When Stephen Colbert walked out of his White House Correspondents' Dinner in 2006, he did it with a metaphorical red dot trained on his chest. Maybe a real one, too. This guy eviscerated a sitting president seated two arm-lengths away from him— one who couldn't seem to grasp his immense unpopularity, either — for 45 minutes.

He did it with a hand so steady he could've balanced a working flamethrower on that thing and, still, the only badly burned thing leaving that room would've been the president.

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Colbert was not well-loved leaving that room. He was dangerously unloved, if anything. A lot of people walked out. It was so biting that the host of the dinner the next year was a Canadian impressionist. This was, in retrospect, a borderline heroic act of free speech.

It also helped restore and cement the White House Correspondents' Dinner night as a direct, gutsy way to let the president know what regular people find wrong with their country.

The White House Correspondents' Association announced Joel McHale as the speaker at this year's dinner. Joel McHale is great and he's handsome and he's smart and all of that, but is he ready for this? Does he understand that this can make him indispensable?

He's tremendous at making fun of Justin Bieber and Wheel of Fortune. He coyly rises above it because he is above it. But let's be real about this: Can he tear down the president and not look like an asshole?

Let's hope so. Let's hope he takes the chance.

Look, nobody knew Jimmy Kimmel had it in him, either.

Kimmel's late night show had just started to pick up some steam when he accepted the gig in 2012. His monologue on Jimmy Kimmel Live had gotten better and tougher and people were starting to take notice.

His speech talks about the military industrial complex, about the rumors of President Obama eating dog in a past life, about the president's abandonment of trying to end Super PACs. Then he ended it with a funny, heartwarming story about showing up a teacher who told him he'd be a nobody, like the goddamn American Dream. It was a little work of art.

He took the gloves off then won everybody over anyway. After a decade on the air, he's become a bit of an institution since that night. Three months after the dinner, ABC announced it was moving his show up to 11:35 to compete with Leno and Letterman. This was not a coincidence.

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This dinner serves as a record for every major or minor grievance that this country has with its presidents. Colbert starts his speech, for example, by telling the audience that their table numbers have been tapped by the NSA, and that they're taking drink orders. This was eight years ago.

Sure, it's only on C-SPAN and Youtube. But this thing is just as much of a starmaker as it is a public good.

Does Joel McHale have it in him?

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