbed punch lines and a racy vocabulary. He is a guerrilla fighter, a master of the old-world art of irony. For Colbert, the punch line is just the addendum. The joke is in the setup. The meat of his act is not in his barbs but his character — the dry idiot, “Stephen Colbert,” God-fearing pitchman, patriotic American, red-blooded pundit and champion of “truthiness.” “I’m a simple man with a simple mind,” the deadpan Colbert announced at the dinner. “I hold a simple set of beliefs that I live by. Number one, I believe in America. I believe it exists. My gut tells me I live there.”

Then he turned to the president of the United States, who sat tight-lipped just a few feet away. “I stand by this man. I stand by this man because he stands for things. Not only for things, he stands on things. Things like aircraft carriers and rubble and recently flooded city squares. And that sends a strong message, that no matter what happens to America, she will always rebound — with the most powerfully staged photo ops in the world.”

It was Colbert’s crowning moment. His imitation of the quintessential GOP talking head — Bill O’Reilly meets Scott McClellan — uncovered the inner workings of the ever-cheapening discourse that passes for political debate. He reversed and flattened the meaning of the words he spoke. It’s a tactic that cultural critic Greil Marcus once called the “critical negation that would make it self-evident to everyone that the world is not as it seems.” Colbert’s jokes attacked not just Bush’s policies, but the whole drama and language of American politics, the phony demonstration of strength, unity and vision. “The greatest thing about this man is he’s steady,” Colbert continued, in a nod to George W. Bush. “You know where he stands. He believes the same thing Wednesday that he believed on Monday, no matter what happened Tuesday.”

It’s not just that Colbert’s jokes were hitting their mark. We already know that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, that the generals hate Rumsfeld or that Fox News lists to the right. Those cracks are old and boring. What Colbert did was expose the whole official, patriotic, right-wing, press-bashing discourse as a sham, as more “truthiness” than truth.

Obviously, Colbert is not the first ironic warrior to train his sights on the powerful. What the insurgent culture jammers at Adbusters did for Madison Avenue, and the Barbie Liberation Organization did for children’s toys, and Seinfeld did for the sitcom, and the Onion did for the small-town newspaper, Jon Stewart discovered he could do for television news. Now Colbert, Stewart’s spawn, has taken on the right-wing message machine.

In the late 1960s, the Situationists in France called such ironic mockery “dÔø?tournement,” a word that roughly translates to “abduction” or “embezzlement.” It was considered a revolutionary act, helping to channel the frustration of the Paris student riots of 1968. They co-opted and altered famous paintings, newspapers, books and documentary films, seeking subversive ideas in the found objects of popular culture. “Plagiarism is necessary,” wrote Guy Debord, the famed Situationist, referring to his strategy of mockery and semiotic inversion. “Progress demands it. Staying close to an author’s phrasing, plagiarism exploits his expressions, erases false ideas, replaces them with correct ideas.”

But nearly half a century later, the ideas of the French, as evidenced by our “freedom fries,” have not found a welcome reception in Washington. The city is still not ready for Colbert. The depth of his attack caused bewilderment on the face of the president and some of the press, who, like myopic fish, are used to ignoring the water that sustains them. Laura Bush did not shake his hand.

Political Washington is accustomed to more direct attacks that follow the rules. We tend to like the bland buffoonery of Jay Leno or insider jokes that drop lots of names and enforce everyone’s clubby self-satisfaction. (Did you hear the one about John Boehner at the tanning salon or Duke Cunningham playing poker at the Watergate?) Similarly, White House spinmeisters are used to frontal assaults on their policies, which can be rebutted with a similar set of talking points. But there is no easy answer for the ironist. “Irony, entertaining as it is, serves an almost exclusively negative function,” wrote David Foster Wallace, in his seminal 1993 essay “E Unibus Pluram.” “It’s critical and destructive, a ground clearing.”

So it’s no wonder that those journalists at the dinner seemed so uneasy in their seats. They had put on their tuxes to rub shoulders with the president. They were looking forward to spotting Valerie Plame and “American Idol’s” Ace Young at the Bloomberg party. They invited Colbert to speak for levity, not because they wanted to be criticized. As a tribe, we journalists are all, at heart, creatures of this silly conversation. We trade in talking points and consultant-speak. We too often depend on empty language for our daily bread, and — worse — we sometimes mistake it for reality. Colbert was attacking us as well.

