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The White House Correspondents' Dinner Has Always Been A Bad Idea by Parker Molloy
Each spring, journalists, politicians, and celebrities make their way to the Washington Hilton for the annual White House Correspondents’ Association dinner. The fundraiser for the White House Correspondents’ Association is a time-honored tradition that dates back almost a century.
But it needs to end.
<snip>
The dinner, which dates back to 1921, has been the setting of an uncomfortable standoff between journalists and the people they cover. President Calvin Coolidge first attended the gathering in 1924, as have 14 other presidents since. In the 1980s, the WHCA began hiring comedians to “roast” the people and organizations in attendance, a tradition that continues today. In 1993, C-SPAN began airing the event live, putting the awkward hobnobbing on display for the whole world to see.
Since then, critics have argued that the event has become a bloated spectacle that gives Americans an unflattering look at how Washington journalism’s proverbial sausage is made. In 1972, gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson even warned of the coziness between journos and politicos at events like the Correspondents’ dinner: “The most consistent and ultimately damaging failure of political journalism in America has its roots in the clubby/cocktail personal relationships that inevitably develop between politicians and journalists — in Washington or anywhere else that they meet on a day-to-day basis. When professional antagonists become after-hours drinking buddies, they are not likely to turn each other in.”
<snip>
Michelle Wolf, the comedian hired as the evening’s entertainment, did what she was brought there to do: She poked fun at the powerful. The jokes were biting, but they weren’t in any way out of the ordinary for the event. Her observations included the fact that Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders lies a lot (this is objectively true), that Trump might not be as rich as he claims he is (there’s a lot of evidence to suggest this is the case), and highlighted the hypocrisy of self-professed “pro-life” members of Congress who pay for their wives and mistresses’ abortions in secret (just last year a Republican member of the House retired for this very reason).
<snip>
With their inability to recognize their error, the WHCA illustrates exactly why its sycophantic relationship with politicians is unhealthy for the industry and for democracy as a whole. Like Thompson says: If you’re afraid of upsetting the powerful and losing access, if you’re afraid of making them dislike you, how are you supposed to hold their feet to the fire?
Washington journalists, and the WHCA specifically, need to recognize the crucial role they play in our country. Journalism is one of the only professions given an explicit shoutout in the Constitution, and for good reason: Journalists need to serve as a check on our government’s worst impulses.
more: https://www.good.is/articles/ending-the-white-house-correspondents-dinner
5 replies
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Trump ran as a "Make America Great Again" "No apologies" "No Political correctness" candidate.
The problem with this orange dumbass, is that he's so fucking thin-skinned, he can't even show up to a correspondence dinner because his feelings would get hurt and he might start crying! 
