Anybody remember when Bush had them rolling in the aisles, with Missing WMD jokes.

I do. Take a look at the video to see for yourself.

http://www.musicforamerica.org/bushjoke

I'd kinda worked out some time ago that Bumiller was Fluffer-in-Chief to the presidential ego.

Why? Because Keller and Sulzberger like it that way.

Why? Because business ain't going so good for the NYT Co, flattering the prez comes cheap, and insurgency (for any top paper, not just the Times) is a path to ruin.

In fact, I'm not sure whether there was any period, except for late Vietnam-Watergate, when any of them have taken an insurgent tack.

For true suckupmanship, rummage about the Virtual Vietnam Archive (albert m colegrove is a good search) and pull up the 1959 reports of the subcommittees of the House Foreign Affairs and Senate Foreign Relations Committees for an insight into how the US media's early anilingualism set up the nation for the subsequent war.

(The Times' Tillman Durbin's work (some reproduced in the reports) matches Bumiller's in sheer ghastliness. Colegrove, by the way, was the one journo who dared to call the emperor (ie, Ngo Dinh Diem) naked. He was scarcely heard of again, as I recall...)

In an elimination tournament Matt Taibbi conducted in the New York Press in the weeks preceding the election, Elizabeth Bumiller won the title of Worst Campaign Journalist in America.  She out-hacked everybody else, though in the end, appropriately enough, she beat Howard Fineman only by default when he failed to file.  

I urge you all to launch missives about this to the public editor (public@nytimes.com).  Here is my email-sent before I read any blogs this AM:

Dear Public Editor:

At the very least, the amazing internet response to Colbert deserves a story in the Arts section.

Will someone please, please, please explain to me what kind of future we have as a free country when the mainstream press can't even report a roast with even the remotest degree of accuracy?

Ahhhh Hahahahahahahahahaha...

Critics of Colbert who say he bombed because no one in the audience laughed are missing the point. The audience in attendance wasn't the intended audience of his comedy routine. Colbert was deadly serious. He did not expect anyone in attendance to  laugh. Considering reports his timing was off at times, I doubt a professional like him would be off if his sole intention was to entertain. No, he was there to deliver a different kind of bomb - one that would shock the audience. Only an idiot would think he delivered that routine just to elicit laughter which is the assumption of those who say that the stunned silence was proof that he bombed.

I think Colbert's only real audience was himself and people who think like him. The joke was not the delivery, but the stunned silence of a washington elite that won't dare anger the president even in confrontational settings, let alone a formal dinner.