A day after he exploded his bomb at the correspondents dinner, Colbert appeared on CBS’s “60 Minutes,” this time as himself, an actor, a suburban dad, a man without a red and blue tie. The real Colbert admitted that he does not let his children watch his Comedy Central show. “Kids can’t understand irony or sarcasm, and I don’t want them to perceive me as insincere,” Colbert explained. “Because one night, I’ll be putting them to bed and I’ll say … ‘I love you, honey.’ And they’ll say, ‘I get it. Very dry, Dad. That’s good stuff.'”

His point was spot-on. Irony is dangerous and must be handled with care. But America can rest assured that for the moment its powers are in good hands. Stephen Colbert, the current grandmaster of the art, knows exactly what he was doing.

Just don’t expect him to be invited back to the correspondents dinner.

Here with a special edition of the Colbert report, Stephen Colbert.

Thank you ladies and gentlemen. Before I begin, Ive been asked to make an announcement. Whoever parked 14 black bullet proof S.U.V.S out front, could you please move them. They are blocking in 14 other black bulletproof S.U.V.S and they need to get out.

Wow, wow, what an honor. The White House Correspondents Dinner. To just sit here, at the same table with my hero, George W. Bush, to be this close to the man. I feel like Im dreaming. Somebody pinch me. You know what, Im a pretty sound sleeper, that may not be enough. Somebody shoot me in the face.

Is he really not here tonight? The one guy who could have helped. By the way, before I get started, if anybody needs anything at their tables, speak slowly and clearly on into your table numbers and somebody from the N.S.A. Will be right over with a cocktail. Mrs. Smith, ladies and gentlemen of the press corps,

Mr. President and first lady, my name is Stephen Colbert and its my privilege tonight to celebrate our president. He’s not so different, he and I. We get it. Were not brain backs on the nerd patrol. Were not members of the factinista. We go straight from the gut, right sir? Thats where the truth lies, right down here in the gut. Do you know you have more nerve endings in your gut than you have in your head? You can look it up. I know some of you are going to say ‘I did look it up, and that’s not true.’ That’s because you looked it up in a book. Next time look it up in your gut. I did. My gut tells me that’s how our nervous system works. Every night on my show, the Colbert report, I speak straight from the gut, ok? I give people the truth, unfiltered by rational argument. I call it the no fact zone. Fox News, I own the copyright on that term.

I’m a simple man with a simple mind, with a simple set of beliefs that I live by. Number one, I believe in America. I believe it exists. My gut tells me I live there. I feel that it extends from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and I strongly believe it has 50 states. And I cannot wait to see how the Washington Post spins that one tomorrow.

I believe in democracy. I believe democracy is our greatest export. At least until China figures out a way to stamp it out in plastic for three cents a unit. In fact, Ambassador [name]: welcome. Your great country makes our happy meals possible. I said it’s a celebration. I believe the government that governs best is the government that governs least. And by these standards, we have set up a fabulous government in Iraq.

I believe in pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps. I believe it is possible. I saw this guy do it once in Cirque du Soleil. It was magical. And though I am a committed Christian, I believe that everyone has the right to their own religion, be it Hindu, Jewish or Muslim. I believe there are infinite paths to accepting Jesus Christ as your personal savior.

Ladies and gentlemen, I believe its yogurt. But I refuse to believe its not butter. Most of all I believe in this president.

Now, I know theres some polls out there saying this man has a 32% approval rating. But guys like us, we dont pay attention to the polls. We know that polls are just a collection of statistics that reflect what people are thinking in reality. And reality has a well-known liberal bias.

So, Mr. President, pay no attention to the people that say the glass is half full. 32% means the glass its important to set up your jokes properly, sir. Sir pay no attention to the people who say the glass is half empty, because 32% means its 2/3 empty. Theres still some liquid in that glass is my point, but I wouldnt drink it.

The last third is usually backwash. Folks, my point is that I dont believe this is a low point in this presidency. I believe it is just a lull, before a comeback.

