Another bad day for the long tradition of comedians speaking truth to power, and then power smiling back with extremely thin lips in an effort to look like actual human beings: The White House Correspondents’ Dinner has been canceled for its second year running. The annual event, in which sitting presidents who are not too big of a baby to attend get to “enjoy” being roasted by celebrity comics, is one of the major social events of the Washington D.C. calendar, but was shuttered last year in deference to the COVID-19 pandemic. And has been again, as the White House Correspondents’ Association announced today that it simply couldn’t find a way to hold the event safely in 2021.
The appeal of the Correspondents’ Dinner for most non-Washington D.C. people, of course, is the comedy monologue, as best embodied by Stephen Colbert’s legendary takedown of George W. Bush in 2006, a scathing indictment of the entire Bush Doctrine that shook the sitting president so badly that he continued to do all the same shit he’d already been doing for the duration of his last two years in office. The subsequent 15 years have often felt like a response to Colbert’s undeniably daring set—the origins of his famed “Reality has a known liberal bias” line, among other jokes—whether by retreating rapidly from firebrand political content (hey, Jay Leno), or by tapping fellow Daily Show alums (Larry Wilmore, Hasan Minhaj, Michelle Wolf) to match his ire. The last few years of the event were noted mostly for the absence of their primary target/honoree, though, as Donald Trump opted not to even bother with the pretense of a single night’s good humor or humanity for the first three years of his term. (And COVID took care of the last.)
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Ever hear about the studies that showed that a lot of conservatives thought The Colbert Report was on their side? As dumb as that is, at least those people were consistent with their beliefs in admiring the character’s rhetoric. What really boggles the mind to me is all the conservatives who said Stephen’s character was an offensive stereotype of a conservative, but who then supported Trump.
I can believe that, but I can’t buy that anyone — no matter what their political persuasion — thinks that Greg Gutfeld is funny.
The President showing how brave or cool he is by yukking it up with vacuous egomaniacal Beltway journalists is one of those “traditions” which doesn’t need to be brought back.
What, you don’t find out of date references and punching down funny?
I worked in public affairs when I was in the Navy. Back in ‘08 I spent a morning in the Fox News green room while my boss waited to go on. I’ve been in frat houses that were better furnished. The main thing I remember about my brief time backstage—other than it looked like nobody cared—was that the microwave in the green room had a Colbert Report bumper sticker on it.We waited for 45 minutes and he got about 5 seconds on air before they cut to commercial. Needless to say, he was disappointed. I suggested we go around the corner to Rockefeller Plaza. I knew we could walk up and they’d put us on because we were in uniform. He got a couple of minutes on air when Ann Curry and Meredith Vieira came out at the top of the hour. Curry’s father was a Navy man and she stuck around and chatted for a couple of minutes when they went to commercial. After that my boss didn’t care much for Fox News but he always wanted to know what was happening at NBC.
Curry seemed to be one of the only decent people in that whole vulture group at Today.
Indeed. Ann Curry and Meredith Vieira are both class acts.On a different occasion I took a group of Sailors to the Plaza and Vieira made a point of sticking around and answering their questions, to the point that she missed her cue to return to the studio for the next segment. Of course, nobody watching at home would have noticed—the studio just skipped to the next segment.Most people in media would have said “gotta go” and left them standing there. They would have been polite about it, but they would have been more concerned with hitting their mark. I always thought it was really nice that she placed more importance on making those Sailors’ day.
Most newsrooms are a viper pit on some level.
It’s because they don’t believe that stereotype to be true and somehow see Trump as king and nowhere near it. Even though he was. But worse.
Shame. I normally enjoy these. And they have made impacts. 2011 inaccurately described as the motivation for Trump running in 2016. It was actually what scared him away from running in 2012. Those were all the jokes. He was thinking of running so Obama slapped him across the beak and Trump cowered away for four years.
Too bad. Trump would have lost to Obama and then not run again.
You think he would’ve won the GOP nomination?
In 2012? Probably not. The question is: does a loss in 2012 mean he doesn’t try again in 2016?
His loss in 2020 hasn’t stopped him from looking in to 2024.
2024 will be the tell: if he runs again it’ll suggest he would have run again in 2016. As always though at this point it’s difficult to tell if he’s really thinking of running again or just trying to maximize the grift.
