Some of you may be sick of hearing about the Stephen Colbert speech by now but I find the various reactions kinda fascinating. And so is this, in a way.
The C-Span people have been apparently going around the Internet getting sites to take down online videos that use the C-Span coverage. They, of course, have every right to do this but I hope they'll realize that one of the reasons so many sites have posted it is that the online video feature on the C-Span site is awful. For one thing, it uses Real Player, which ain't as good as some other things. For another, their links only work about 25% of the time. Most of all, they only offer full events…so if you want to watch just Colbert, you have to deal with a three hour online video just to see the last twenty-four minutes.
I posted two sets of links to Colbert's speech earlier here, one of which no longer works. But these seem to. And in the meantime, ABC News has posted what they shot that evening. This is different coverage with no cutaway shots for audience reactions and, it seemed to me, a little more laughter in some places.
At the end, Colbert runs a video skit of how he'd fill the job of Bush's press secretary. ABC's coverage does not show this tape, though you hear its audio. Instead, the ABC camera (they seem to only have had one there) was trained on George W. Bush throughout the video and you see his reactions. He chuckles in some odd places and seems pretty uncomfortable when Helen Thomas is asking her eternal question about why we invaded Iraq. Here's that video. (An ad may or may not precede your viewing of it.)