I mean, its like the movie Rocky. The president is Rocky and Apollo Creed is everything else in the world. Its the 10th round. Hes bloodied, his corner man, Mick, who in this case would be the Vice President, and he’s yelling ‘Cut me, Dick, cut me,’ and everytime he falls, she says stay down! Does he stay down? No. Like Rocky he gets back up and in the end he…actually loses in the first movie. Okay. It doesn’t matter. The point is the heart-warming story of a man who was repeatedly punched in the face. So don’t pay attention to the approval ratings that say 68% of Americans disapprove of the job this man is doing. I ask you this, does that not also logically mean that 68% approve of the job he’s not doing? Think about it. I haven’t.

I stand by this man. I stand by this man because he stands for things. Not only for things, he stands on things. Things like aircraft carriers and rubble and recently flooded city squares. And that sends a strong message, that no matter what happens to America, she will always rebound with the most powerfully staged photo ops in the world.

Now, there may be an energy crisis. This president has a very forward-thinking energy policy. Why do you think hes down on the ranch cutting that brush all the time? He’s trying to create an alternative energy source. By 2008 we will have a mesquite powered car.

And I just like the guy. Hes a good joe. Obviously loves his wife, calls her his better half. And polls show America agrees. Shes a true lady and a wonderful woman. But I just have one beef, maam.

I’m sorry, but this reading initiative. Ive never been a fan of books. I dont trust them. They’re all fact, no heart. I mean, theyre elitist telling us what is or isnt true, what did or didnt happen. Whats Britannica to tell me the Panama Canal was built in 1914. If I want to say it was built in 1941, that’s my right as an American. Im with the president, let history decide what did or did not happen.

The greatest thing about this man is hes steady. You know where he stands. He believes the same thing Wednesday, that he believed on Monday, no matter what happened Tuesday. Events can change, this mans beliefs never will. And as excited as I am to be here with the president, I am appalled to be surrounded by the liberal media that is destroying America, with the exception of Fox News. Fox News gives you both sides of every story, the Presidents side and the Vice Presidents side.

But the rest of you, what are you thinking, reporting on N.S.A. wiretapping or secret prisons in Eastern Europe? Those things are secret for a very important reason, theyre superdepressing.

And if thats your goal, well, misery accomplished. Over the last five years you people were so good over tax cuts, W.M.D. intelligence, the affect of global warming. We Americans didnt want to know, and you had the courtesy not to try to find out. Those were good times, as far as we knew.

But, listen, lets review the rules. Heres how it works. The President makes decisions, hes the decider. The Press Secretary announces those decisions, and you people of the press type those decisions down. Make, announce, type. Put them through a spell check and go home. Get to know your family again. Make love to your wife. 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.

Because really, what incentive do these people have to answer your questions, after all? I mean, nothing satisfies you. Everybody asks for personnel changes. So the White House has personnel changes. Then you write theyre just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. First of all, that is a terrible metaphor. This administration is not sinking. This administration is soaring. If anything, they are rearranging the deck chairs on the Hindenburg.

Now, its not all bad guys out there. Some heroes, Buckley, Kim Schieffer. By the way, Mr. President, thank you for agreeing to be to my show. I was just as shocked as everyone here is I promise you. How is Tuesday for you? Ive got Frank Rich, but we can bump him. And I mean bump him. I know a guy. Say the word.

See who weve got here tonight. General Mowsly, Air Force Chief of Staff. General Peter Pace. They still support Rumsfeld. You guys arent retired yet, right? Right, they still support Rumsfeld. Look, by the way, Ive got a theory about how to handle these retired generals causing all this trouble, dont let them retire. Cmon, weve got a stop loss program, lets use it on these guys. If youre strong enough to go on one of those pundit shows, you can stand on a bank of computers and order men into battle. Cmon.

Jesse Jackson is here. I had him on the show. Very interesting and challenging interview. You can ask him anything, but hes going to say what he wants at the pace that he wants.

Its like boxing a glacier. Enjoy that metaphor, because your grandchildren will have no idea what a glacier is.

Justice Scalias here. May I be the first to say welcome, sir. You look fantastic. How are you?

