Politico has a story about how congressmembers and their staffs are avoiding the Colbert Report that contains this anecdote:

"My experience with that show is like herpes. It never goes away, and it itches and sometimes flares up," said a former aide to Rep. Lynn Westmoreland, after his boss appeared on the show in 2006. The conservative Georgia Republican, co-sponsor of a bill requiring that the 10 Commandments be displayed in Congress, was skewered by Colbert in a segment of "Better Know a District" for appearing to be able to name only three of the commandments.

The episode has "haunted" the office for years, the former aide said. “I deeply regret letting him go on the Colbert Report."

Colbert gave the guy the dumbass demagogue herpes!

Seriously, Rep. Westmoreland isn't haunted by Colbert. He's haunted by the reality of his ignorant demagoguery, briefly exposed on Colbert.  (Watch the video--it's not Colbert's editing that makes him come across as he does.) The Colbert Report is one of the few places where this sort of thing can happen anymore--and that should be the key point. Politicians are avoiding Colbert in favor of more friendly and servile venues--like news outlets.

The New York Times' David Carr (9/20/10) compares involvement by media figures in politics--exemplified by CNBC's Rick Santelli and various Fox News figures fueling the Tea Party movement, and Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert's dueling answer rallies to said movement--to "a football game where the reporters and commentators, bored by the feckless proceedings on the field, suddenly poured out of the press box and took over the game." Writes Carr: "In politics, it seems as if the media is intent on not just keeping score but also calling plays."

Regardless of what one thinks of any particular media figure's political advocacy, it should be remembered--in a nation that was basically imagined into existence by a political commentator named Thomas Paine--that there is nothing at all unusual or alarming about people writing and talking about politics in the hopes of affecting the course of political life. Indeed, that's the most obvious reason to become a political journalist, and the assumed role of journalism that underlies the First Amendment. It's only the corporate media tradition of trying to conceal the political opinions of journalists in the hopes of marketing the broadest possible audience to advertisers that makes it seem natural to think of journalists as people who ought to confine themselves to "keeping score" rather than getting directly involved in the sport of politics.

Eyeing a new poll that "revealed that one in four Americans now believe that the 'faux' news delivered by Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert is replacing 'real' news sources as viable outlets," Greg Mitchell (Editor & Publisher, 5/5/09) has to wonder "if the remaining (if relatively low) public respect for the press is gone for good":

Yes, the delivery platform of the future will change--the Kindle, iPhone apps or rubbery plastic may replace paper everywhere--but the content still has to be credible. And now it must be said: The media blew both of the major catastrophes of our time.

I speak, of course, of the Iraq war and the financial meltdown. I wrote a book about the first, calling it So Wrong for So Long. I could write a sequel on the second disaster, and maybe title it So Wrong Again.

Even though "individual reporters at certain papers did some fine watchdog work," Mitchell writes that their efforts were "to no avail" and that "defenders of the press in this matter are cherry-picking the good stuff, much like Bush with his intelligence on Iraqi WMDs."

See Extra!: "Busted Bubble: The Press Fell Down on the Job on Housing Prices" (11-12/08) By Veronica Cassidy.