Stephen Colbert has balls of steel. He not only roasted the president to cinders at the White House Correspondents' Association banquet while the man sat stone-faced scant yards away, but he did it without losing much composure in front of an audience almost pathologically unwilling to laugh. Watching Colbert soldier on in the face of such hostility, for something like twenty minutes, is painful and almost unbearable. But he was brave and brilliant:

Colbert's monologue

At least Helen Thomas was willing to laugh, bless her soul. And willing to appear in Colbert's "audition tape" for the job of White House press secretary:

Colbert's audition tape

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