Last week I blogged about Elizabeth Bumiller's clueless coverage of the White House Correspondent's dinner, in which she simply didn't mention Colbert's performance.  I couldn't figure out her motivation, what makes her tick, since clearly it's not standing up to power.

This profile Elizabeth makes it all clear.  She just loves stenography.  A typical day in the life of one Elizabeth Bumiller is bookended by White House press conferences, one in the morning and one in the afternoon.  Throughout the day she checks her inbox, which is usually brimming with email from the White House press office. And at those press conferences, boy is she plucky:

The key is perseverance and a refusal to give in. "At every press conference I stand up every time and ask a question," Bumiller says. "No matter what."

Hear that?  She needs something to write down every single press conference.  The roots of her passion for stenography go way back apparently, to her college days.

"Elisabeth was a star even at the Daily," says longtime friend Geraldine Baum (J77). Baum, a New York-based columnist for the Los Angeles Times, says that Bumiller always put work first. Baum remembered how on their last day at the Daily in June 1977, a big story on tuition hikes broke. While the rest of her colleagues were cutting loose and celebrating graduation, Bumiller sat at her typewriter, back straight, finishing her story.

"She was always flawless, sentence after sentence of copy," Baum says. "And she filed before she had fun."

What a great typist.  Really courageous.  And back then there wasn't even spell check!

Actually, maybe I'm wrong about her coverage of Colbert; maybe she thought he wasn't the entertainment but was in fact just there to help all the journalists in attendance brush up on their skills.  She does after all take his advice:

He's the Decider. The press secretary announces those decisions, and you people of the press type those decisions down. Make, announce, type. Just put 'em through a spell check and go home.

It's really amazing, actually, that this is how degraded the craft of American political journalism has become.  I've watched journalists operate now at a bunch of press events, and it really is this bad, this childish.  It's like if you ask a question, then you've done your job, even if they lied to you flat-out.  There is a reward for this kind of work.

Nicolle Devenish (GJ96), assistant to the president for communications, says that despite their occasional differences, she respects Bumiller. "Elisabeth was a tireless hunter of color and detail that we were often reluctant to share," Devenish says. "But in the end I think we learned to understand each other, and more often than not we were able to come to a middle ground on most stories."

Cocktail weenies!  Yay!

There's more...

Stephen Colbert's incredible roast, where the room of pompous DC-tards wasn't laughing but everyone else was, has been seen several hundred thousand times on Youtube.  The stupid and hackish Bush impersonation, replete with such witticisms as Laura Bush is 'hot', isn't even listed.  The people choose Colbert.

And on cue, Elizabeth Bumiller's article on the evening in the New York Times doesn't even mention Colbert, and talks about how Bush stole the show.  Amazing.  Ridiculous.  In a few months, the insiders at the dinner will be claiming that they thought Colbert was terrific, that they were the only one laughing.  That's how these people work.  They'll hear about the legendary Colbert performance, and they'll rewrite history to make themselves seem savvy enough to 'get the joke'.

Anyway, it doesn't matter.  This is the gasp of the royal pretensions of the punditocracy.  And Colbert laid them bare, brutally. Thank you, Stephen.

There's more...