Little now tells the New Yorker that he is, “basically a Republican.” His career, however, is on fire. The article discloses that he next appears at the Soboba Casino, in San Jacinto, California, and then at the North Iowa Community Auditorium. Even so, he still has strong opinions about his comic colleagues:

“Little said that he does not find [Bill] Maher and his ilk terribly funny. When asked to name a young comedian he admired, he responded, “Robin Williams.” [Williams is 55 years old]

And when asked if he has a funny joke about Iraq, he slipped into his W impression and said…

“George W. Bush here. I tell you, I’m between I-raq and a hard place.”

Boy, with material like, these will be the hottest tickets in Washington.

Now it may seem like I’m making too much of this. After all it is just a social gathering for the DC media crowd; an opportunity to mingle with celebrities and one another. But when you think of the pressure that must have been brought to bear in order to make such a drastic change in direction, it reveals something about these folks.

Whether the pressure came from the White House or the WHCA members, the bottom line is this: None of these people can take a joke. The cliche about comedy, that it is funny because it’s true, is, like most cliches, rooted in reality. Truth is something that is in scarce supply in Washington. The White House isn’t dispensing much of it, and the press, too often, doesn’t go looking for it. They seem, sometimes, to be running from it. And as they run from the honesty of Colbert, they slam face first into a wall of truthiness. Ironic, isn’t it?

The fact that they cannot laugh at themselves when a mirror is held up to them just further confirms their aversion to the truth. So they settle for a safe, toothless, has-been Republican clown to provide entertainment that they know will not get stuck in their bridge-work. And that’s the perfect analogy for a press corpse that feeds the rest of us that same Truthiness Brand© of pablum.