I have to admit that, like Noam Scheiber and Bob Somerby, I didn’t find Stephen Colbert’s performance at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner very funny. But a lot of people are obsessed with it and the media’s failure to devote much coverage to it. Here’s Scheiber’s analysis:

My sense is that the blogosphere response is more evidence of a new Stalinist aesthetic on the left–until recently more common on the right–wherein the political content of a performance or work of art is actually more important than its entertainment value. Jon Stewart often says he hates when his audience cheers; he wants them to laugh.

I agree. The Daily Show and Colbert are increasingly focused on telling jokes that make liberals feel good about themselves. The result is that the shows are both pretty mediocre right now.

The problem, which Scheiber doesn’t fully acknowledge, is that the post-9/11 political atmosphere stifled a lot of dissent and made it cathartic for liberals when elites criticized Bush publicly. Bush reinforced this by hiding from the press and only speaking to screened audiences. The result is that there’s still a lot of bottled-up resentment more than four years later. That’s what made Colbert’s routine such a big deal.