John McCain is here. John McCain John McCain. What a maverick. Somebody find out what fork he used on his salad, because I guarantee you wasnt a salad fork. He could have used a spoon. Theres no predicting him. So wonderful to see you coming back into the republican fold. I have a summerhouse in South Carolina, look me up when you go to speak at Bob Jones University. So glad youve seen the light.

Mayor Nagin is here from New Orleans, the chocolate city. Yeah, give it up. Mayor Nagin, I would like to welcome you to Washington, D.C., The chocolate city with a marshmallow center. And a graham cracker crust of corruption. Its a mallomar is what Im describing, a seasonal cookie.

Joe Wilson is here, the most famous husband since Desi Arnez. And of course he brought along his lovely wife Valerie Plame. Oh, my god! Oh, what have I said. I am sorry, Mr. President, I meant to say he brought along his lovely wife, Joe Wilsons wife. Pat Fitzgerald is not here tonight? Dodged a bullet.

And we cant forget man of the hour, new Press Secretary, Tony Snow. Secret service name, Snow Job. What a hero, took the second toughest job in government, next to, of course, the ambassador to Iraq. Got some big shoes to fill, Tony. Scott McClellan could say nothing like nobody else. McClellan, eager to retire. Really felt like he needed to spend more time with Andrew Cards children. Mr. President, I wish you hadnt made the decision to quickly, sir. I was vying for the job. I think I would have made a fabulous press secretary.

I have nothing but contempt for these people. I know how to handle these clowns. In fact, sir, I brought along an audition tape and with your indulgence, Id like to at least give it a shot. So, ladies and gentlemen, my press conference.

Via DKOS: [Colbert shows a video of a mock press conference, at which Colbert is completely dismissive of questions he doesnt want to answer, i.e., all of them. He chooses among three buttons Eject, Gannon and Volume to get rid of the offending speaker. But ultimately Helen Thomas causes Colbert to flee in terror from the press conference with her insistence that he answer her question, Why did you really want to go to war [with Iraq]? Colbert has difficulty finding a door from which to exit the room, echoing Bushs experience in China. He finally finds a way out, and runs frantically down the street and into a parking lot. Helen Thomas pursues Colbert relentlessly. He calls for help on an emergency phone in the parking lot, but the attendant also wants to know why we invaded Iraq. Colbert screams, No!!! Colbert fumbles nervously with his keys, having great difficulty getting into his car. Finally, he gets in, and continues to fumble trying to get the car started. He looks up and sees – Helen Thomas standing in front of the car! He screams, No!!! Colbert manages to drive away. He then takes the shuttle from Washington, D.C. to New York. His car is waiting for him at Penn Station. The uniformed man standing alongside the car opens the door and lets Colbert in. He says, What a terrible trip, Danny. Take me home. The driver locks the doors, turns around, and says, Buckle up, hon. ITS HELEN THOMAS!!! No!!!]

STEPHEN COLBERT: Helen Thomas, ladies and gentlemen. Mr. Smith, members of the White House Correspondents Association, Madame First Lady, Mr. President, its been a true honor. Thank you very much. Good night!

(above: Part 1)

(above: Part 2)

(The presentation was 25 minutes total… Missing final part will be added shortly…)

Colbert Lampoons Bush at White House Correspondents Dinner– President Not Amused?

By E&P Staff

Published: April 29, 2006 11:40 PM ET updated Sunday

WASHINGTON
A blistering comedy “tribute” to President Bush by Comedy Central’s faux talk show host Stephen Colbert at the White House Correspondent Dinner Saturday night left George and Laura Bush unsmiling at its close.

Earlier, the president had delivered his talk to the 2700 attendees, including many celebrities and top officials, with the help of a Bush impersonator.

Colbert, who spoke in the guise of his talk show character, who ostensibly supports the president strongly, urged the Bush to ignore his low approval ratings, saying they were based on reality, “and reality has a well-known liberal bias.”

He attacked those in the press who claim that the shake-up at the White House was merely re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. “This administration is soaring, not sinking,” he said. “If anything, they are re-arranging the deck chairs on the Hindenburg.”

Colbert told Bush he could end the problem of protests by retired generals by refusing to let them retire. He compared Bush to Rocky Balboa in the Rocky movies, always getting punched in the face “and Apollo Creed is everything else in the world.”

