Easy Way Out

" 'We're in the business to make money,' said CEO Rex Tillerson, asked on NBC if he would consider cutting profits to help consumers."

Well, at least Bill Clinton got something done yesterday. The former fat kid brokered a deal to get sugary sodas out of schools.

Here's a new Colbert twist: A blogger mad at a lawmaker for criticizing Colbert. Kos begins with the news story:

"House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) took on a rare role yesterday as a defender of President Bush.

"Hoyer came to the defense of the commander in chief after Saturday's White House Correspondents' Association dinner, where the president took a drubbing from comedian Stephen Colbert.

" 'I thought some of it was funny, but I think it got a little rough,' Hoyer said. 'He is the president of the United States, and he deserves some respect. I'm certainly not a defender of the administration,' Hoyer reassured stunned observers, but Colbert 'crossed the line' with many jokes that were 'in bad taste.'

"I'd like to know which jokes, in particular, Hoyer thought were in bad taste.

"Colbert, like many of us, is crashing the gate in DC. The natives, not used to getting more than Jay Leno-style good-natured ribbing, don't like it when one of their own gets a serious dose of reality. And Steny Hoyer, more than almost any Democrat in the House, has been there a tad too long.

"Well, more than a tad."

Salon Editor Joan Walsh also imbues the comic's performance with great meaning:

"Colbert's deadly performance did more than reveal, with devastating clarity, how Bush's well-oiled myth machine works. It exposed the mainstream press' pathetic collusion with an administration that has treated it -- and the truth -- with contempt from the moment it took office. Intimidated, coddled, fearful of violating propriety, the press corps that for years dutifully repeated Bush talking points was stunned and horrified when someone dared to reveal that the media emperor had no clothes. Colbert refused to play his dutiful, toothless part in the White House correspondents dinner -- an incestuous, backslapping ritual that should be retired. For that, he had to be marginalized. Voilà: 'He wasn't funny.' "

John Podhoretz says Bush can't be doing as badly as the polls indicate: