White House Correspondents' Association Dinner 2006 Speech by Stephen Colbert | Introduction & Overview

White House Correspondents' Association Dinner 2006 Speech Introduction

In April 2006, Stephen Colbert was a late-night cable-television comedian; by May, he was revered as the truth-telling jester in the farce of modern American media and politics. He delivered his speech at the White House Correspondents' Association Dinner on April 29, 2006. Although comedians and other entertainers have been invited to the annual dinner before, and while both the press and the presidency have always been open for some gentle ribbing, Colbert was the first speaker to so harshly and hilariously attack those honored institutions. As a result, Colbert found himself condemned in some circles as a tasteless bully while being venerated as a great American satirist in others. As Adam Sternbergh of New York Magazine put it:

[Colbert] wound up delivering a controversial, possibly very funny, possibly horribly unfunny, possibly bravely patriotic, and possibly near-seditious monologue that earned him a crazed mob of lunatic followers who...
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