Ed Murrow vs. Stephen Colbert

I've been wanting to write something about this for a while now, and just haven't gotten around to it... but since it's been a while, I thought I'd wax political here for a few moments.

A couple of weeks ago I finally got around to watching "Good Night, and Good Luck" which had been on my need-to-watch list for a while. For the unawares, it's a bit of a docu-drama based on CBS journalist Ed Murrow, and specifically his reporting against McCarthyism in the early 1950's on his show "See It Now", which ultimately led (or, at least, contributed) to the censure of Joseph McCarthy and the public backlash against him for his witchhunt-like anti-communism trials.

I don't want to really go into a huge boring analytical breakdown of how some of the mentalities back then are still manifesting themselves today in some circles, but what's important to this post is the speech that Murrow gives to the Radio-Television News Directors Association, which both opens and closes the movie. Here's the most poignant bit:

This instrument can teach, it can illuminate; yes, and it can even inspire. But it can do so only to the extent that humans are determined to use it to those ends. Otherwise it is merely wires and lights in a box. There is a great and perhaps decisive battle to be fought against ignorance, intolerance and indifference. This weapon of television could be useful.

Which brings me to the next morning when I'm scanning through some news sites before leaping into real work, and I notice all sorts of references to a speech given to the annual White House Correspondent's Dinner by Comedy Central's Stephen Colbert, in what will probably be seen retrospectively as one of his defining moments as a comedic pundit. Sitting not 10 feet away from President Bush, he goes on to slam, well, basically everything going wrong in the U.S. and with the current administration. It's quite brilliant. And it really got me to thinking that maybe guys like Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert have found a way for people to have Ed's cake and eat it too.

It's been floating around the internet for a while now, but here's the link to the Colbert video.

Meanwhile, in the Great White North... nah, let's not go there.