The comedian Stephen Colbert’s speech at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner, on Saturday, April 29, was easily the high point of the evening. But the press coverage the next day essentially ignored it and focused only on the pre-Colbert stuff. Standing just a few feet away from George W. Bush, Colbert let loose with one lacerating attack on Bush’s policies after another. What made it a truly exhilarating event was precisely that Bush was sitting a chair or two away from Colbert. Had Colbert made the same jokes on his hit TV show “The Colbert Report” or some comparable venue they would not have had nearly the same effect. But here he was, saying it right to Bush’s face. And all Bush could do was to try lamely to laugh along so as not to appear totally bereft of a sense of humor.

Coming back to the mainstream press’s Stalinist attempt to airbrush Colbert out of existence, I certainly was not surprised. As it is not easy to quantify these things, one has to rely on one’s own instincts. Mine tell me that precisely at those points at which you most need the TV—and, more broadly, the press—coverage to be fair, the media will subvert the truth to help the right. Having done the right’s bidding at a crucial juncture—say during the 2000 and 2004 election campaigns that I followed somewhat closely—it will then take a few superfluous jabs at the right to have something ready to throw at anyone on the left who may dare to accuse the media of right-wing bias.

Thank God for the Internet, however! In this instance, thank God for YouTube.com. For the time being at least, you can watch Colbert’s speech at that Web site: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3.