Craig Crawford on Colbert

Crawford was in the audience at the White House Correspondents' Dinner. This is his take:

All I know is that I was wiping away tears of laughter after the Comedy Central star's brilliant send-up (although I did notice that only a handful of folks at the tables around me were visibly amused).

Colbert spared no one, and Lord knows that none of us should be. In a hilarious passage that still makes me laugh at this writing, Colbert lampooned the entire country's jingoistic madness, from commerce to war-making, when he said, "Ladies and gentlemen, I believe it's yogurt. But I refuse to believe it's not butter."

For all the high and mighty whiners out there, I'll relay what Colbert told me in the green room before I did his show a few months ago. "I hope you understand that I play a character on this show," he said. "I play a complete idiot." And a gloriously funny idiot he is, played to perfection at last week's dinner. At least he was the one just playing the fool.