The debate about US TV comedian Stephen Colbert's speech taking the mick out of George Bush at the White House Correspondents' Dinner has been raging among bloggers all week: was he funny or not?
However, in a new twist, Time magazine TV critic James Poniewozik argues that this debate misses the point. Colbert may not have got many laughs from the assembled media types at the dinner, but that doesn't matter - he was actually aiming at the audience online, where the video of his performance has been widely circulated.
"What anyone fails to get who said Colbert bombed because he didn't win over the room is: the room no longer matters. Not the way it used to," says Poniewozik. "The room, which once would have received and filtered the ritual performance for the rest of us, is now just another subject to be dissected online."
NBC News correspondent Dawn Fratangelo sees the whole Colbert debate as yet another example of the growing power and influence of bloggers in the US. "Colbert's roasting of the president this weekend got nearly 70,000 posts on blogs according to the blog-tracking Web site Technorati -- the most of any subject Thursday," she says.
