Locus Medius

The Power of Satire

Proving that you can get away with saying things satirically that would be difficult to say in a serious manner, Stephen Colbert really lit into President Bush as host of the White House Correspondent's dinner on Saturday.

I couldn't get the C-Span clip to work on my computer (you have to set up Real Player as your default player, and I didn't feel like doing that). I found this shorter clip at one of the video sites. Don't bother watching after Colbert switches to his audition tape (after about 7 minutes, 30 seconds on the shorter clip), because its not really funny from there on.

According to various reports, Bush was thoroughly unamused by Colbert. Doesn't surprise me. Ideologues can accept satirical criticism just as gracefully as they accept serious criticism (which can be succinctly described as "not at all").

Some choice moments from the video below:

Mummies are Cool

Saw a fascinating episode of Nova on PBS the other day. It was about an Egyptian mummy found in a freakshow-style museum in Niagara Falls. Turns out the mummy (which was in this little museum from the 1850s to 1999) is most likely the missing mummy of Pharaoh Ramses I — founder of the New Kingdom's 19th Dynasty, perhaps the most powerful dynastic line in the pre-Roman Mediterranean.

So what was so fascinating?