Republicans generally nominate the guy who came in second during the previous competitive primary (it was true of Romney, McCain, H.W., and Reagan). In the 2012 primary, Romney had trouble closing the deal against pipsqueaks like Rick Santorum, and the GOP electorate was already so deranged they were doing crazy things like booing gay Iraq veterans for coming out after DADT was repealed.Trump likely would have lost the 2012 nomination, but by coming in second, he would have skated to the nomination in 2016. Although if Trump had won the nomination in 2012, he would have been spanked pretty hard by Obama in the general election and he’d have made a few more seasons of The Apprentice without getting half a million Americans killed.
He would have easily won the nomination in 2012. All the same voters were in play, they just knew Obama was largely unbeatable so Romney was the only truly serious candidate trying to run and they gave it to him more or less by default. Trump would have been blown out and that would have forced a Romney/Hillary battle in 2016 where she would have beaten him.
I don’t remember Obama being considered “largely unbeatable” back then.
Whoever said he wasn’t was full of it. 2012 was the limpest attempt at maintaining a horse race in the last 20 years. Everybody knew Obama was cruising to victory.
“In the last 20 years”? Obama won by more in 2008 than 2012.
The polls for much of the campaign disagree with you, especially the polls after the disastrous first debate.
Romney never polled at +1 outside of Rasmussen, Obama consistently polled +3 or more. https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2012/president/us/general_election_romney_vs_obama-1171.html#polls
I think the Republican establishment still had enough control of the party, and Romney was a powerful enough figure, that they would have kept Trump in the whole for 2012. Indeed Romney’s loss is the key thing that opened the door for Trump; a plurality of Republican voters were simply not going to support an establishment presidential candidate again after two consecutive losses.
The kooks running against Romney weren’t really doing anything but the establishment line along with some varied pet peeves and white resentment politics. Trump really coalesced the existing Tea Party/White resentment voter base they had relied on for years into a full blown fascist movement. I also stand by Trump getting exceptionally lucky and that needed everything to break his way as his repudiation was pretty thorough in 2018/20, the question is do whites backslide in 2022 giving Republicans breathing room while they run out the clock on the demographics implosion we’re watching happen.
Over Romney? Very possibly.
The thing that makes me wonder about that is that year’s GOP race was full of nutjobs, but the voters went with Mitt Romney. In 2016 not only did Trump win, but Ted Cruz came in second, so I think the GOP voters in 2016 were just really in the mood for an asshole nominee.
He would have lost to Obama, but realized that you can grift a lot of money from people by running for office.
This dinner should never happen. The proper function of journalists in a healthy society is to aggressively question everything that those in power do. Buddying up to them at any point creates the wrong kind of bond between them: a sympathetic one. Journalists will of course insist that they can be totally 100% objective and that this kind of thing has no effect on them, but all it takes is reading most news outlets to determine exactly what kind of bullshit that is.
What, you DON’T like hacky ribbing over actual body counts and/or financial malfeasance? 😀
I’m just here for the sexual shenanigans.
I have a lot of respect for journalism, and the role it applies in holding powerful people accountable, but good heavens are journalists some of the most smug, insufferable people I’ve ever encountered. They seem to think that because we pay attention to them to figure out what heck is going on in the world that this also gives them a platform to frequently harp on whatever inane, inside-baseball drama is going on in their field.
The awfulness varies a lot in the field, but as a general rule it gets to the worst levels in the fields where reporting gets the most formulaic and the closer it is to the top. So you see the same garbage on ESPN shoutfests, NYC fashion coverage, and White House correspondents.White House coverage is deeply ritualistic, editors and senior management make themselves readily available to sources going seeking to undercut any reporters who dare to violate unwritten rules, and advancement depends on being able to meet the formal designs of reporting, not genuine news or analysis, or even money. Wolf Blitzer is not the face of a network that really cares about profit margins or journalism.
This. This. This. I could not say it better. The whole thing is a charade, and the only person who ever rose to the challenge was Colbert, who in hindsight pretty much blew up the whole format.
Nah, Michelle Wolf kicked some ass, too.
Eh she was alright, but mostly the reaction to her seemed to be “Michelle who?”
Wrong. There was much bullywho about her. And tons of people know her. Just because you don’t…
Michelle Wolf’s monologue in 2018 was up there with Colbert’s, in terms of just eviscerating her targets.