Turning to the war, he declared, “I believe that the government that governs best is a government that governs least, and by these standards we have set up a fabulous government in Iraq.”

He noted former Ambassador Joseph Wilson in the crowd, just three tables away from Karl Rove, and that he had brought ” Valerie Plame.” Then, worried that he had named her, he corrected himself, as Bush aides might do, “Uh, I mean… he brought Joseph Wilson’s wife.” He might have “dodged the bullet,” he said, as prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald wasn’t there.

Colbert also made biting cracks about missing WMDs, “photo ops” on aircraft carriers and at hurricane disasters, melting glaciers and Vice President Cheney shooting people in the face. He advised the crowd, “if anybody needs anything at their tables, speak slowly and clearly on into your table numbers and somebody from the N.S.A. will be right over with a cocktail.”

Observing that Bush sticks to his principles, he said, “When the president decides something on Monday, he still believes it on Wednesday – no matter what happened Tuesday.”

Also lampooning the press, Colbert complained that he was “surrounded by the liberal media who are destroying this country, except for Fox News. Fox believes in presenting both sides of the story — the president’s side and the vice president’s side.” In another slap at the news channel, he said: “I give people the truth, unfiltered by rational argument. I call it the No Fact Zone. Fox News, I own the copyright on that term.”

He also reflected on the alleged good old days for the president, when the media was still swallowing the WMD story.

Addressing the reporters, he said, “Let’s review the rules. Here’s how it works. The president makes decisions, he’s the decider. The press secretary announces those decisions, and you people of the press type those decisions down. Make, announce, type. Put them through a spell check and go home. Get to know your family again. Make love to your wife. 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.”

He claimed that the Secret Service name for Bush’s new press secretary is “Snow Job.”

Colbert closed his routine with a video fantasy where he gets to be White House Press Secretary, complete with a special “Gannon” button on his podium. By the end, he had to run from Helen Thomas and her questions about why the U.S. really invaded Iraq and killed all those people.

As Colbert walked from the podium, when it was over, the president and First Lady gave him quick nods, unsmiling. The president shook his hand and tapped his elbow, and left immediately.

Those seated near Bush told E&P’s Joe Strupp, who was elsewhere in the room, that Bush had quickly turned from an amused guest to an obviously offended target as Colbert’s comments brought up his low approval ratings and problems in Iraq.

Several veterans of past dinners, who requested anonymity, said the presentation was more directed at attacking the president than in the past. Several said previous hosts, like Jay Leno, equally slammed both the White House and the press corps.

“This was anti-Bush,” said one attendee. “Usually they go back and forth between us and him.” Another noted that Bush quickly turned unhappy. “You could see he stopped smiling about halfway through Colbert,” he reported.

After the gathering, Snow, while nursing a Heineken outside the Chicago Tribune reception, declined to comment on Colbert. “I’m not doing entertainment reviews,” he said. “I thought the president was great, though.”

Strupp, in the crowd during the Colbert routine, had observed that quite a few sitting near him looked a little uncomfortable at times, perhaps feeling the material was a little too biting–or too much speaking “truthiness” to power.

Asked by E&P after it was over if he thought he’d been too harsh, Colbert said, “Not at all.” Was he trying to make a point politically or just get laughs? “Just for laughs,” he said. He said he did not pull any material for being too strong, just for time reasons. (He later said the president told him “good job” when he walked off.)

Helen Thomas told Strupp her segment with Colbert was “just for fun.”

In its report on the affair, USA Today asserted that some in the crowd cracked up over Colbert but others were “bewildered.” Wolf Blitzer of CNN said he thought Colbert was funny and “a little on the edge.”

Earlier, the president had addressed the crowd with a Bush impersonator alongside, with the faux-Bush speaking precisely and the real Bush deliberately mispronouncing words, such as the inevitable “nuclear.” At the close, Bush called the imposter “a fine talent. In fact, he did all my debates with Senator Kerry.” The routine went over well with the crowd — better than did Colbert’s, in fact.

Among attendees at the black tie event: Morgan Fairchild, quarterback Ben Roethlisberger, Justice Antonin Scalia, George Clooney, and Jeff “Skunk” Baxter of the Doobie Brothers–in a kilt.