If you haven’t seen Stephen Colbert’s lacerating, 25-minute closing presentation from Saturday’s White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner, enjoy. Colbert - as his cluelessly gut-driven, O’Reilly-style Comedy Central altar ego - gleefully lobs spitballs at the President while looking him straight in the eye, then has the nerve to call his press corps audience on its own bullshit again and again. He actually opens with a joke about the Cheney shooting (directed right at Bush, with faultless eye contact, which Colbert maintains throughout the speech), and throughout, no subject remains off limits. The laughs in the room are scattered, but it makes for hilarious viewing.
The closing video vignette, in which Colbert (fantasizing about being White House Press Secretary) is chased, Freddy Krueger-style, by former UPI White House Bureau Chief Helen Thomas as she demands to know why we invaded Iraq, whips itself into an absurd frenzy. Within seconds, it manages to make a Karl Rove gay joke and compare Condi Rice to The Facts of Life’s Tootie.
Be sure to relish the awkward post-show moment between Colbert and Dubya as the former leaves the stage. Mee-fucking-yow.
If you just want to skim, Daily Kos has a transcript.
Colbert roasts Bush [YouTube]
Improved Colbert transcript [Daily Kos]
for those that missed it: this video was removed from YouTube because C-SPAN claimed it was copyright infringement.