Wrong. You can have dinner with people, laugh at/with them, and still hold them accountable. This is an insufferable fucking take.Plus, it’s pretty good television.
“You can have dinner with people, laugh at/with them, and still hold them accountable.”There’s little evidence to support this, given how poorly most WHCA members hold the goverment accountable for anything.
Exactly.
Proximity breeds familiarity. Sorry, the difference of the dinner existing or not is wholly irrelevant. The palace intrigue of the city exists as a whole because we don’t have some sort of mythical legal requirement to separate them or enforce access, so journalists have to play nice to get things otherwise they’ll always be filing FOIAs and trying their best to land interviews. This is the game we play, the problem is that the inside the beltway class is unable to realize that because most of them are still from a time before this whole thing was deeply understood in the broader public sense.
“play nice to get things”No. Consider a journalist who is exceedingly hostile to the government; always fair and never libelous, but interprets things in the worst possible light. Politicians and bureaucrats won’t talk to them on the record….but there are always plenty of disgruntled or ambitious folks in the government who will talk to any journalist off the record if leaking info (or just expressing their opinions) suits their purposes. The journalist can make excellent use of that to find out things the politicians don’t want people to know.The things you get by “playing nice” aren’t worth having.
Yeah, your fantasy world of deep throats doesn’t exist. There aren’t that many leakers and all of the people they talk to are people who survived the system. By all means, go full Mr. Smith but remember, that’s a fantasy. Not that we can’t change it but stop railing as if you can do it by just being brash.
I never said everyone has to be like that (nor do I think very many people are like that), just that playing nice isn’t a necessity in order to do the proper work of journalism. A journalist who makes good use of public records requests, attends public meetings, and talks to low-level folks who know more than the high level folks think they do can shine quite a lot of light on those in power. Even just asking tough questions at a press conference, even if the politicians ignore them, can highlight what they’re afraid of/hiding. Your “everything is fine the way it is” attitude is why we don’t have a better fourth estate: you don’t demand it.
Your “everything is fine the way it is” attitude is why we don’t have a better fourth estate: you don’t demand it.If that’s how you misread my replies, go fuck off. ^_^
The White House Correspondents Dinner and the incestuous relationship between journalists, politicians and celebrities summed up in one video:
“The annual event, in which sitting presidents who are not too big of a baby to attend get to “enjoy” being roasted by celebrity comics, is one of the major social events of the Washington D.C. calendar, but was shuttered last year in deference to the COVID-19 pandemic.”Uhh Trump didn’t attend a single one during his presidency.
Why would he? There was no ‘good natured ribbing’ on offer. The press hated him, and he hated them. As for now, it may be uncharitable, but there’s no need for a WHCD when there are Democrats in the White House. There are no journalists working at the WH, only boosters and PR flacks.
Yeah, that’s in the article and alluded to in the sentence you quoted.
Reading BAD. Inability to finish full article GOOD.
Despite his not attending a single one of these functions, I can still imagine Trump calling Biden a failure for not having the event go ahead this year.
OH, if he was still in the spotlight, which, thank god, he isn’t for some reason, he would have.
Okay.
Michelle Wolf laid the WHCA bare and they’ve never recovered.
Wolf reminds me of Wyatt Cynac who had one great ‘oh fuck this shit’ night and then got branded with it for good or bad.
I saw her at a local comedy club shortly after that. We had tons if security because she was getting death threats.She talked about what it was like for the president to effectively put a hit on you.So good live. She deserves better than what happened.
That’s too bad. Corn Pop was scheduled to MC.Dude’s got stories.
Maybe that guy with the no shirt can talk about when he was in Russia, or something.
make it a much smaller, zoom event next year.
If you’re looking for a more than acceptable substitute to this event, I recommend the Joe Biden Insult Bot:
Another bad day for the long tradition of comedians speaking truth to powerIs that what they do at the WH Correspondents dinners? I guess it’s hard to tell what comedians are saying with power’s dick in their mouths.
Wasn’t it shut down last year because Trump didn’t want to be roasted?
Well, between this and the unlamented death of April Fools Day, I can’t say that the pandemic didn’t do anything positive.Farewell to a terrible tradition that we should all be deeply embarrassed was ever a thing.