He's not Stephen Colbert, but then, who is?

Have I ever mentioned how I loves me some Craig Ferguson? Of course I'm a sucker for the speech cadences of the land of kilts and haggis (sorry, Liss), which go a long way towards turning a recitation of The Brothers Karamazov into a riotous comedy. And of course he has those craggy, Basset Hound-y good looks. But I think Ferguson ascended from being just another goofball into Comedic Valhalla with his brilliant riff on the media treatment of Britney Spears in the context of his own recovery from alcoholism.

Nothing will ever again hit the absolute perfection of Stephen Colbert's wicked skewering of both George W. Bush and the media at the White House Correspondents' Dinner a few years ago. Last year they decided to play it safe with the spectacularly unfunny Rich Little, and learned that really bad comedy can lay as big a turd in the punchbowl as Colbert's scathingly dry indictment of the whole room did the year before. Sure, there's the mandatory Shecky humor; the bad jokes that seem to come right out of the Borscht Belt that are missing only the snare drum. But if they're not going to have the guts to bring in Marc Maron to do this gig, I think Ferguson found a way to skewer the media and the administration at a level they could understand.

So without further ado, ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Craig Ferguson (and don't miss the Rumsfeld montage in Part II):